Naphtali Wall

"I'm in love!!!" I am sure many of you reading this blog can remember
a time in your life where you first started to "fall in love" and you
found yourself talking with friends, family and often strangers about
your "special someone" . When you were not talking about him/her,you
were thinking about that person and everyone around you could tell
what your thinking about because no matter what you can't get that
goofy grin off your face. I went to Kenya expecting to enjoy the
children we did camp with, experience things I had never seen before
and learn things about myself. Never in a million years did I expect
to come back 2 weeks later in love and in many ways heartbroken over
having to leave my new love or loves in Kenya. I came back wanting to
tell everyone I met about the beautiful resilient children who I did
life with for 2 weeks and share with others everything I knew about my
new love. The problem has been is every time I go to share I suddenly
feel like I am speaking Swahili to a group of Munzungus (Swahili for
white person) and I am left feeling like I have not represented the
power and beauty of the people of Kenya or be able to share fully
their stories. Over the last few days I have been hearing God remind me
that He knows each of the children's stories , each of their needs and
I can only share a bit of that.


One of the beautiful aspects of Ecclesia's commitment to Kenya is the
relational aspect of our trips. As a church we support( both
financially and through prayer) Homecare Fellowship and Ghetto Light
and as a church body have been visiting our friends in Kibera for the
past 4 years. In a culture where relationship and time spent are the
essential tools used to communicate care I realized how important it
is that we send not only financial support but, that each year we
send friends to go bear with our brothers and sisters in Kenya. In a
community of over a million where children are prolific and often not
seen as valuable as a church community we choose to go offer children
the gift of knowing that they are valuable, seen and prayed for daily.

One of my new friends in Kenya is Joyce. Joyce is six years old and
does not speak a lot of English. I am not sure of Joyce's story, I do
not know who she lives with, if she is safe right now or how often she
goes to bed hungry. What I do know about Joyce is that I will see her
again because Joyce with her timid little voice, her big beautiful
broken blood vessel eyes and with child like faith choose to accept
Christ as her savior during our first week of camp. There are a few
images from Kenya which continue to play through my mind nightly and
getting to pray with Joyce is one of them. At the end of both of the
camps we would pray with each member of the camp individually. I loved
loved loved loved each time I got to pray with a child on these days.
On Friday during the week Joyce came to camp I had the blessing to be
able to pray with my little love Joyce. Joyce was different then any
of the other children I prayed with that day because Joyce to the best
of my knowledge does not speak English and I do not speak Swhalli. As
I started to pray that day Joyce locked eyes with me and seemed to in
that moment to know the prayer of my heart for her and see how
special she is to God reflected from God through my eyes to her. I
will never forget just how powerful her gaze was during that prayer
and how blessed I felt to shower my little Joyce with words of truth
regarding how precious she is to God. I can't wait to return to Kenya
again and hopefully see my little Joyce , but am more excited to know
that no matter what happens regarding me being able to return to Kenya
that I will see little precious Joyce again someday in Heaven