A team of 26 Youthworks Year 13 students are learning valuable lessons about life and the gospel in Kenya.
The students and three staff who are currently in Nairobi for their Gospel Gap Year four-week mission trip have observed the heights of wealth and depths of poverty after their first week there.
One of the Year 13 team members, Chris Entwistle, has been phoning in his daily travel blog to sydneyanglicans.net to share both the team's and his personal journey.
"If I was to give Nairobi City a title, I would call it the city of contrasts. While flying into the city I was surprised by the sights of Nairobi's very modern, evidently affluent skyline," Chris says.
"It's the sight of such extreme wealth that has shocked me the most. It serves to highlight the great deprivation we only glimpsed in the slum communities we drove past. In Nairobi, glass-panelled business districts are only hundreds of metres away from slum communities, filled with dilapidated houses and farms."
Chris says he and the team have had to wrestle with the issue of poverty in God's world as they are confronted with the world of poverty which consumes 16.7 million Kenyans.
"Associating the will of a loving and caring God with such conditions seems contradictory," Chris says.
"But through my experiences over the past two days I've come to know that our trust of God must go very deep, even to the realm of suffering. A man who finds little to fulfill and satisfy himself in this world will inevitably be drawn to consider the hope of the world to come."
Two thumbs up for Year 13
"Year 13 has offered me a vast array of experiences and has exposed me to an enormous amount of great teaching to stimulate my reflections," Chris says.
He says meeting and interacting with the people of Kenya has been "an amazing joy'.
The team has visited several African Enterprise ministries, but the one that has impacted Chris most so far is the Mathare Womens Rehabilitation project.
"The story behind the women in this centre is incredible " each has come from an unspeakably tragic background, usually involving making a living out of shameful servitude," Chris explains.
"However African Enterprise has begun a self-sustaining business project whereby these women can make clothing in a workshop."
Chris says the women receive spiritual encouragement and fellowship with people of a similar background.
"As I talked to one, she shared with me her favourite verse from Philippians: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.’ She explained that she knew that no matter what circumstance she was confronted with in life she had to rejoice in God."
Serving like Jesus
The work of the Year 13 team in the Mathare slum has been an example of balancing practical service with gospel proclamation. This has included cleaning out drains in view of the public.
"As "mozungu' (white men) cleaning out these fetid drains, locals would stop and stare in utter amazement. It was in these moments that I was able to do some outreach," Chris says.
"It is my prayer that our actions along with my faltering gospel sowed a seed in their lives which one day will grow into a tree of faith."
Another opportunity for outreach was a shoe-shining stall on the street which served dozens of bemused Kenyans.
"As they sat and had their shoes shined the team had a chance to evangelise to the customers," Chris says.
"I was amazed to find how open Kenyans were to being challenged about their beliefs and so humble in their acceptance of a gospel which even to some of the Christians we talked to was quite an unknown message.”
