One Big Family - The Next 10 Years

It was my last full day here today, before I jump on a plane back to England and to my gorgeous family.
Nicky and I had a meeting today with all of the people who work for the Trust in Kenya. It was the culmination of the week for me and a chance for us to reflect together on the things that have been achieved in the ten years that we have been working in Kisumu and the surrounding provinces.

It was also a time to share our vision and ambition for what we believe that God has put into our hearts for the next 10 years of the Trust’s work here.

The day started slowly.

Moses is an immensely talented musician, songwriter and worship leader and over the last few weeks he has got together with some musician friends to record his debut album at a small studio in Kisumu.

We have listened to it in the car on all of our journeys over the last few days. It is full of familiar songs, which we sing in church and in fellowship whenever we are here. They are not songs from a book, but songs written by Moses from a life’s experience as a pastor, a teacher and a worship leader.

On Thursday Moses received a phone call inviting him to be at Lake Victoria Radio at 10:00 this morning to talk about his album, his inspirations and his faith and for them to play a selection of songs from his album.

Lake Victoria Radio broadcast to Western Kenya, around the Lake Shore, from Southern Nyanza and the Tanzania border right across to Busia and the border with Uganda.

Moses was accompanied by Nicky and by Isaiah, one of the boys from Kibos who has recently graduated from high school. Isaiah loves music and has not come down from the adrenaline rush of talking on the radio. He is a minor celebrity around Kibos these days!

Moses media experience was over by 11:30 and we met on the terrace at Sunset with Paul James to continue where we left off yesterday, talking and sharing about the children in the various programs we run.

At 2pm the other workers arrived.

John, Anton, Boniface and Paul James talked, while Moses rushed off to run a couple of errands, before returning an hour (or two) later with Tatu and Verity, their 6 month old daughter.

This was a precious time for Nicky and I. A chance, together, to reflect on where the Trust has been and where we are going.

John has been with us since the early days of 2004. He knows what life is like on the streets, having faced hardship and tragedy in his youth. He is a quietly spoken man with a passion to help change the lives of young people help back by poverty.

Anton has also worked with the Trust since 2004. He is young, but more than willing to learn and happy to try his hand at anything he is asked to do.

Boniface is one of the biggest miracles of the last 10 years. A former dealer in marijuana and other drugs he was feared around the rubbish tip. He is now a reformed man. He has attended bible college for the last three years and currently acts as the pastor and leader of the fellowship in Kachok, under the watchful stewardship of Moses.

Paul James joined us just as we took the first boys from the streets. He was an itinerant teacher, offering home tuition in the estates around where we worked. Tatu met with him one day and suggested he come to work with some of our first street boys. His role has flourished since those days and he now runs the Trust’s smaller rehabilitation centre and home in Mamboleo. Along with Moses he is a Director of our local board.

We would not be talking about a work of 10 years without the passion and calling of Moses and Tatu. A husband and wife team wholly dedicated to changing the lives of street children. They have made their home a place of hope, where desperate children find love, compassion, stability and a new family life.

As we met, we went round each person in turn and asked everyone what they are most proud of over the last 10 years.

Each person talked of the transformation they had seen in the lives of different street children, the most desperate, the dirtiest, the most ragged, the ones that ran away the most frequently. Lives, for the most part, transformed by the grace and the love of God and the work of these men and women in His name.

We have had many successes, boys in training, those who have graduated high school, those who are now in college or considering new courses and options. There are many stories too of children who had gone through the program and who were now settled at home.

We can’t forget those we had not reached, or for whom the call of the streets was too great. Boys who entered one of our homes, but were not ready to accept the discipline needed to be part of a home or class in school.

For those boys we are sad and we hope and pray that another chance, at a different time, might find them in a more accepting place.

And so we turned to the future.

A call to work in the kingdom of God isn’t one that is for the short term. It is a lifetime’s work, a prophetic destiny, and one that finds fulfilment in the prayerful giving of time, thought and labour.

Nicky shared the scriptures she was blessed with when we began the work, from Isaiah 61,, she talked of a garment of praise replacing a spirit of despair, that sense of hopelessness from the streets replaced with thoughts of college and careers.

Nicky and I shared a picture from God when we began the work, of our hands bound around a fishing net dropped into the waters of a lake.

Moses shared that sometimes, if you use a drag net, you catch good fish, but you can also catch sharks and frogs.

We talked together about what we have learned through the successes and the failures we have had in the work so far. We agreed that there has been much that we need to celebrate, but also things that we need to change.

We need to fish smarter, to catch the ones that are ready for landing, to focus our efforts and our limited funds in the places where w will make a real difference.

We planned for new programs, one to one counselling, new outreach possibilities, new home reintegration programs and an annual “Festival of Music, Drama and Dance” for the whole of the Trust’s family wherever they might be, where all of the children in our care will camp at Kibos, mix, socialise and share, whilst enjoying music and drama.

We agreed that we don’t do enough of that sort of thing, bringing our family together to know each other better and to celebrate their achievements.

We resolved to do much more of it in the future.

Nicky had brought some wristbands that were made and donated to us back in England. We gave one to each of the workers.

The wristbands bear the legend "Tumaini Mtaani" - Hope in the Streets. It's the name of the program we began here amongst the rubbish tips and dusty streets of this city.

Our afternoon merged into the evening and we went to a small restaurant in Kisumu town to share a meal together.

God has blessed Nicky and I with a burden for this work and has brought together a group of people who share that vision and that burden.

I hope there will be many more trips like this one, much more hope on the streets of Kisumu.