Thanksgiving and Prayers

Sunday.

And so to church.

Not just any church though, this is African church. Worship here isn’t the reverential singing of a few songs from hundreds of years ago. It’s a celebration, a party. It’s dancing until you can’t dance any more, it’s repeated harmonic rhythms sung out from the front and repeated by the congregation. It’s jumping and clapping and dancing and singing until you think there is nothing left in you.

And then it is thanksgiving.

Not a prayer from the front, not a formal time, but a mass participation event where everyone in the church raises their voice and gives thanks for all the things God is doing in their lives. They may be the poorest of the poor, they may live in the mud and thatch huts that surround the church and our land, but they manage to give thanks for 10 minutes at least. Everyone talking at once, their own personal prayers lost in the melee of voices and left to the beneficiary of the thanksgiving to sort out.

Then the music starts again. Soft guitar rhythms, “wewe bwana, ni wewe Bwana yangu” and then the joy wells up again, the music gets louder, the voices swell and the church starts to party.

Our church in Kibos is not a grand building. It’s a few mbati sheets (corrugated iron) around a wooden frame, sunk into increasingly fragile ground as the rains cause the sandy soils to shift underneath it. It has stood for almost 7 years now and needs reinforcing with steel posts, but nobody minded.

The music these days is limited to Moses guitar, a donation from well wishers in the UK. We had a keyboard, but last November, when the rains caused a blackout the pastor here, Hezbon, borrowed a generator and plugged the keyboard in. Within an hour it had fried, quite literally.

After an hour or so of praise and worship, thanksgiving and dancing Moses invited me to preach the sermon. It was quite short by Kenyan standards, just about an hour, translated by Moses into Swahili.

My local preacher training at the Methodist Church has had little influence on my preaching here in Kenya. I am often led to tear up my notes and preach from the heart. This morning I shared from Isaiah 35 – The future Glory of Zion

He will come and save you

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped

Then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the dumb shall sing

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert

The parched land shall become a pool

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return ....

And they will come to Zion with singing

With everlasting joy upon their heads

They shall obtain joy and gladness

And sorrow and sighing shall flee away

The worship that followed was wonderful, we prayed God’s kingdom down upon us and his peace upon all we do. I greeted everyone like old friends. I love it here.

I left tired, sweaty and hugely uplifted.

One day, just one day to have English worship like they do here!

This morning we took three new boys into our home at Mamboleo. The space has been made available over the last couple of months as schools have started and three boys that were with us have been resettled at their homes, with parents, grandparents or guardians.

As a result of going through the budgets yesterday we recognised that we were able to support the new intake of boys.

I know for Nicky and I this is a wonderful moment. It’s why the Trust was started in the first place, to help the most desperate off the streets. It’s the reason for the name of this blog.

Paul James and John Odhiambo, our Director and Social Worker respectively have been meeting the boys in town for some time now, taking them to a small cafe for some food and chatting with them, getting to know the reasons they were on the streets, their family background and circumstances.

They recommended them as soon as funds were available and we were delighted to welcome them today.

Brian, Fidel and Silas have been on the streets for 1.5, 2 and 2 years respectively. Their stories are different, but are all equally tragic. The loss of parents, living with elderly grandparents who aren’t able to cope, single parents who drink and beat the children. They left their homes in rural Nyanza for the streets of the largest town here, Kisumu.

On the streets they have found food at various outreach centres, even gone to a different home for a few days, but ran away again because they couldn’t cope with the regime.

I hope we are a different kind of organisation. We have small places with, what feels, to me at least, like family units. Boys treat other boys like brothers, teasing, joking, but ultimately caring for and loving one another.

But not all boys stay. About one in 5 will leave and choose a life on the streets. They struggle with the discipline of waking up each day for school, doing chores and contributing to the running of the house, washing their clothes and doing their homework.

Those who do make it are a joy and a blessing beyond measure.

And they are many. I was lucky enough to talk with a number of them this afternoon as we sat at Kibos. Atenas, Shadrack, Winnie, Evelyn, Dominic, John, Florence, Isaiah, articulate children blessed by the work of people here with funds from generous supporters in the UK and thankful for a second chance in their lives. I just wish it could be for so many more.

It is 10 years this October since Nicky and I first came out. The first boys we took in 2003 are now in secondary schools and the most delightful young men. 28 street boys have gone home and are in school, 34 are in secondary school and looking forward to their KCSE exams, 13 this year will take KCPE and graduate from primary school. 3 have completed secondary school and are looking at colleges and university.

They could never of dreamed of this.

It’s worth giving thanks for.

Our new boys got fresh clothes and a good bath this morning. They have been playing football in front of the house with the other boys this afternoon.

It will be a long road for Brian, Fidel and Silas. My prayer is that they, along with those who have made it so far, will

come to Zion with singing

With everlasting joy upon their heads

They shall obtain joy and gladness

And sorrow and sighing shall flee away

I hope, in another 10 years time, we will be giving thanks, Kenyan style of course, for their emergence from the shadows of the streets into the fullness of maturity. If you have faith, please say a prayer for them.