Nairobi's Children: A Mission of Love and Hope

While we are in Nairobi, we will be doing mission work with three local organizations. Although each organization serves a very different population, they all share a commitment to caring for some of the most vulnerable people in their community.

Mathare Community Outreach is a grassroots interdenominational Christian nonprofit organization founded in 1994 by Bishop Daniel Ogutu and Magdaline Ogutu to serve vulnerable children and families in the Mathare Valley slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

What began as a simple daily feeding program - giving children a cup of porridge to combat malnutrition - has grown into a holistic community development ministry addressing poverty, education, health, and spiritual growth. Today, MCO serves over 1,500 children living in poverty in Mathare Valley.

We will spend a full day at Mathare Community Outreach, where we will have the opportunity to meet the children and families who receive services from the organization and participate in whatever activities the staff feel are most helpful. We are especially looking forward to serving lunch and sharing a meal with the school children.

In addition to spending a day at Mathare Community Outreach, we will also worship with Bishop Ogutu's church (Outreach Community Church) on Sunday morning.

There is something especially meaningful about worshipping alongside Christians whose lives and experiences are very different from our own, yet still gathering together, as one body, to worship as people of faith who follow Jesus' transformative message of love.  

The second organization we will connect with is Happy Life Mission (HLM). This is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing hope to abandoned children through a three-fold ministry: shelter, education, and medical care. 

In 2002, Pastor Peter and Faith Ndungu opened Happy Life Children's Home to care for three abandoned children. Since then, HLM has cared for more than 1070 children. Happy Life Children's Home currently houses over 50 infants and toddlers under the age of three.

We will spend one day at Happy Life's Children Home caring for the babies, including helping with feeding and bathing. This will probably be one of the more emotional experiences of the trip. It is difficult to think about babies so young having already experienced traumatic circumstances that resulted in them being separated from their families. 

At the same time, we don't want to approach our visit simply feeling sorry for these children. Our hope is that we see them first as children who are deeply loved and valued, and who deserve the opportunity to grow, learn, and thrive. We are looking forward to spending time with them, even if our contribution during one afternoon is small. 

Our third day in Nairobi, we will visit Kwetu Home of Peace (KHP). This organization was established in 1993 by the Catholic Church in Kenya.

Father Michael, a Catholic missionary who was serving at Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Nairobi, had become concerned about the children who were lingering on church grounds, begging for food and money, so he started a "Care and Feeding Center" for the homeless boys and girls. In 1995, the program expanded with the creation of Kwetu Home, a halfway house for homeless boys. 

KHP currently provides housing, education, and healthcare to homeless boys between the ages of 8 and 17, and helps them reconnect with their families of origin, whenever possible. Today, KHP provides services to more than 140 homeless boys.

Our time at KHP will be different from our other visits. Rather than serving meals or caring for very young children, we will be spending time playing games and building relationships with the boys at KHP. 

Playing a game may not seem like "mission work" in the traditional sense. But sometimes simply giving your time and attention can communicate something important: "I see you. I am interested in who you are. You matter." 

Our primary goal in working with these organizations is not simply to "help" people. It is to build relationships with people of faith who have had very different life experiences from our own. 

We are going to Nairobi willing to learn from the people we meet and the experiences we share with them. We intend to remain flexible, open to participating in whatever activities the leaders of these organizations feel will be most meaningful and beneficial for everyone involved. 

We will certainly be doing things while we are there. We will serve lunch to school children, feed and bathe orphaned babies, and play games with boys who have experienced homelessness. But we will not measure the success of our mission trip by how many tasks we accomplish.

Perhaps the most important part of the trip will be what happens in the spaces between those activities: the conversations, the laughter, the stories we hear, the people we meet, and the relationships that we develop. Only God knows what these encounters will bring. Maybe we will be able to make a small difference in the lives of the children and young people we meet. Maybe we will encourage someone who needs to know that they are seen and valued. Maybe we will also be the ones who are changed. 

We are going to Kenya because we believe God calls us to love our neighbors and sometimes our neighbors live thousands of miles away and have life stories very different from ours. We are going to Kenya to share what we can: our time, our love, our faith, and our hope. But we will also be ready to receive those same gifts from the people we meet.