Out of My League

As I have mentioned before, Kenyan schools operate on a different time schedule than their American counterparts... 1st term lasts from January until the end of March, 2nd term lasts from May until the end of July, and 3rd term lasts from September until the end of November. With that being said, my school recently closed for holiday, and I am now in Nairobi. When Kari and I left Icaciri, we had no idea where we would be volunteering this month or what we would be doing. After a few days of uncertainty and a few meetings with our coordinator, Phyllis, we got a phone call instructing us to meet at St.Andrews PCEA church at 8:00 last Wednesday morning. Little did we know what was in store for us.
We met Rosemary at the specified time and proceeded to follow her through the crowded streets of Nairobi to a matatu stage downtown. As it turns out, we spent most of last week working with the TULIP ministry at a camp for girls in Korogocho, one of the city slums. Never in my life have I been anywhere like a Kenyan slum. As we walked through narrow alleyways with rusty homes made from whatever scraps of tin could be found, trying to avoid the streams of sewage and refuse that ran through the garbage paved paths, I wondered what the girls we were on the way to meet would be like. Would they be bitter? Would they be angry? Each day last week, we spent time in Bible study, listening to speakers, and practicing vocational skills along with about 60 teenage girls. We sang with these girls, we ate with them, we laughed with them, we strung together beads for bracelets and necklaces. Girls who have grown up in the slums, who have dealt with all of the difficulties that life at the bottom of the third world means. Girls who have watched their parents and friends suffer and die of AIDS, girls who know what it means to be abandoned, to be hungry, to look at life and see only darkness. And yet they themselves are the light. They are the hope and beauty of tomorrow. Through the TULIP ministry, the girls that qualify are sponsored in secondary school and therefore have a chance to get an education and to end the cycle of poverty that traps so many women and children.
There were and are definitely moments when I look around at our surroundings and think I have no idea what I am doing ... I have absolutely no experience to prepare me for this... I am way out of my league here. Yet God has been with me each moment, and He has shown me how real faith can be. As I sat with Group 9 in Bible study each morning, I was amazed at the strength demonstrated by each girl. I found myself asking "what difference does God make here?" and they continually reiterated the fact that God makes all of the difference.