In 2002 we allowed Patrick and Rebecca Kahiu to give a presentation on Sunday morning in our church about providing beans and rice to orphans for lunch. Whenever I speak about this I try to be careful to say, to my shame as a senior pastor I was not moved by the presentation. As the couple shared about feeding the kids lunch through the program they started it meant nothing to me. Often when I think about that presentation I find myself wondering how I could hear about hungry elementary school kids and not be moved. A minister at our church, Clyde Johnson had invited them to come to our church. They were fellow bible college students. There was a member of our church, Belinda Wimbush, that was moved by the presentation. She came to me and said Pastor we must help these people. I said to her, this is New Life Church… if we are going to help them you will be the team leader. On that day was the beginning of what you see now. Belinda named the work that she was doing “The Kenya Club”. She would collect a free will offering from the members of church, often catching them in the foyer and collecting coins. There came a day when Belinda would leave the church and at that point we had to decide what to do with this work. We decided then to make it an official entity of the church. We would stand before the congregation and receive a special offering for the work. We would tell the congregation that we were providing beans and rice for the kids in the village of Mwuimutoni in Kenya East Africa. One day my wife Terry came to me and said “we tell our congregation that we are providing money for beans and rice but we don’t know first hand where the money is going once we give it to the Kahius. We must go and see it for ourselves.” The thought of going to Africa was not one that I easily digested, nevertheless, I knew that I must go.

When I landed in Africa the thing that stood out to me the most were the street kids, they were everywhere. I had never seen a three year old child sleeping on the streets before coming to Africa. One of the heart gripping experiences at the downtown hotel was seeing girls as young as six years old come up to me on the street begging for food. Unless you have been outside of American you truly have no frame of reference to what I am describing. That alone, if not multiple other encounters, set me on a life mission to help.

I got to the village of Mwuimutoni and I saw what great work they were doing with the meager means that were provided. Even then I could see that the need was greater than I could have ever imagined. Many grandmothers were forced to raise their grandchildren because the Aids epidemic had nearly wiped out a whole generation in that village. That moment also became a part of the decision to make my life’s work to help those in need.

Thanks to the grassroots type of organizations that we work with (that you will hear about during this presentation), on my last trip in 2019 I only saw 2 street kids. Not that Kenya has solved its problem of street kids, but the difference is night and day. Today in 2019 countless people on several continents and in several nations have been blessed because of one person being moved.