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Short-term missions and embarrassing grace
By Shawna Songer Gaines on Oct 15, 2014"The Germans are coming!" This has been the joke around our church office at Bakersfield First Church for the last several months. All summer we have prepared to receive a mission team here in California from Germany. We prayed, borrowed air mattresses and learned to say, "Willkommen" ("Welcome"). These Germans would not catch us unprepared! Still, with all our preparations I was not ready for the disorientation of being on the receiving end of short-term missions.
I'm no stranger to international missions. I was 10 when my family joined our church on my very first mission trip to Mexico. I officiated over my first funeral on a Mexico mission trip when I was 17. Hey, my first full-time job was forNazarene Missions International, the network of leaders in every local Nazarene church which mobilizes people for mission.
In all my experiences I must have heard fellow teammates say a million times, "I really got a lot more out of this than I gave." Always underlying these comments was an assumption of transaction. We go on a short-term mission trip assuming that "they" need something that "we" can give or do. We leave having arrived at some kind of a revelation that "they" gave us something "we" needed. Either way, we still assume we are there to transact, exchanging one thing for another.
But my time on the receiving end of this "transaction" has turned my perspective of short-term missions on its head.
Earlier in the summer, Donabel, our pastor for outreach, led a group from our church to Germany where they run a recovery ministry, much like our church. Donabel had the marvelous idea to open a relationship with our German brothers and sisters that would go both ways. She worked with the German leaders to not only plan our trip to Germany but also to receive a team of young German adults here in Bakersfield. In addition to working with our recovery ministry, the German team, a team from our church and a team from Point Loma Nazarene University, spent a weekend working alongside fellow Christians in Tecate, Mexico.
Bringing a team from another country and inviting them into your culture and community is like being handed fun-house glasses and sent back into what was once a familiar room. You can never look at your own culture the same again.
Willkommen to Bakersfield
Hands down, my most memorable moment with our German friends happened on a trip to Costco, a very large retail center in the U.S. Here we are at a bulk warehouse store, sitting down to a bite of lunch... and by "bite" I mean gigantic slices of greasy, delicious pizza. We are finishing up lunch when one of the young German guys sees a shopping cart with an electric chair attached to the front. Immediately amused, he sits in the chair, reclines back, begins to wheel around the food court of Costco, steering with one hand, holding a gigantic slice of pizza in the other, shouting, "America!" In that moment my favorite lunch spot became a parody of a scene from Walle. Sitting around the lunch table one day I asked two of the leaders from the Germany team, "What is the biggest challenge ministering with youth in Germany?" They both had basically the same answer. They said that young people in Germany think they have everything they need. They have cell phones and clothes, education and opportunities, and so many things to do that seem much more fun than going to church. Sound familiar?
But what do Germans do for "fun"? One day my husband tried to talk the team into taking a break from their work. They had been cleaning, sorting, painting and organizing for hours. Tim said, "why don't you take a break and do something fun?" to which Norman replied, with all seriousness, "We are working, work is our fun."
The Hard Part
They worked so very hard! And this is what was most difficult for me. I knew they would be working with our recovery ministry and our youth group and children's ministry during the evening, which all felt like an acceptable arrangement. But manual labor? During the day they cleaned out the rooms at our church that had been storing the junk growing on top of the junk put in there years ago. They washed light fixtures, painted dirty walls, cleaned behind stoves, and organized -- oh the glorious German engineering spirit of organization! I seriously don't understand how they lost World War II (which several of our church members learned is not the best conversation starter when you are meeting a group of Germans for the first time).
They worked as if scrubbing the yellow off our light covers would bring the kingdom of heaven down to earth. And honestly -- I'm really repenting as I type this -- I was embarrassed. I felt like, "We aren't one of 'those' churches that need this kind of help. We aren't poor." The transaction in this relationship felt off. I mean, there was a German molecular engineer (I'm not even smart enough to know what that is!) who was cleaning grime out from our stoves!
What must it have been like for Peter, the fisherman, to let Jesus the Messiah wash his feet?
What made all this even harder for me was how perplexed these Germans were by how many staff members and pastors our church has. Granted, we have a lot of part-timers and some unpaid, but still, we have we have seven pastors on staff, an office manager AND a custodial service... yeah, that's right, a custodial service, and these Germans flew 3,000 miles to clean our church.
