LifeSpring Church shares love in Mathare slum

The LifeSpring Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, has adopted the Kosovo slum community in the Mathare Valley in Nairobi, Kenya. Part of the partnership involves assisting the church and school located in the community with leadership training and a variety of projects, including Community Health Evangelism, HIV/AIDS and microfinance lending. Members of LifeSpring have taken several short-term trips to Kenya, and Dick Alexander, Senior Minister at LifeSpring, recently shared his thoughts about their most recent one. Here are some excerpts from his blog:

“I’m writing this on the way home from this month’s LifeSpring mission trip to the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. It’s hard to describe the Mathare slum. Eight hundred thousand people live in shacks made of corrugated steel with dirt floors. Lacking city services, there are no sewers, so the dirt paths between the shanties double as sewers. If I had enough space here I could describe the scene. I could never describe the smell.

“It doesn’t take long to be attacked by the darkness of Mathare. At the entrance to the part where our partner church is located is one of the thousand informal bars that sprinkle the slums. Men shovel grain into a large pot over an outdoor fire where they brew the moonshine they drink all day. Eyes glazed over, brains fried, they are the picture of despair and a symbol of Mathare.

“ ‘Daily bread’ means something different here. We talk with Suzanne, a beautiful young African woman. She supports her two children, her sister and her infant daughter, and their mother — a smaller household than in many of Mathare’s minuscule huts. She was trained as a secretary, but can’t find a job. She used to live in a flat with her husband, but he died a couple of years ago. She didn’t say it was AIDS, but she didn’t have to. As the sole support for the household, Suzanne sells bananas in the morning and sells herself in the evening. It’s not that she wants to be a prostitute — she despises it — but she has mouths to feed.

“There are no words to describe how bad the living conditions are in Mathare; neither are there words to describe how good the ministry is that our partners are doing. On Sunday morning we enjoyed a church service of more than three hours. They brought together the eighth-graders from the Missions of Hope schools to pray for them in preparation for the three‑day national exam to determine high school admissions — a big deal in Kenya.

“The Missions of Hope schools began nine years ago with a group of three-year-olds, so this was the first graduating class from the schools. The students appeared sharp and ready. Some will likely qualify for the best high schools in Kenya. Knowing where they came from, we sat and watched in tears.

“The LifeSpring team worked hard. Four nurses, a doctor, a counselor, two homemakers, two artists, a couple of college students, a seventh-grader, and a software guy presented a VBS for 465 kids, held a medical clinic for 862 patients, and painted a four-story mural on the school building.

“At the end of the week the kids presented a two-hour program of songs, skits and poems for us, and it was absolutely amazing! Even more amazing was that 100 feet from where they sang about the goodness of God were their homes — the Mathare shanties. After a while you quit wiping the tears; you just let them run.

“On our last day there we attended a baptismal service for 160 people at a swimming pool. Those on this side of the New Birth really are different. They speak of a God who is good, and they smile a lot.  There is hope in Mathare.”