Nearing the End

Well, the trip is drawing to a close. The last few days have seen some difficult times and some wonderful times together as a team.

First the difficult: Kibera. I'm not going to attempt to sum up our experience in Kibera, as I feel that would be saying too little about the personalities represented on our team. Future blogs will hopefully involve team members offering their take on Eastern Africa's largest slum.

But I will say this from my perspective: I spent the last year trying to forget Kibera. Not actively, mind you, but in subconscious ways I had created walls that forced those images out of my brain. So to see it again and spend a short afternoon there brought back a wave of emotions and feelings that hadn't surfaced in a while. There was also a marked poignancy to reliving the experience through fellow team members' eyes who were seeing it for the first time. Much of it was surreal.

There aren't words to describe places like Kibera. Even if I could manage to convey a picture of that place, it wouldn't suffice. How do you capture a smell--thick, nauseating, and inescapable--on a computer screen? (If you have time and want a better idea of what Kibera is like, check out the first part of this article that Dave shared with the team: http://www.economist.com/surveys/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=9070714) We sing songs about a God whose love and faithfulness and justice flow to every part of this earth, but I think many (ourselves included) leave that place wondering if God is really present there.

In an effort to keep this post to a reasonable length, let me just say: The key is not to look for God in the location. Sometimes we see God in the grandeur of the mountains and the beauty of the oceans, but miss him when it comes to sewage strewn alleyways through densely-packed mud shacks. But God is unmistakeably present in the people of Kibera (as Katelyn so eloquently put it after the experience). If we miss God in a place like Kibera, then we've lost sight of his connection with the "least of these."

Now the wonderful: Our team has just spent Wednesday evening and all of Thursday together processing what we have experienced here in Kenya. This has been a rich time of being alone with God, then coming together to share how this journey has shaped each of us. And the stories abound! The culmination of these days together was a time of worship and then affirmation of each other that really solidified the bonds that we had formed over the last 2 weeks. God really has brought this team together in an incredible way and this fact was very evident as we celebrated what He had done through each person. And we capped it off by joining Anthony and Jurim (our drivers) and Brian and Debbie (Jane and Ken's children) for a great night of eating and fellowship together at "The Moonflower." It was a wonderful night.

As I write, the team has likely arrived at their Safari destination in the Masai Mara, and Holly and I are hanging out at a cyber cafe as we wait for our flight to leave this evening. We will be home in around 30 hours...

The team may have a chance to blog again on Sunday before they depart, but in the meantime, thanks again for following along with us!

Joel and Holly