Beyond Transaction
The churches of our German friends all had one pastor and the church members do everything else that is needed: clean, work in the nursery, teach children and youth, fix things that are broken, and take care of people who are sick or in need. Crazy right? The church caring for the church, without a paycheck. And here this team sacrificed a great deal to come and do the things that really, our congregation has every ability and resource to do for ourselves. After all, we're Americans, and shouldn't Americans do things for themselves?
But those two weeks, we were reminded that we are not Americans, not mostly anyway. And these new friends of ours from Germany were not Germans, not mostly anyway. We were and are Christians, together submitting to the Lordship of Christ and living in the Kingdom of God. And the Kingdom of God is not something we do or bring or create. No amount of transactions can buy a ticket into this Kingdom. It is breaking through portals of grace.
Grace is not something we can take for ourselves, it must be given, lavishly and embarrassingly given. Gifted. Not transacted.
I don't often think about being embarrassed by grace. But I guess I am. Grace means I cannot get what I need on my own; I am incomplete.
Grace is exactly what we received from our German brothers and sisters. Their presence among our congregation was a gift that is still helping us re-imagine who we are as the people of God and who we are called to be. And we didn't deserve it. We don't ever deserve grace. And sometimes we are too proud to receive something we didn't pay for. But I am repenting of that pride and missing my German friends. The halls of the church feel a bit incomplete without them these days, but longing for more grace ain't bad.
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 Ellos son el pueblo kieni, desplazados desde 1992 y declarados "olvidados" por la ONU. En 2001, el gobierno de Kenia trasladó a este grupo tribal agricultor hacia un campo de refugiados cerca del bosque de Kieni. Con el correr de los años, el pueblo perdió toda su documentación. Eventualmente, el gobierno se olvidó por completo del pueblo kieni.
En parte gracias a miembros de la iglesia nazarena Eagle (águila), en Idaho (Estados Unidos), quienes decidieron sumarse a su causa, los kieni ya no se encuentran en el olvido.
Y debido a la iglesia Eagle es que surgió una nueva asociación el año pasado entre una organización sin fines de lucro llamada Expansion International (expansión internacional) y la Iglesia del Nazareno en el este de África, así como también con el Ministerio Nazareno de Compasión. Las cuatro entidades comparten un deseo común de ayudar al grupo kieni para que puedan establecer una nueva vida en su propia tierra, y de ministrar en cuanto a sus necesidades físicas, emocionales y espirituales. Este deseo llevó a que todos se reunieran para ponerse de acuerdo en apoyarse unos a otros para ayudar al pueblo kieni.
Nunca más olvidados
Forzados a vivir en un asentamiento de espacio muy limitado, los 4 mil kieni, quienes son un grupo agricultor, se encontraron sin tierra para cultivar, sin trabajos, sin medios de generar dinero, sin escuelas y sin hogares. Ellos construyeron estructuras provisorias con cañas y lonas, y allí vivieron durante 12 años sin un propósito y con pocas esperanzas para el futuro.
En 2003, la iglesia nazarena Eagle, de Idaho, envió un grupo misionero a Kenia. Durante el viaje, el grupo misionero se enteró del campamento de refugiados, vio las terribles condiciones de vida en que se encontraban, y varios miembros del grupo se sintieron movidos a ayudar.
La iglesia Eagle comenzó a enviar grupos misioneros a Kenia en forma regular. Dos miembros de la congregación (Marietta Thompson y Arlene Hardy), junto con Evanson Baiya, nativo de Kenia, desarrollaron una saludable relación con el pueblo kieni y llegaron a fundar una organización sin fines de lucro para asistirles. La organización, llamada Expansion International, tiene como misión el proveer ayuda a las comunidades rurales de Kenia en lo que respecta a educación, atención a la salud, y crecimiento económico así como espiritual, y rápidamente se expandió pudiendo asistir a cinco comunidades de Kenia.
Varios miembros de Expansion, así como también de la iglesia Eagle, pasaron varios años realizando peticiones ante el gobierno de Kenia para darle al pueblo kieni un territorio propio y para ayudarles a establecer nuevos hogares. Ellos se comunicaron con los medios de comunicación de Kenia y también llevaron a cabo un gran concierto local con artistas cristianos para generar una mayor conciencia al respecto en el 2012.
