While we were in Kenya we stopped at Kibera: the 2nd largest slum in Africa, 1st largest slum in East Africa.
TO be honest, at this point, we had been in Africa over a month.. and we had mostly seen it all. Everything was starting to become normal, and it wasn't a shock to see the brutalness of poverty anymore.
But this deffinitly hit me in the heart. The things we saw, were hard to see with our American eyes. It was brutal, these pictures don't do it justice. Our leader, Angie, had been here this past fall and had a vision of how she wanted to help a few of the men.
Slum Life is rough. The poorest of the poor live in the slums, and most have no other choice to survive other than by living a life of crime. Its not that they are horrible people, its that they don't have any other option to survive. Most have no education, and have no option of education (its not free there like it is here!!)
When Angie visted last fall, she saw hope in some men. They aren't educated, therefor they can't get regular jobs... so they decided to try something new! They take cow bones.. and saw and shape them to make jewlery. Neat right!
Well, the only problem is that the dust that comes from the bones is heavy. In fact, when we went in to see them... their skin looked completely white from all the bone dust they were covered in. And you can only imagine what type of diseases can come from inhaling that dust. How to prevent that? All you need is some masks.
So Angie had this idea that we would go to the market and buy tons of masks for these men to have so that they could continue doing their work, and their health would be okay along the way. What a blessing it was to deliver these masks, the smile on their faces was overwhelmingly filled with JOY! How awesome!!!
Last night, I attended Passion City Church in Atlanta with some friends. Ironically they were advertising about Compassion International (a sponsership program) and they had a girl from Kenya share her story about the hope that Jesus brought in her life because of Compassion and her U.S. family that has sponsered her for all these years. Sure enough... where was she from?? KIBERA slum! Crazy!!! She lived in a 10x10 mud hut with 3 siblings and her parents... where they struggled to pay the 4$ rent a month. One day when she was 7 years old, she found out that a family from the United States was going to sponser her so that she can get her education and live a life of freedom and not poverty.
If you dont know what that means... check out www.compassion.com or www.worldvision.org to see how you can help change a childs life forever!!
I LOVE Compassion! Doug and I are priveleged to sponsor 4 children with Compassion. Jackson, 19, and Letasuna,7,are from Kenya.Farida is 12 yo and she is from Burkina Faso which is in the horn of Africa near the Ivory Coast. And, there is precious little Deysis,6, from Nicaragua. We have wonderful letters and pictures they send us. We will be visiting each of them this year. I work the Compassion events and activily seek sponsors. For $38 a month, you have the ability to bring a child out of abject poverty and share the love of Jesus with them giving them hope and dreams for their lives. Thank you dear Allee for being His hands and Feet and helping to deliver these precious children from their dreadful lives and into the arms of our loving Jesus.
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