Giants of Faith ~ Pastor Jepson and Edith Karau

Pastor Karau and Edith, his wife, have been dedicated to the Mathare Valley Slum in Nairobi, Kenya since 1983. Pastor was making a good living for his family as an accountant but then he was called by God for purposes he never dreamed. Edith and their four kids joined him on this challenging assignment.

When you look at the slum the obvious needs are overwhelming but Pastor was called to the subtle, unseen by human eyes, needs. The impoverished spirits of the people. The greater need for purpose not just a few shillings for basic necessities. And so he was led to found Mathare Worship Center, located in the slum, to address those needs. He knew he couldn't begin to meet the physical needs but he knew a God who could and who would show him how to speak hope to the greater needs.

The first time I met this powerhouse was in the summer of 2006. He and Mrs. Karau visited our church, who partners with them in Kenya. One would almost imagine that such a powerhouse would be larger than life in stature, yet I looked him straight in the eyes to shake his hand. I welcomed him, shaking a bit from excitement and nerves. The next time I would see him it would be on his turf ~ in the valley slum of Nairobi.

The cadence of Pastor's tongue is oddly comforting. Before he left that summer I got to hear some of his adventures in this life that he too calls faith. On more than one occasion Pastor and Mrs. Karau have admittedly asked the Lord to release them from ministry in the slum. To let them return to a less challenging, less heart wrenching life. It is not for the faint of heart. As you can see, God's answer has been, "No, my grace is sufficient for you." And so for 25 years they have served and loved the people of Mathare Valley slum. In that time Pastor's life has been at risk. His ministry has not come without hard work, commitment, and a few tears along the way.

During the years spent in the valley, Pastor and Mrs. Karau have seen where the cycle begins and how it can end. Generations have lived in the slum but they see hope if the cycle gets interrupted, diverted, broken. So, in addition to their duties as Senior Pastor to a thriving church they became the Kenya Country Coordinators for Hope's Promise ~ a non-profit headquartered in Colorado that provides adoption services along with a "rescue" program of sorts in the countries of Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Vietnam. To get the program started Pastor and Mrs. Karau (Mama to those of us who have met her, worked with her, and love her) have handpicked 11 kids from Mathare Valley who, for a variety of reasons, aren't being cared for and live with them in an area of Kenya that is removed from the slum. The idea is to take the kids who are forced into the cycle of poverty and give them an opportunity to get out on a different path, in hopes that one day they will reach out and do the same for others in the valley. Then a new cycle can begin to emerge. Breaking the cycle starts with just one - or in this case 11 - kids at a time. It has been so successful in the two years since the home opened that a second home has now opened with 10 more kids from Mathare and a house mom that the Karau's have prayerfully chosen. To date the kids are all under 10 years of age, giving them an even better chance of escaping the vicious cycle of poverty and neglect.

Back at Mathare Worship Center Pastor has a dedicated group of people who have felt the call of God to join him and Mama in ministry to the slum. A lot of them come from the slum, in fact they still reside there, and have answered the call of God to make a difference right where they are at. Identifying the physical and spiritual needs, the church has many outreaches designed to address those needs at little to no cost to the people. Currently the church has these outreaches in place:

Saturday Kids Club, HIV Mom's Group, Nursery and School, Medical Clinic, Curio Shop, Loan Program for congregation members, and an organization called Lepta (training for young girls to gain employment).

The second time I met up with the Karau's I had just landed in Nairobi. They met us at the airport with hugs and handshakes and made Kenya feel like home. In the 10 days we spent with them, their influence in the community and with others became very evident. MWC stands out as a lighthouse projecting a beacon of hope into 6 square miles of darkness.

In April 2008 we had the privilege of Pastor and Mama visit us in Colorado again. We had the honor of hearing him exhort us in this life of faith. Hearing his voice brought back Kenya to me in such a vivid way that I felt homesick for it! One afternoon, at a reception for Hope's Promise, he asked his wife, Edith (Mama), to join him to speak and he called her "honey". Not uncommon in American culture but very uncommon in Kenyan culture. He explained that they don't speak to each other that way in Kenya. But with a shrug of his shoulders and a smile on his face he said, "But when in Rome do as the Romans do..." and held out his hand for Mama.

Pastor and Mama Karau are true giants of faith in this life. I am so humbled by the Lord that he would allow me to know them, work alongside of them, and learn from them. I thank God for them and for their hearts to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

"Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him." Psalm 126:5-6 (NIV)

Dusty Discipleship

It was a bittersweet day. Our last day at Mathare Worship Center had come and I was dreading it. I felt like we had really just gotten into our groove and here we were, leaving. The last day is a Saturday Kids Club that MWC holds for the kids in the slum. This Kids Club was the impetus for almost every other ministry that MWC has. It is a focal point. The kids growing up in the slums are the next generation and they will either continue the cycles or break them. MWC wants to help them break the cycles.

