Feeding the Hungry Children of Mutomo

 Mutomo Kenya is located in the Horn of Africa, an area known for drought and seemingly endless famine. Recently Anita, director of Mutomo Mission Hospital reported, “the famine is really biting now and is going to be more severe because we never did get any more rain so there will be no harvest.”

In the work of fighting HIV/AIDS Mutomo Hospital is famous. It has one of the highest percentages of children infected with HIV in Kenya. 841 children are under treatment….47% of all their patients.

Four years ago Tree of Lives began to assist Mutomo in their care of HIV+ children. During October 2011 until January 31, 2012 nearly 6800 food packs of porridge, milk, eggs, maize flour, rice, beans and bread were distributed. The Children Feeding Program is funded by TOL and has received additional help through the Christmas Eve offering at First Pres.

One can sense the joy in the eyes of the little girl from Mutomo, pictured above, asking for her milk….and receiving it!

Anita ended her report by saying….

”God bless our friends in USA who have enabled us to feed the hungry in Mutomo!”

A Bed in Hell

Korogocho is a slum in the city of Nairobi where 150,000 people live within one square kilometer.  Sanitation is non-existent and the smell of sewage and the smoke of burning trash hangs heavy in the air.  Homes, no more than tiny metal or earthen shacks, are stacked almost on top of one another in a maze of human habitation.

The Greek word we translate as hell is “Gehenna” – Jesus’ reference to a burning trash dump outside of Jerusalem.  Korogocho is a hellish place.

Walking around the streets of Korogocho, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the thought that there is too much evil and suffering for us to make any difference.

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.”

In the midst of this Gehenna, twelve women receive hair salon training for free so that they might receive careers.  A pastor’s wife named Panina runs a small medical clinic for 350 of the poorest of the poor.  Rosa, a patient of the clinic, volunteers twenty hours a week as a community health worker and receives a bar of soap each month as her thanks.  Vonter, a mother of five and an HIV patient, takes in a sixth child despite her fears of not being able to feed her own children.  Maureen, another patient, finds shelter with her brothers from the man who beat her until she lost her hearing.  Respis, who has bled for three years, will receive the operation she has needed – free of charge – this coming Tuesday.

The truth is that light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it.

by Jim Gates, Associate Pastor for Evangelism at First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.

Fourth of July

Africans love celebrations. Part of this love comes from a need to find cause to celebrate.  In a nation where only 6 percent of rural folks have access to electricity and 46% of the population lives below the poverty line, where the average annual income per person is  $760 (yes, that calculates to about $2 a day) you might ask what cause there is to celebrate.  But there is – births and family and graduations and first loves and marriages and freedom.  Freedom – the right to discuss politics freely, to vote and to pursue life, not as directed by a colonial government or dictator – is most highly valued here.  As a young African friend shared with me this morning, “Without freedom, pastor, how could we truly pursue the will of God for our lives and our nation?”

His words find special meaning for me today, this my nation’s Independence Day; they offer me the valued “so what?” so often lost.   Without freedom how could we pursue the will of God? Yet, how often do we? How often do we as a people get it right and view our independence, our freedom, not as an end in itself but as a means – a means to pursue the will of God for our lives and our nation?

So today, this Independence Day, thirteen of us (rather symbolic hey?), will gather with a few of our African friends in the backyard after a day of ministry to roast a goat, eat some American-style potato salad, my favorite African beans and have a toast to freedom. Without it after all, how could we pursue the will of God?

by Jim Wood, Senior Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.