No, not the motown Philly R&B group from the 90′s. This Boys to Men story is a little different. It has to do with circumcision. In rural areas of Kenya, male circumcision is often a right of passage into manhood and it is not uncommon for males between the ages of 14-18 to have the procedure done. Many young men during this time of being initiated into manhood are vulnerable to gangs and the pressures of some locals that want to indoctrinate them into a morally corrupt way of living. Camp Brethren Ministries (CBM) saw this as a excellent opportunity to share the truth of Jesus Christ and educate these young men on what it biblically means to be a man while also helping them adhere to the culture practice of circumcision.

The Boys to Men program was created a few years back and each December young men from the surrounding area of Naivasha come to CBM to have the procedure done and be educated on some of the challenges they face from a biblical perspective. The young men come for 10 days to CBM where a nurse performs the procedure and then they spend the remainder of their time in recovery. During recovery, men from the ministry spend time with the young men educating them on a variety of topics including choosing friends, peer pressure, drug/alcohol abuse, HIV/Aids, time management, self identity, and youth and development. At the conclusion of the program there is a graduation ceremony and each of the young men receive a certificate. I witnessed the graduation ceremony the year and below are a few pictures from the event. 

The significance of electricity has already made a life changing impact on the services provided at Camp Brethren Medical Clinic. For several years leading up to 2011, the clinic has served the community of Eburru without power. During daylight hours the clinic was open to both children and adults to receive medical attention. However, they were limited in the services they could provide due to a lack of electricity. For example, a serious disease common to this region is Typhoid. Without electricity, the Camp Brethren lab tech is unable to detect Typhoid in a patient’s blood sample because the use of a centrifuge is required. And naturally, the centrifuge requires power to operate it. Another example, what happens when a woman needs to give birth in the maturnity ward after sundown? Without power the woman gives birth by the light of a kerosene lantern. And if there are complications requiring more advanced, power requiring equipment? There is no option at the clinic and the nearest hospital is 45 minutes away.

In 2011, through the financial support of David’s Hope power was brought to the Camp Brethren Medical Clinic for the first time. The clinic now is able to provide a broader range of services to the local community such as Typhoid testing and treatment as detailed above.

 While visiting Eburru in December, I experienced first hand the life-giving services that the clinic’s maternity ward now can provide through the help of electricity. About 3am on December 9^th a woman went into labor at the maternity ward. (You never know what is going on at the clinic while comfortably asleep in the visitors huts 50 yards away) When the baby was born he was not breathing. So they quickly applied an oxygen pump to the child and moved him into the baby-warmer. The warmer is operational thanks to now having electricity. The pump however is still hand operated. For 4 hours the nurse pump oxygen into this newborn’s lungs. And then the child began to breath. Praise Jesus. As nurse Mary exclaimed later that morning, “That baby is a miracle.” 

I visiting with them Friday and according to the nurses, the boy was doing fine as was the mother. Mother, child and his new aunt stayed the night. I saw them again Saturday morning and below are two pictures from our time together. She was planning to leave the maturnity ward saturday and take her son home. They weren’t sure if they were heading home via car or motorbike. Yes, motorbike! Those Eburru women are strong.

Praises:

• For a solid foundation and continued growth in our child sponsorship program
• Mike S. has volunteered to serve as the new David’s Hope new accountant!
• Over 400 generous donors and sponsors contributed to David’s Hope during 2011, representing both churches and individuals. December’s giving almost doubled the giving from all previous months in 2011.
• 21 people were baptized in Eburru on December 11th
•  Feast Party was held on Christmas Day in Eburru.  All of the Camp Brethren staff were invited and the gospel message was shared! (Staff represents distributors, ground men, teachers, cooks, lab tech, nurses and others)
• Funding was provided to supply each of the 12 orphanage residents with 3 sets of school uniforms
• A new teacher was hired for the new 3rd grade class!

