Rains

Every Sunday at Christ Church there is a segment of the service which is devoted to welcoming new visitors. The guests stand, introduce themselves, say where they are from, and the congregation then sings them a welcome song. It is an occurrence I have grown quite accustom to since it was first sung to me a couple of months ago. This particular Sunday there was a South African man who is currently living in North Carolina in attendance. After the service while everyone was taking tea I went over to talk with him about the States. While we were doing so one of the Somali Christians, Mohiedin, came over to say hello. When Mohiedin mentioned that he was Somali we learned that the reason David (the South African) was attending the service was to learn of the Somali outreach program.

A little later the three Somalis who had attended the service, along with Dave, Rev. Rachel and I met with David to discuss what had been going on. David works with an organization called International Justice Mission (IJM), who has done extensive work with Somali Christians. In fact they have been so successful with Somali Christians that they have been forced to repeatedly move their office and can no longer put up a sign, or freely give out their organization's address, for fear of attack by Muslim Somalis.

IJM is also responsible for bibles printed with Koran covers, and stylized after the Koran; an effective, controversial, and, when discovered, potentially very deadly enterprise.

He had come in the hope of organizing a 'hush-hush' networking system between churches working with the Somali refugees. There is currently absolutely nothing in place for such activities and the only way in which some organizations or churches are aware of the others is through the Somalis themselves. We talked with him for about 45min, just discussing our specific situation, and how we have tried to go about ministering to these displaced people.

After the meeting we learned that one of the Somalis who was in attendance had just recently become a Christian. Therefore, she was also just recently disowned by her family, and thrown from her house. She had showed up at Christ Church on Sunday morning carrying a small bag, filled with her only possessions. She had no place to stay, and nowhere to go. One of the Somali mothers, Sarah, whose son, Abdi, does the translations for us during the Somali service, offered to take in the young girl named, Kedra. Here too, however, was a problem. Sarah had recently been locked out of her own home by her landlord in the Kangemi slum, for failure to pay her rent. She owed 600 shillings (under $10) and had been locked out for the past two nights. David offered to give her the money, under the understanding that he was a one time visitor and the Somalis could not expect the same treatment in the future.

The issues temporarily settled, Kedra went home with Sarah and Abdi who would soon be allowed back into their home.

After two weeks of missed Somali services, Dave could again not attend, but this week three of the interns and I made the trip (Festus, Suezette, and George). I gave the lesson on Matthew 25, the story of the 5 talents, and the then each intern broke into small groups with two Somalis and further discussed the verses.

It was great to see the interns interacting so well with the Somalis, and I am excited with the possibility of creating an even larger community with the Somalis and further integrating them into the Sunday service.

Starting next week the Somalis will meet for a half hour after the service and practice singing worship songs in Somalian to preform for the Sunday congregation. Our hope is that as the Christ Church community becomes more aware of the Somali ministry we will be able to secure more funds to begin the micro-loan, micro-business plans.

As we were leaving the Church to take tea, the clouds looked extremely ominous. They were nearly back and the wind told of storms to come. Despite the interns pleas to leave before the rain we stayed for tea, and made it into town before the rains began. As we had walked half way to where we were to catch our second matatu (on the other side of the city) a light ran was falling, by the time we were with in 200 feet of the matatu stage it was a torrential down pour. We ran and jumped into the first matatu we could. The streets were flooded within minutes, and we waited for the matatu to fill up, the majority of other passengers huddled under shelters unwilling to make the sprint to the van. About 30min later, the matatu was full and we were off. spraying muddy water about 4ft in every direction.

I hopped out at Church Army and sprinted into the office. The rain drops were about the size of marbles. The parking lot was a pond. It poured for the next hour like this. The office's ceiling began to leak and water was dripping on the computers so we moved them, and then I decided to make the 100 yard scurry back to my room. Every inch of me was muddy and soaked by the time I walked through my door, the compound was flooded, the ceilings in the dorm too were leaking. It was pretty exciting.