El año pasado, el gobierno de Kenia finalmente escuchó sus súplicas. Éste envió emisarios para que visitaran el asentamiento, realizaran un censo y determinaran sus necesidades. Luego se le dio dinero a cada familia del asentamiento para que pudieran comprar sus propios terrenos.
El dinero no era suficiente para construir hogares, comprar las semillas necesarias para iniciar cultivos, excavar pozos de agua potable o para abrir escuelas para los niños, pero ellos estaban muy alegres al tener la oportunidad de iniciar una nueva y permanente comunidad, la cual sería propia.
 Este año, los miembros de la iglesia Eagle recaudaron más de $130 mil (dólares americanos) para construir 34 hogares para las familias kieni, los cuales costaron unos $3.900 por unidad. Expansion tiene como objetivo la construcción de 120 casas más, contratando a los mismos refugiados para realizar la labor y así proveyendo trabajos.
Estableciendo una asociación
El pastor Tim Bunn, de la iglesia Eagle, así como el equipo de liderazgo se alegraron al ver a su congregación tan emocionada por las misiones y por el poder ayudar al pueblo kieni. Sin embargo, ellos se veían un tanto preocupados acerca de la cantidad de dinero que estaba siendo recaudada por su iglesia para ser adjudicada fuera de la denominación nazarena, cuando la Iglesia del Nazareno ya contaba con una importante presencia en Kenia, donde ésta ya suplía necesidades físicas, emocionales y espirituales de la misma manera que Expansion intentaba hacerlo.
"Nos preocupaba que esto no diera como resultado nuevas iglesias nazarenas", dijo Josh Kinney, el presidente de Misiones Nazarenas Internacionales en la iglesia Eagle. "Nos parecía importante intentar unificar los esfuerzos".
La iglesia Eagle propuso facilitar una reunión entre Misión Global Nazarena y Expansion International. En el verano de 2013, las dos organizaciones se reunieron con la iglesia, así como con Don Gardner, un misionero que sirve como coordinador de estrategia para el territorio del este de África. Gardner se ofreció con mucho entusiasmo para trabajar junto con Expansion en pos de ayudar al pueblo kieni así como al resto de las comunidades que habían sido identificadas, en cualquier manera en que la Iglesia del Nazareno pudiera asistir y teniendo como objetivo final el plantar iglesias en donde fueran bienvenidos.
Como resultado de la nueva asociación, la cual incluyó la firma de un memorandum de entendimiento por parte de todas las entidades, todos los fondos provistos por nazarenos para el trabajo de Expansion International pueden ser enviados directamente al Ministerio Nazareno de Compasión y serán destinados a apoyar el trabajo de Expansion entre las familias kieni.
Un inicio
"La relación todavía se encuentra en una temprana etapa, de modo que el liderazgo del este de África se encuentra a la espera de que se desglosen algunos detalles antes de proseguir con la práctica", dijo Sam Oketch, el coordinador del Ministerio Nazareno de Compasión para el este de África. Ya se están enviando fondos a la Iglesia del Nazareno en el este de África para apoyar al proyecto de construcción kieni.
"Nuestra asociación está a penas comenzando a desarrollarse. No hemos hecho nada en conjunto, todavía estamos en las etapas iniciales de intentar coordinar cómo trabajaremos juntos", dijo Oketch. "Nos encontramos en las primeras etapas de visitar para poder identificar cómo podemos ayudarlos a estabilizarse en sus nuevos hogares".
Entre algunas de las ideas del MNC se encuentran la asistencia a Expansion para recaudar fondos para los nuevos hogares, así como el cavar pozos de agua potable, la provisión de capacitación y conciencia en cuanto a nutrición, el enviar expertos en agricultura para ayudarles a comenzar con sus plantaciones, y el establecimiento de iglesias.
El MNC ya se encuentra realizando esta tarea en otras áreas de Kenia, de modo que puede prestar su experiencia y conexiones para el proyecto.
Misión Global engendra misión local
La congregación de la iglesia nazarena Eagle se encuentra energizada gracias a la asociación y la oportunidad de unirse al pueblo kieni, ayudándoles a construir una nueva vida.
