What's YOUR definition of success?

Our week at Mathare Worship Center started with my quiet time early Monday morning. I was led to pray Proverbs 16:3 for the team that morning. "Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." What freedom the truth of that verse would prove to be later that day.

Upon arriving Monday morning at the church we immediately had a few switches. Kenny and Penny were still in the waiting room (i.e. sanctuary) of the clinic talking with the people who came in to be seen. Hillary, our resident med student, was still in the Clinic. The preschool team was not going to be running a VBS-like program as we thought and prepared for. School was still in session and the church had started a school two months prior. Kids were in class and we were now going to be assisting the teachers in the lessons. Robert got drafted into teaching higher education and Nick got put into a classroom with mid-elementary aged kids! The rest of us divided between preschool and kindergarten aged kids. It was chaos for just a few moments. Trying to switch gears from being the lead to assisting the lead. I smiled and whispered a "thank you" to God. He was teaching us a lesson. Kevin and Rachel had already been introduced into the preschool classroom and Kevin was sitting in a corner surrounded by kids. For the rest of the week as soon as he showed up Teacher Fridah ordered him to his corner. I wish I could have captured on video the sight of this giant man crawling over kids and a table to squeeze into the corner that would hold him captive for the majority of the day! He loved every minute of it. Sara, Nick, and I ducked into an empty room in those first crazy moments to pray. We asked God for his plan, his way, and his direction. This wasn't about us, it was about God. I don't believe it was even 5 minutes after we prayed that Isam came to me and pulled me. Mama Beth was needed elsewhere.



This is the classroom that Kevin and Rachel were in each day. The little girl in the pink jacket is Faith. She stole everyone's heart and made the rounds to whoever would hold her. We took turns!


Teacher Fridah handing out the jump ropes that we brought. The kids were fascinated by them! It made their recess a lot more exciting!


The parachute turned out to be one of the best things we brought. Teacher Sara from our team bought them for the kids. The kids and Teachers Grace & Fridah were equally happy about the bright colors and the motions you could make with it. We left it with them and now they pull it out about once a week as a treat. You can see in the picture that we popped balls on it and we also showed the kids how to run underneath it! It struck me that the parachute was one of the only truly colorful things in their world. You can see the contrast between it and the slum behind them.


Teacher Nick hard at work. Nick is awesome, he takes any job handed him very seriously and with a great amount of zeal. He did a fantastic job with those kids! He taught in Teacher Virginia's class. Virginia is the first person outside of Pastor and Mama that I met at Mathare Worship Center. She was teaching during the day and going to school at night to finish her own high school equivalent education. The first days we were there she was diagnosed with malaria and began treatment for it, so I saw how God provided Nick for that week so she could rest.


Teacher Nick with he and Teacher Virginia's class. That is Virginia standing next to Nick.

Robert with his students. Mercy, in the red, was there every day and she and Robert hit it off! She wrote him a letter sharing her story with him and he wrote her one back. She was an exceptional young lady and smart!

We brought crafts with us to do along with the bible lessons. We introduced glue to the kids and teachers. That was quite an experience. I don't know what the kids thought of the glue but Teacher Fridah didn't like it at all! One day she asked me if the craft we were doing that day involved glue. I answered that it didn't and she said, "Oh good, I don't like that stuff!"

We were kid magnets. At any point in time during the day all you had to do was look up and at least one of us would be covered in kids! They flocked to us and just hung on for the ride!

Hillary, who just graduated pre-med and is moving on to med school in Fall 2008, spent a lot of her first week there in the clinic. They were testing for malaria, TB, Typhoid, and ringworm - among other things. She learned a lot while there and was even given homework! Hillary spent a total of 6 weeks at MWC, after we departed she and Rachel, who spent a total of 4 weeks there, moved into Pastor and Mama's house and spent the remainder of their time in their care. The clinic slowed down considerably after we left so Hillary spent the rest of her time mostly with the kids in school.

I followed Isam downstairs and outside to the nursery. As we made our way he explained that there was only one woman in the nursery and many babies, they needed help. I heard crying as we approached the doorway and as I stepped in to the room my eyes took in the scene.

I found the crying baby and picked him up while focusing on another baby, perhaps 6 months old, propped up in a cardboard box. My brain put this image away for later processing and I moved my attention to the other woman in the room holding a baby. I could see movement from two others on the other side of the wall. I looked down and saw I was standing on a hard packed dirt floor partially covered by a bamboo mat. During this time I heard Isam explain to the woman that I would be helping her. She just nodded and he left, promising to check in on me in a little while.

Suddenly all of my attention was brought back to this crying baby in my arms. He was wet. A babies cry is universal. This wasn't hard to figure out. The woman stood and went to a table in a partitioned off part of the room and I followed her to get the baby changed. I looked down and saw a piece of foam covered with a sheet and a baby asleep on it! It was the crib for the nursery. Without thinking through the diaper differences I offered to change the baby. And it was then I discovered that this woman spoke no English. And I spoke no Swahili. Okay! Moving on to the universal gestures for "wet" and "diapers"! We managed. She fortunately took the baby from me. As she started to change him I realized they use cloth diapers there and I was unfamiliar with how to change those! She handed me another baby and a bottle. I understood that command perfectly!

About the time I finished giving the baby in my arms his bottle it was tea time. Everyone breaks for tea time between 10-10:30 am and then again at 4:00-5:00 pm. All of the little ones who could walk plopped down on the floor, abandoned their play things, and accepted cups full of hot tea. And I watched, with jaw hitting the floor I am sure, as they drank from their cups perfectly - no spilling, no dribbling, no drops. I thought to myself, "Oh, when I get home Eliana is going to learn to use a fork all of the time!" I was amazed. When they were done they looked at me and silently handed me their empty cup.