Our day started in the sanctuary with kids that seemed unfamiliar to us. Most of our school kids from the week weren’t there. These were the kids that count on Kids Club to give them their meal for the day…or for the next week. These were the kids that couldn’t afford the school tuition and so spent their days playing with trash and wandering around the slum. These were the kids that needed help in order to break the cycle. The kids we saw in school each day were the ones whose parents had found a way and were traveling the road to a different existence.

Not long into our day we headed to a large empty lot right down the road from the church. We spread out with our parachutes and balls and various other pieces of equipment and started rotating the kids through games. I barely blinked and we went from about 150 kids to 300! It was incredible. The neighborhood kids who didn’t know about Kids Club came pouring out from the nooks and crannies of the Valley. A little boy, maybe 2 years old, went walking by me dragging behind him a handmade toy. Someone had taken an empty plastic milk jug and cut it to make it look like a car. They had even fashioned wheels so it would roll! I really wished I could have gotten a picture of that little boy and his toy car.

Sara, Isam, and I were on parachute duty. These parachutes have been a gift from God to the kids of the Valley, the teachers at the school, and to us! The first day we unfolded them the wonder that lit up in the eyes and faces of the kids was worth every penny spent. And if you look around you see that the parachutes provide colors the kids don’t normally see in the Valley. They serve as reminder of the hope Christ can and does bring to a life dedicated to him.

So this large public yard is a big dirt lot. And there were 300 kids plus all of us adults kicking up the dirt in that yard. From a distance I imagine that all one could see was a dirt cloud rising from the Valley! At the parachute station the dirt was especially thick. The kids would grab on and we would all run in one direction together and then switch directions and run the other way. We would raise that parachute up and down, up and down and then call the kids to run under it while we pulled it down over them. We would throw balls in the middle of the parachute and everyone would start shaking it as hard as they could, popping those balls high up into the sky. Shooting bursts of color over the muted colors of the valley these kids called home.

I tried really hard not to think about it. And I succeeded for the most part. One time I looked down at my legs and saw that I no longer was wearing white socks. They were the color of the dirt in the yard. I didn’t look down again. At one point my eyes were filled with dirt and throwing all caution out the door I wiped my eyes with my shirt and my hands. As we walked back to the church after playtime I could feel the grit and crunch of the dust that had settled into my pores and on every fiber of my clothing. I could shake my head and see the dust fly out of it. Sara, Isam, and I had blackened faces. We took a second to wipe off what we could and then we shrugged our shoulders and went on with the day.

The moment we returned to Little Sisters I hit the showers. The water coming off of me was black, literally. The dust was everywhere. I had to pound my shoes on the pavement to try to get as much of it off as possible. Every time I blew my nose for the next few hours it was black. I didn’t even try to wash the clothes. I shook them out and put them in a Ziploc, I would just deal with them at home in Colorado. I went into our team meeting that night feeling refreshed from the shower but exhausted! Was it worth it? Was the blanket of dust worth the shrieks and joy of kids who may only have that pleasure once a week? You bet it was worth it. Every single minute was worth it. Every dust particle that found its way to me was worth it. The love of God doesn’t belong in a box, it isn’t clean, and it doesn’t belong just in stained glass sanctuaries. The love of God gets down in the dirt and throws caution to the wind so that someone receives a touch from their Creator.

Recently I heard a teaching on what a disciple of Christ really is and what it really looks like.* A whole new idea of what I should be doing, because I call myself a disciple of Jesus Christ, has opened up to me. Back in the day Jewish boys would go to school and as they reached certain ages they would either continue on in their education or not. Some would cease after learning the first five books of the Torah and go into an apprenticeship, learning the family trade. Others would continue and by the time they were 14-15 years old they would have every Hebrew scripture memorized. That’s Genesis through Malachi! MEMORIZED. And then the best of the best would go on even further still and “apply” to be a disciple of a rabbi. If the rabbi thought they “had it” then they would be accepted, otherwise they would be sent home to learn the family trade and no doubt be one of the most knowledgeable laypersons around.

How did the rabbi know if they “had it”? Well a disciple is one who isn’t just a student but is one who commits their whole life to walking in the footsteps of their rabbi. They give up everything to follow their rabbi and learn what the rabbi does and says. They orient their whole life to that of the rabbi’s. The wise men and sage’s came up with a saying to bless the disciple with. “May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.” See, the rabbi and his group of disciples would travel and in order to keep up with him they would have to be right on his heels. Israel is pretty well known for being a desert. (If that isn’t stating the obvious then I don’t know what is.) And in the desert you have, well, dust. And lots of it. So at the end of a busy day it was very likely that the group of disciples were covered in the dust kicked up by their rabbi. But it wasn’t a bad thing; no, I think it was a good thing. To be covered in the dust of your rabbi meant that you were remaining true to your commitment to be his disciple.