 "La gente de nuestra iglesia está acostumbrada a escuchar acerca de viajes a Kenia, pero el 80 por ciento de nuestra iglesia jamás ha visitado o ha experimentado ningún tipo de contacto con ellos", dijo Kinney. "Uno de los motivos por los cuales vimos tan grandes contribuciones por parte de personas que no contaban con ningún tipo de vínculo con Kenia fue que ellos podían identificar a una familia a la cual ayudarían a construir una casa. Pudimos involucrar a muchas familias que no contaban con los fondos para realizar un viaje a Kenia, pero que ahora están patrocinando la construcción de la casa de una familia y a través de esto tienen una conexión directa con una familia en Kenia. La asociación y la habilidad de poner todo nuestro involucramiento en pos de la tarea cambiará todo en lo referente a nuestro vínculo con esa comunidad y con estas personas". -- Translated by Ed Brussa.
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They are the Kieni People, displaced since 1992, and called “forgotten” by the UN. In 2001, the Kenyan government moved this tribal agricultural people into a refugee camp next to the Kieni forest. Over the years, it lost all their paperwork and documentation. Eventually, the government forgot all about the Kieni people.
In part, because members of the Eagle Church of the Nazarene, Idaho, decided to take up their cause, the Kieni people are forgotten no more.
And because of Eagle church, a new partnership was born last year between a nonprofit organization called Expansion International and the Church of the Nazarene in East Africa, as well as Nazarene Compassionate Ministries. The four entities share a mutual desire to help the Kieni group establish a new life on their own land, and to minister to their physical, emotional and spiritual needs. This desire brought them all to the table to agree to help one another help the Kieni people.
Forgotten no more
Forced into a cramped camp, the 4,000 Kieni, who are an agricultural people, had no land to cultivate, no jobs, no way to earn money, no schools and no homes. They built temporary tarp-covered structures with bamboo and lived there for the next 12 years, without a purpose and little hope for a future.
In 2003, Eagle Church of the Nazarene, Idaho, sent a mission team to Kenya. During the trip, the mission team learned about the refugee camp, saw their terrible living conditions, and several team members became driven to help them.
Eagle began regularly sending mission teams to Kenya. Two members of the congregation – Marietta Thompson and Arlene Hardy – along with Evanson Baiya, a native of Kenya, developed a relationship with the Kieni people, and went on to found a nonprofit organization to help them. Called Expansion International, the organization’s mission was to provide help to rural Kenyan communities in the areas of education, health, economics and spiritual growth, and it quickly expanded to helping five communities in Kenya.
Members of Expansion, as well as members of Eagle church, spent several years petitioning the Kenyan government to give the Kieni people their own land and help them establish new homes. They contacted the Kenyan media and also held a large local concert with regional Christian performers for awareness in 2012.
Last year, the Kenyan government finally heard their pleas. It sent emissaries to visit the camp, conduct a census and assess their needs. Then it gave enough money to every family in the refugee camp so that they could buy their own land.
The money was not enough to also build a home, buy the seeds to plant crops, drill wells for fresh water or open schools for their children, but they were just happy to have the beginnings of a new, permanent community they could call their own.
This year, the Eagle church members raised more than $130,000 to build 34 homes for Kieni families, at $3,900 per house. Expansion has a goal to build 120 more homes, hiring the refugees themselves to do the work, thereby providing jobs.
Forging a partnership
Pastor Tim Bunn, of Eagle Church, and the leadership team loved seeing the congregation excited about missions and about helping the Kieni people. However, they had reservations about all the money being raised in their church that was going outside of the Nazarene denomination when they knew that the denomination already has an expansive presence in Kenya, meeting needs which are physical, emotional and spiritual, just as Expansion seeks to do.
“We were concerned that it was not resulting in Nazarene churches,” said Josh Kinney, Eagle’s Nazarene Missions International president. “It seemed important enough to us to try and tie it together.”
Eagle proposed to facilitate a meeting between Nazarene Global Mission and Expansion International. In the summer of 2013, the two organizations met with the church, along with Don Gardner, a missionary who serves as the field strategy coordinator for theAfrica East Field (a geographic area of the Africa Region in which the churches and ministries are administered together as one field). Gardner enthusiastically offered to work with Expansion to help the Kieni people and the other targeted communities in whatever way the Nazarene church could assist, with the end goal of planting churches wherever they would be welcomed.