Prayer Requests

• 2012 goal is to increase from twelve to sixteen orphans in orphanage.  This will require additional funding to meet their needs
• Camp Brethren School will go from 2 standard classes to 3 in January and will be able to accomodate 200 students
• A new 3rd grade teacher and a new class of students will join the existing Camp Brethren family in January for the 2012 school year’s start.  Pray for smooth transitions and a successful school year
• Logistics and planning for Pastor Steve’s upcoming trip to the USA in late March/early April
• Opportunities to share the work of Camp Brethren with potential partners in the US
• Funding is needed for new textbooks, electricity for the school & the construction of 5 more classrooms in 2012
• Next David’s Hope Leadership meeting on January 15th
• Bank wire transfers to go through correctly; there have been some technical issues with this lately
• For safe & quick completion of the orphanage parent’s house and teacher’s dorm in January
• For a new orphanage cook for to accept position & alleviate the growing workload on the school cook

The mobile clinic had visited this village a few weeks prior doing much of the same: vaccinating infants, diagnosing toddlers and treating adults as best possible. And the locals apparently marked the return date on their calendars. When we arrived, thirty or so mothers with their infants were waiting for us in the two room mud schoolhouse. Quickly the schoolhouse was transformed into a clinic; waiting room and baby weighing station in the front, nurse consultation in the back. Each of the infants this day were getting a variety of vaccinations including Diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. No magazines, smooth jazz or tropical fish tank in this waiting area. Just an american muzungu weighing children before they get checked in with a nurse and are given the vaccinations. Without the mobile clinic most of these children would not have any access to medical treatment in the critical early stages of their life.

While the clinic is underway some of us with no medical skills visited with the locals in the village. Between games of pool (yes, they had an outdoor pool table), some goong goong fado (uh, sp?) (cards) and black cat (cards) we shared about Jesus and the Lord’s goodness in our lives.

Below are a few images from the day.

All that is still there. But there is so much more. The amount of development that has occurred in a year around the Camp Brethren school and the clinic is remarkable. To the David’s Hope supporters – we thank you for your loving support over this last year. The growth there is a testimony to your generosity as well as Camp Brethren’s faithful stewardship and God’s goodness. The ability of Camp Brethren to effectively manage and stretch the funds David’s Hope has been able to provide is amazing to see. Below are just a few of the changes taking place in Eburru.

Orphanage

In 2010, an orphanage was built to support some local children whose parents/guardians are unable to provide the basic necessities for them. Today, there are twelve boys and girls living in the orphanage and another 6 are likely to move in when the school opens again in January. While I was visiting Eburru, the school was closed due to winter holiday and because there aren’t fulltime dorm parents yet, the orphanage too was closed. The orphanage (dorm) kids had returned back home to stay for the winter break. However, everyday several of the kids would come to the school just to get breakfast and lunch and hangout for the day. This school has become a place of safety, love and hope throughout the community.

Power

There has never been any electricity for the general public throughout most of Eburru. No lights, heat. refrigeration or power for a PC. Let’s just say it gets very dark (and cool) when the sun goes down. Over the last year Kenya Power decided to run electricity out to additional areas of Eburru. Through David’s Hope supporters we were able to fund the necessary transistor to run power to the clinic and the nearby visitors huts. We hope to get power to the school soon.

Water

Eburru is a very rural location sitting at 8200 ft elevation on top of volcanic grounds. There is no natural water and there are no underground aquifers to drill into. The only hope for water is rain or capturing condensation that forms over steam holes drilled into the ground. Thanks to support raised this year, Camp Brethren was able to drill holes and create a large condensation capturing system that now delivers clean running water to the school 24/7. Running water in Eburru. This is amazing.

Kitchen

In 2010, Racheal the school cook was preparing all meals for the students, faculty and staff (~150) in a single large cauldron over an open fire. Daunting to say the least. Thanks to funding support from David’s Hope, Camp Brethren was able to expand the kitchen and outfit it with 4 large wood burning stoves. This can support the school and orphanage needs today, and importantly it will adequately support Camp Brenthren as the school and orphanage continue to grow over the years.  