I’m sitting here today thinking about the dust of Kenya that covered me that Saturday in June 2007. I traveled to Kenya because Jesus looked at me and said, “Come, follow me.” And where he has led me to in that journey has been some pretty amazing places – and I’m not talking about location. I thought about the blessing, “May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.” I want to be covered in the dust of my rabbi, Jesus. And I think that day in Kenya, as I got covered in dust, that maybe I wasn’t at the very back of the pack but a little closer to the heels of Jesus as he kicked up the dust.

May you, too, be covered in the dust of your rabbi, Jesus.

*www.nooma.com Dust : 008 Rob Bell

My own personal "Groundhog Day"!

Okay really groundhogs have nothing to do with my stories of Kenya or my heart transformation for the things of God BUT I have a point to prove!

Have you seen that movie with Bill Murray, "Groundhog Day"? If you haven't don't go rush to put it on your NetFlix or rent it. I personally didn't think it was all that funny (I am sure the hate mail will start to pour in now - people seem to love that movie!) but it provides me with a great reference! For those of you who haven't seen it, here's the lowdown - a news reporter goes to Punxsutawney for the groundhog moment and gets "stuck" in the town by living the same day over and over again. But each day he learns something new about himself and about others. Really I guess the movie isn't so bad in retrospect (with age comes wisdom and all that). Anyway, I am dangerously close to digressing. My point is simply this...when it comes to taking trips to Kenya I am living the same conversation over and over it seems! It's like my own personal "groundhog day"!

If you are on my snail mail list then by now you have received a letter that was eerily similar to a letter you may have received in May 2006. There's a reason for it being so familiar. I had saved that letter...good thing. Who knew I would need it again? Well, God did I suppose.

The December 27, 2007 Kenya elections went badly. Very badly. Lives have been lost, thousands have been displaced from their homes, national security went out the door with the shady election outcome. The majority of our Mathare Worship Center church members fled the valley with the violence threatening their personal safety. I came to discover that the majority of our members there were the "hunted" tribe. Every day for weeks the news kept informing us of the status. The two largest slums, Kibera and Mathare, produced pictures of the violence and like a tragic car accident that everyone can't help but stare at as they drive by so I would click on these images and pray that I wouldn't recognize anyone. You do not know the relief in my heart when emails were returned with messages of "I'm okay" and when I recognized no child or adult in any images the media published.

Oddly enough I was more than ready to get on a plane and get to Kenya come June...or IMMEDIATELY! June couldn't come fast enough for me. The upheaval of the nation made me even more anxious to get there. What could I have done? Nothing. I suppose in my mind I think I could have done something useful but the reality is that I would have been more in the way. So I resisted the urges to drive to DIA with my passport and my friend, Hillary, and hop on the first flight out. "Um, Beth," my inner voice - i.e. Holy Spirit would say, "you have a hubby and kids, you have a job, you have responsibilities. You can't go, you'd be in the way. STAY HERE." So I was REALLY, REALLY looking forward to June. Suddenly I could relate to my friends, Melissa and Kenny, when last year they were chomping at the bit to get on the plane back to Kenya. As I sat in the corner with teeth chattering and bald spots from the stress of thinking about the "what ifs" of Kenya I thought they were CRAZY to want to get back to Kenya. I mean I was going, but as everyone knew I wasn't happy about it and I certainly was only going ONCE. Well. We all know now that I was walking in complete ignorance to the ways of God. Oh, but I am dangerously close to digressing...again. Back to the point.

We had our authentic African family meal January 13. As before (click here for the story of the first meal) it was a great night of becoming the family that the Body of Christ should be. It was so different from my first meal! Last May I thought the chai tasted like...well...grass. Weird. January 13 found me savoring the chai and having that excitement of June press on me with such force that my heart ached. I was tempted to drive to the airport that night.

So imagine my shock when, three days later, I am told the trip was being postponed until June 2009. Oh my. I really wonder what my face said that my mouth could not at that moment. I truly thought Isam was joking with me. I mean what are the odds that this would happen to me TWICE? Once I figured out he was serious the first thing I thought of was "Groundhog Day" and I told him so! It was surreal. It was a rare moment in my life when I was rendered speechless. Later that night Hillary called me to check in. She saw my face when I was told the news. But I was distracted and told her I didn't know what to feel or think. I was shelving it until a later date. Nope, I didn't think I would cry anytime soon, too much to sift through.

The minute my eyes opened the next morning the floodgates opened. I spent the entire day - literally - in tears. Pouring out my disappointment before the Lord, pouring out my frustration that the sin of people costs so much - in this case lives and homes and my trip! (Selfish moment there but it feels good to confess it.) The end of the day found me dehydrated (really) and with a pounding headache.

Andy Warhol said, "Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?" Ah, the truth of that query. Yes, my trip got postponed again. But this time the images have changed. The first time there was relief. This time disappointment. The first time there was fear. This time there is faith. The first time there was weakness. This time there is strength. Yes, I am a study of snapshots but as the situation has repeated itself the images of my heart have changed. Oh the amazing grace of God.