As a result of the new partnership, which included all the entities signing a Memorandum of Understanding, all funds given by Nazarenes for the work of Expansion International can be sent directly to Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, and will support Expansion’s work among the Kieni families
A beginning
It is still early in the relationship, so the leadership in East Africa is waiting on details to be fleshed out before moving forward in practice, said Sam Oketch, the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries coordinator for the Africa East Field. Funds are already being moved to Nazarene Africa East in support of the Kieni building project.
“Our partnership, really it is just developing. We haven’t done anything together, we are still at the initial stages of trying to fix things together how we will work,” Oketch said. “We are in the beginning stages of visiting them so we can … find out how we can help them to stabilize in their new homes.”
Among some of NCM’s ideas are helping Expansion with raising funds for the new homes, as well as drilling bore holes for fresh water, providing training and awareness about nutrition, sending agricultural experts to help them begin planting crops, and establishing churches.
NCM is already doing this work in other areas of Kenya, so it brings experience and connections to the table.
Global mission engenders local mission
The congregation at Eagle Nazarene is energized by the partnership and the opportunity to come alongside the Kieni people and help them build a new life.
“People in our church are used to hearing about trips to Kenya, but 80 percent of our church has never been or has no personal touch,” Kinney said. “One of the reasons we saw such a huge outpouring from people who had no tie to Kenya – they could actually see an individual family they could build a house for. We’ve just tied in so many more families who may not have the funds to go to Kenya, but are sponsoring a family’s house and now have a direct connection with a family in Kenya. The partnership and the ability to put our full weight behind it will have changed everything in our tie to that community and those people.
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| Heart of God: Tell everyone, everywhere
By Howard Culbertson on Oct 14 , 2014
A million years in the future most of the things that take up our time and energy now won't matter much. What will matter is whether people are in heaven or hell.
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"He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” -- Mark 16:15
Contemporary English Bible translations render Mark 16:15 in very succinct and clear ways:
“Go everywhere; tell everyone” (Easy-to-Read Version)
“Go everywhere; announce to one and all” (The Message)
“Preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere” (The Living Bible)
No doubt about it: We followers of King Jesus are a commissioned people. That is clear from the mandate in Mark 16:15 to spread the Good News in all the earth. We delude ourselves if we see world evangelism involvement simply as an optional add-on.
In one form or another, the command to go everywhere and tell everyone appears in all four gospels as well as in Acts (Matthew 28:19-20, Mark 16:15, Luke 24:46-48, John 20:21 and Acts 1:8). Over the last two hundred years that command has come to be known as the “Great Commission.”
That the Great Commission appears in Mark’s gospel indicates something of its importance. With just 16 chapters, Mark is the shortest of the gospels (at 28 chapters, Matthew is the longest). Some things in the other gospels do not appear in Mark. For instance, Mark says nothing about Jesus’ birth or childhood. It may be said, therefore, that to Mark, the Great Commission had more significance than the Christmas story.
In the oldest Greek manuscript found to date of Mark, chapter 16 ends at verse 8. Verses 9-20 are missing. As a result, Bible scholars are not sure who actually penned Mark 16:15.
Whether Mark wrote those words or whether someone else added them later does not, of course, change the fact that they are about something we know to be God’s will. This is not the only place in Scripture that has the Great Commission. Biblical passages like “I am sending you,” “Be my witnesses to the ends of the earth,” and “Go make disciples of all nations” all state that same command.
Clearly, we must not ignore the Great Commission and we dare not try to explain it away. It was obviously paramount in the biblical writers’ minds. Dare we place less importance on it than they did?
How can believers today carry out the Great Commission? Well, it certainly includes the actual going to the ends of the earth. However, it may also mean financial support.It could be spending time in intercessory prayer in support of world evangelism. It can mean preparing publicity to stir world evangelism interest and passion. It could be telling a missionary story once a month to a children’s group at church. It could be mentoring a young person who feels called to missionary service.
A million years in the future most of the things that take up our time and energy now won’t matter much. What will matter is whether people are in heaven or hell. Thus, whether we carry out the Great Commission will matter for all of eternity.