As tea time came to a close I was sitting on the floor trying to engage a little one to play ball. I was having a hard time discerning the gender of these babies. They were all dressed with many layers and most of them were wearing girl style clothing. I found out from another woman who joined me and spoke English that they were all boys with the exception of one. I asked questions and she shared with me stories about the lives of the babies I was playing with and her own life.

The day was kind of a blur. At one point I was sitting on the bench holding a baby and getting him to sleep and looking around the building. The walls were rusted and falling apart; the toys available were things like rusty nails, bottle caps, deflated rubber balls, and bits of broken press board; the furniture consisted of a cardboard box and a piece of dirty foam covered with a sheet. I found myself praying and asking God what was needed to improve the environment for the babies and the women who ministered to them?

Just as tea time had ended Mama came into the nursery with a bundle of blankets and a weak woman. Everyone began talking in Swahili loudly while sitting the woman down and listening to her speak. I kept playing with the babies, I knew if Mama needed me she would ask. Eventually I figured out that the woman was sick. About this time Mama hands off the bundle of blankets to me along with the comment that he was about a week old. What did she say? And then I looked down and understood perfectly. I was holding a newborn baby wrapped up in the blankets. Oh, he was precious. He was asleep and had that newborn smell mixed with the smell of Kenya. I got lost in his face for just a moment. And then reality came back at me loudly...in Swahili. This weak woman was his mama and she was not well. After a series of conversations and gestures Mama left to go get the doctor from the clinic and the woman who spoke English told me that the mom was sick and they were going to look her over. I held that sleeping baby and prayed. After a few minutes the sick mama started breathing differently and they laid her down on the floor next to me. Then she started seizing. I prayed even harder. They called for the doctor to come quickly and Mama told me I needed to move because medics were coming to take her away. I stood up and after a moment wondered why I felt wet. I looked down and this little newborn was peeing all over me, right down the front of my skirt! I looked up at Mama who had covered her mouth and her eyes held laughter and question. I just shrugged. I've had worse happen to me, I'm a mom! They all laughed when they saw I wasn't bothered by it and they took the baby from me and urged me to go wash my hands. I met Isam coming in as I was going out, he looked down, saw I was wet and told me to go wash my hands. It is not my hands that got peed on! But to humor everyone I did wash my hands. After that Mama explained to me that the sick woman was HIV positive and the baby hadn't been tested yet so they weren't sure about him. The doctor at the clinic said that she was literally starving and that caused the seizures.

The rest of my day in the nursery found me sitting on the floor playing ball with the toddlers who had warmed up to me. I wonder if they had ever seen a white person before? They were all young, under or just over one, so it is possible that I was the first white person they had ever seen. Dennis was one of the babies who was about 6 months and spent a lot of time in the cardboard box. At one point I picked him up and held him on my lap to help me play ball with a set of twin boys in the nursery. And then I felt a familiar sensation on the opposite side of earlier that day. I lifted Dennis off my lap and yep. He peed on me. I just ignored it, what did it matter? I handed him off to be changed and kept on playing. At one point I looked up and found one of the twins chewing on a rusted coke bottle cap and the other was standing next to some press board nailed to the wall and chewing on it. Oh I just had to breathe and pray. And then I diverted them from those toys with the ball we were rolling back and forth to each other.

The infant & toddler nursery at MWC. It is a separate building from the church building. (The nursery got some updates! You do not know the joy in my heart when Hillary shared with me what had taken place, God answered my prayers very quickly with this. A few weeks after we departed Kenya an InterVarsity team came into the valley for a work day. One of their focuses was the nursery! They gave it a concrete floor covered with laminate that is similar to linoleum, they nailed up wood over the tin for walls that were safer and they purchased mattresses for the babies to sleep on. Yes, I cried when I heard. God is faithful to his kids.)

The twins I played ball with. They are both boys. The one in the pink hat is the smaller of the two and he was born sick in his chest I was told. I got them to smile and almost laugh!

This is John. I was told that he was born sick in his chest and still was. I never once saw him smile the entire week we were there. He could walk but I could tell something wasn't quite right with his legs either.

Another boy in the nursery. The lady who was in there with them daily would let them crawl outdoors and around the yard and eventually she would go and pull them back inside.

The baby was I was able to feed and then put to sleep. He was very sweet and very hungry! I sat there feeding him and thanking God for the universal things of life. Mama Beth knew what to do with a baby and a bottle!

God's grace doesn't always present itself or look like I think it should. That day in the nursery wasn't anything I had planned but God had purpose in it for me. It was his reminder to me that when I commit my day and my plans to him then he is the one I follow. What he asks me to do and where he asks me to go may not be what I have in mind but it is what he knows is best. Because of my day in the nursery he provided a challenge to my heart and my thinking later on that night.

"I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building." (1 Corinthians 3:6-9 NIV)

In the nursery I was very much behind the scenes. I was seperated from my team, only Isam knew where I was. God showed me that evening through his word that behind the scenes is where some of his most important work gets started, it is the place where the seed gets planted. And you cannot grow something if the seed isn't first planted. Some may think I "just" held a baby that day but what I actually did was plant a seed of value into the life of each baby I touched in that nursery. That is the way of God, planting value into the hearts and lives of his kids - no matter if they are kids being held or the "kid" doing the holding. I call that SUCCESS.