Only God

Three Sundays before we left for Kenya we invited our church family at CrossWay to participate in our Sole to Soul campaign, helping to put shoes on the children in Village 2 of the Mathare Valley. Village 2 is the area that we have adopted and the children we are sponsoring are from that village. Village 2 is where we are involved in ministry. I mentioned to our church that I thought $1600-$2000 would put shoes on the kids at the school in Village 2. Although people came to church that Sunday unprepared to give, the first week they gave enough to cover the cost of shoes for the children in the Village 2 school.

I told them on the second Sunday that we had received enough the first week to put shoes on the kids in Village 2 but if they still wanted to give, we would still take the money. We would use it for shoes for other children or to meet some other need as directed by the leaders of Mission of Hope International. The people in our church continued to give that Sunday and the next. When we left for Kenya we left with $10,000. Unbelievable. In three short weeks, we collected $10,000.

When we got over to Kenya we were told we would be buying shoes for 90-some children. I did the calculation and realized we would have $8,000 left, and I wondered how God would lead us to use that money.

At our briefing on Sunday afternoon, our first full day in Kenya, we discovered that property for the Hope Center in Village 2 had been hard to find. Although they started looking in January, it took months to find the property. The temporary structure they constructed had only opened the week before we arrived. Therefore, we got to be there for what amounted to be the grand opening, which was really cool.

On Monday we had dinner at the home of Mary and Wallace Kamau. Mary and Wallace are Kenyans who serve as the executive directors for Mission of Hope International. I asked Mary to explain to our group about the property search and where things stood in the process to acquire it. She said that they had put a down payment on the property of $2,000. At this point, they are waiting for the title to clear. “Once the title clears,” she said, “we will be responsible for the remaining balance. We may have to make payments on it, but we are trusting God to figure out where the rest of the money will come from.” I asked her, “How much will you owe on the property?” Do you want to guess what she told us? “$8,000.”

When she said that number several members of our team let out an audible gasp loud enough to be heard all over the room. They knew, even though Mary did not yet know, about the $8,000 we had left. We were able to hand Mary the $8,000 needed to pay off the property. So our team got to be there at the grand opening of the Hope Center in Village 2. We were blessed to conduct health screenings for all the kids, put on a fun VBS program, put new shoes and socks on their feet, and pay off their property.

As a parent, you really want to give your child the best possible start in life that you can. You want to launch your child into the world on as solid a footing as you can. We helped give birth to the Village 2 Hope Center and put it on solid ground. To God’s glory, I don’t think we could have given them a better launch and I can’t wait to see what God will do there in Village 2.

Bwana Asifiwe,
Ron