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Cuando el esposo de la mujer murió a causa del VIH/SIDA, ella no tenía idea de cómo cuidaría de sus hijos. Él era la única persona que traía el pan a la casa, y ella no tenía ninguna destreza vocacional que ofrecer. Desesperada por conseguir ingresos monetarios, ella se convirtió en trabajadora sexual.
Más tarde, sus hijos fueron inscritos en un ministerio apoyado por el Ministerio Nazareno de Compasión (MNC), el cual asiste a huérfanos y a niños en situaciones de vulnerabilidad dentro de su vecindario en Kisumu, Kenia. El programa proveyó alimentos para sus hijos y les ofreció consejería emocional, así como cuidado espiritual.
Un día, el plantel invitó a todos los tutores de de los niños inscritos a concurrir a un día de capacitación vocacional, enseñándoles cómo comenzar una pequeña empresa. La capacitación incluía capital para iniciarla.
 “Una mujer decidió comenzar un proyecto de granja” dijo Sam Oketch (fotografía a la izquierda), el coordinador del MNC para el este de África. “Ella comenzó en una escala pequeña pero ahora le está yendo muy bien. Ella dejó de prestarse como trabajadora sexual”.
Esta mujer vende su pollo a hoteles y mercados. Lo que es aun mejor, ella ha comenzado a concurrir a una iglesia nazarena, donde ha aceptado a Jesucristo como su salvador.
Esta familia es a penas una de varias que han encontrado nuevos hogares, nuevas oportunidades, y que además han encontrado una nueva esperanza mediante un programa del MNC que ayuda a las familias carenciadas del área de Kisumu.
Desde 2009, el MNC ha estado trabajando en cinco distritos de Kenia (Siaya, Kisumu, Nyando, Migori, y la bahía de Homa) para proveer servicios esenciales tales como alimentos y nutrición, albergue, protección física, atención a la salud, apoyo psicosocial, educación y capacitación vocacional, y oportunidades económicas para niños que se han convertido en huérfanos y que se encuentran vulnerables.
 Oketch dijo que el ministerio trabaja a través de las iglesias nazarenas en los distritos de Kenia. El MNC provee capacitación continua para los miembros de la iglesia local, quienes asisten a sus vecinos carenciados. Mediante el proyecto Build-a-Home (Construir una casa), los miembros de la iglesia ayudan a identificar familias que se encuentran viviendo en situaciones inadecuadas y así las ayudan a construir un mejor hogar. Ellos también perforaron pozos para algibes que proveerán agua potable para las comunidades, y reciben capacitación para ofrecer consejería y apoyo psicosocial a quienes se enfrentan al trauma y la penuria que conlleva la pérdida de seres queridos debido al VIH/SIDA, así como otras crisis.
La iglesia se encuentra con muchos niños traumatizados emocionalmente por la pérdida de uno o ambos padres debido al VIH. Algunos niños se niegan a ir a la escuela debido al terrible recuerdo de concurrir a clases un día, para regresar a casa y encontrarse con que uno de sus padres había muerto; otros son quienes cuidan de padres enfermos, quienes fallecen durante su cuidado. Los miembros de la iglesia que han sido capacitados ofrecen consejería y apoyo emocional para estos jóvenes.
Los cuidadores son capacitados en cuanto a cómo iniciar una pequeña empresa, la cual puede tratarse desde proyectos de ganadería y pesca, hasta proyectos de jardinería.
“Ellos se encuentran llevando a cabo todos estos pequeños proyectos para poder sustentar a sus hijos, y nuestro papel es el de hacer posibles esos proyectos” dijo Oketch. “El objetivo no es el de hacerlos dependientes, sino que sean autosuficientes”.
 Jennifer y sus dos hijos (foto arriba a la izquierda) son algunos de quienes han encontrado un mejor presente así como una esperanza para su futuro, mediante la asistencia de la Iglesia del Nazareno de Malunga, una de las iglesias locales capacitadas en este ministerio dedicado a los huérfanos y a los niños vulnerables.
Jennifer perdió a su esposo hace 11 años debido al SIDA, y ella también está infectada así como su hijo menor, quien nació con la enfermedad. Cuando la iglesia construyó un hogar para la pequeña familia, Jennifer se acercó a la congregación.