Mission Improbable: 
Lessons from my mission trip to Eburru by Marc Taylor

This is a memoir of sorts, certainly more than a mere “blog post”, although that is the ostensible reason for why I finally decided to sit down and commit my personal memories and reflections to paper. This might not have happened without the considerable prompting of a great group of DHI leaders, namely Jillian Welleski, who presented me with the opportunity to do what I should have done some time ago; reflect on (and through this blog, share) my experiences in Kenya for those almost two weeks, now roughly 5 months past; the lessons, most profoundly, the spiritual lessons that God wished me to learn through my service in Eburru, and perhaps most importantly, how this missions experience has changed me for the better and strengthened my daily relationship to God.

Preparing for Re-entry

It might be best to start at the end.

When we returned from Eburru, after spending two intense weeks witnessing extreme poverty firsthand, we were cautioned by our trip leader that we could expect to experience a variety of emotions as we began the process of assimilating back into our old, familiar “Western” ways of living in the United States. These emotional reactions included (1) Isolation; (2) Anger/Alienation; (3) Imitation (e.g. re-socialization); and (4) Integration (being proactive). While in theory, everyone was experiencing a degree of each of these emotional responses, we were told each member of the team would tend to fall into one category more than the others based upon that person’s unique spiritual experiences and individual personality. I found myself identifying most with feelings of isolation (Reaction #1), but also somewhat paradoxically, with feelings of and a desire for integration (Reaction #4). Isolation in the context of returning from a mission trip was described as “team members (finding) themselves feeling a strong sense of guilt over the home culture’s affluence and materialism.” Similarly, Anger/Alienation (Reaction #2) was described as “team members finding that they are angry at their culture, family, team and/or church. No one understands them. Team members may see everyone differently than they did before, and may find themselves mocking other’s lifestyles and values.

While I began to reassume my day to day existence in the states, I realized how strongly I identified with many of these emotional reactions. I recall how for several weeks, I had no discernible desire whatsoever to watch TV, and assiduously avoided doing so for as long as possible (surprisingly, that lasted almost a month!) I recall how my senses seemed bombarded with material affluence everywhere I looked. Despite the United States having been in the grips of a prolonged economic recession for the past several years, the Metro DC area where I live has been largely spared its most debilitating consequences. Our conspicuous consumption, perhaps tempered somewhat by the economic downturn of recent years, proceeds largely as it always has. The prosperity gap between rich countries like the United States and poorer ones like Kenya hasn’t shrunken to any perceptible degree, or at least certainly hadn’t in the two weeks that I was gone (moving as it does at a snails pace). I wondered to myself what life would be like in the United States if we didn’t define ourselves so much by our material possessions, perceived level of success or accomplishment, or any of the so many other yardsticks we obsessively-compulsively measure our selves and our self-worth by, and instead endeavored to learn and grow in our knowledge of the living God, and began to understand our inherent worth in His eyes.

In response to what I saw in Eburru, I was determined to be “less materialistic” in my own daily decisions, mostly out of a somewhat selfish desire to remain connected, even in the most superficial of ways, to the simple joys and rhythms of life that I witnessed among many of those we served alongside with in Eburru. Certainly, at Camp Brethren Ministries (CBM), the small village where we stayed (and part of the larger, geographically diffuse community known as Eburru) we saw our share of the daily struggles of life; poverty, disease, malnutrition, lack of formal education, lack of access to clean water and basic medical care. However, Camp Brethren was different. Serving alongside them, one would never know that they lacked any of the basic necessities of life. Theirs was a joy, peace and dare I say, hope in the unseen things of this world that truly surpassed all understanding (at least the understanding of the supposedly wise). I now understood James 2:5,

Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?

With God’s help, I made a decision that I would turn my feelings of isolation into a desire for re-integration upon my return. I returned to a job that I was less than thrilled about, but I made a decision that I would not hide my experiences from those I worked with out of fear of ridicule, rejection, apathy or condemnation. While no miraculous conversions or professions of faith occurred as a result of sharing my experiences with those non-Christian co-workers, I knew that the effort was in obedience to God’s will and made Him proud all the same. Only God knows what seeds may have been planted through my willingness to share boldly the reasons for this “humanitarian” missions trip to Kenya. Some of my conversations with non-believers at work were surprisingly positive and encouraging. My love of Africa; its people, culture, and natural beauty and diversity, led me to take a radical step of faith and join this mission trip. While there in this remote mountainous village lost in the Rift Valley of Kenya, the juxtaposition of images I saw there; the crushing poverty of the students we visited at a Primary school in Kibera (reportedly the largest slum in Africa; second only to a slum in India) compared to my relative affluence as a child and product of the American school system, left me with a profound sense of humility. Where formerly there may have been despair and an almost apathetic surrender in the face of seemingly overwhelming human suffering and destitution, I now desired to see these people as Christ – the greatest missionary to a lost and hurting world the world has ever known – would have seen them if He had been walking and ministering to these people in the slums of Eburru and Kibera: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. “ (Matthew 5:3). Across the vast gulf of cultural and social and economic differences between us, I felt connected to these people through the enveloping mercy of Christ and God’s promise to comfort those who mourn.

The next radical step: living each day with an absolute faith in the power of the Gospel to transform the lives of not only the materially poor in Kenya, but just as importantly, the spiritually impoverished here at home.

As you go about your Christmas preparations, we ask that you consider making a one time or monthly donation to David’s Hope International.  Check out our Christmas Catalog for some gift options or simply make a general donation to fund the greatest needs in Eburru at this moment.  We are extremely thankful for any amount you feel led to give. Your generosity will make a difference and spread holiday joy this season!

What amazes me is the impact that this place has on people. We had a range of people at the retreat that went from a person who’s never been to Kenya all the way to someone who’s been there multiple times starting 11 years ago. I think there are two things about Eburru that are so attractive to us Americans. First, the people of Kenya are so warm and hospitable and just generally grateful not only for what we have brought but more importantly what God has done. By American standards life is not easy in Eburru. Not by a long shot. But, in every conversation we have with Pastor Steve and Mary we hear them say “God is good.” If only I was as quick to remember that in my day to day challenges. I have so much to learn from the people of Kenya.

Second, it is so easy to see how God is tangibly improving this place. I last went to Eburru in January. Since that time, electricity has been installed in a number of the facilities David’s Hope supports. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot but it is huge for this little village. When I was there in 2006, the roads were full of potholes and drivers had to swerve their way around them. This year the majority of the roads were about as good as the roads in DC (not that that’s saying much…). I wish it was as tangible for me to see God moving and improving things for me here in the day to day. I think it’s a matter of perspective and giving credit where credit is due. It’s all too easy for me to think I had something to do with changes that happen in my own life, when in reality it’s all under His control.

Thanks for checking in with David’s Hope. We hope that in reading through this blog and our website in general, you will be reminded that… God is good!

- Cindy
(Outreach, Partnerships & Volunteer Director)

Praises:

• A new bull was born and is healthy.
• The support of many generous donors, sponsors and prayer partners
• Teacher’s dorm construction is going well and just needs the roof to be put on. All the teachers are excited about these new accommodations.
  
• Orphanage parents dorm home is now fully funded and construction will begin shortly
• Pastor Steven’s new truck has been working well on the rough terrain near Eburru
  

Prayer Requests

• Pray for Mary Njenga (Pastor Steve’s wife) who had a bottle fall on her and lost several teeth
• David’s Hope Leaders Retreat-November 11th-13th  - pray for us to see God’s plan for our future involvement projects & strategies. Praise for the people coming from Colorado, Prince William campus and elsewhere who are/have participated with us.
• Possible future plans for a boarding school, hospital, and/or tourism business in Eburru. Pray for God’s wisdom as there are many questions and research to be done to determine how these projects would operate, contribute to sustainability and potentially be supported by David’s Hope.
• Logistics & wisdom for Pastor Steve’s possibly visiting the USA in March or April