“He decidido unirme a esta iglesia porque he podido ver el amor y la compasión que me fue demostrada tanto a mí como a mis pequeños hijos. Los miembros de mi clan me abandonaron luego de la muerte de mi esposo, y en ustedes he podido ver el amor a pesar de que yo no adoraba junto a ustedes”.
Luego de escuchar acerca del amor de Jesús mientras que concurría a la iglesia, ella decidió aceptarlo a Él como su salvador personal. Hoy en día, Jennifer se encuentra muy activa dentro de la iglesia. Ella también tiene una pequeña empresa con la que vende pan y otros alimentos, gracias al proyecto.
“Éste es el motivo por el que hacemos estas cosas” dijo Oketch. “Éste es el motivo por el que el MNC está aquí para crear un puente entre lo que es la transformación espiritual y social. Nos da un enorme gozo si tan sólo un alma llega al Señor como resultado de nuestro trabajo”. -- Traducido por Ed Brussa.
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When the woman’s husband died from HIV/AIDS, she didn’t know how to care for their children. He had been the sole breadwinner, and she had no vocational skills to offer. Desperate for an income, the woman became a sex worker.
Then, her children were enrolled in a Nazarene Compassionate Ministries (NCM) ministry to orphans and vulnerable children in their neighborhood of Kisumu, Kenya. The program fed her children and offered them emotional counseling and spiritual care.
One day, the staff invited all the enrolled children’s caregivers to come to a vocational training day, teaching them how to start small businesses. The training included start-up capital.
“This lady decided to start a poultry project,” said Sam Oketch (photo left), the NCM coordinator for East Africa. “She started with a small scale but now she is really doing well. She stopped doing commercial sex work.”
The woman sells her chickens to hotels and markets. Better still, she began attending the Nazarene church, where she accepted Jesus Christ as her savior.
This family is just one of many that have found new homes, new opportunities and best of all, new hope through an NCM program to help impoverished families in the Kisumu area.
Since 2009, NCM has been working in five Kenyan districts (Siaya, Kisumu, Nyando, Migori, and Homa Bay) to provide essential services, such as food and nutrition, shelter, physical protection, health care, psychosocial support, education and vocational training, and economic opportunity, to children who have been orphaned and who are vulnerable.
Oketch said the ministry works through the Nazarene churches in the Kenyan districts. NCM provides ongoing training to the local church members, who assist their disadvantaged neighbors. Under the Build-a-Home project, the church members help identify families living in inadequate housing, and then help them build better houses. They also bore holes for wells that will supply the communities with fresh, clean water; and they are trained to offer counseling and psychosocial support for those suffering trauma and grief due to losing loved ones to HIV/AIDS and other crises.
The church encounters many children with emotional trauma due to losing one or both parents to HIV. Some children refuse to attend school because of the terrible memory of going to school one day, only to come home and find a parent dead; others are the caregivers for sick parents who pass away under their care. The trained church members provide these young people with counseling and emotional support.
Caregivers are trained in starting up small businesses, ranging from raising livestock to fish ponds to gardening projects.
“They are doing all these small projects to help them support their children, and our part is to empower those projects,” Oketch said. “The goal is not to make them dependent, but self-sufficient.
Jennifer and her two sons (photo left and above) are among those who found a better present and hope for a future, through the assistance of the Malunga Church of the Nazarene, one of the local churches trained in this ministry to orphans and vulnerable children.
Jennifer lost her husband 11 years ago to AIDS, and she is also infected, along with her youngest son, who was born with it. When the church built the small family a new home, Jennifer was drawn to the church.
“I have decided to come join this church because I have seen love and compassion shown to me and my two children by you. My clan members abandoned me after the death of my husband and in you I have seen that love even though I was not worshipping with you people. ”
After hearing about the love of Jesus at the church, she decided to accept Him as her personal savior. Today, Jennifer is very active in the church. She also has a small business of selling flat bread and other food items, thanks to the project.
“This is why we do these things,” Oketch said. “This is why NCM is there to build a bridge between spiritual and social transformation. It gives us a lot of joy if even one soul comes to the Lord as a result of our work.”
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