Mathare

Hey everyone!!

I'm writing from a little cyber cafe just outside Nairobi (Kenya's sprawling capital city).  Shemiah and I have had an incredible few weeks working in Mathare Valley, 6 square miles populated by approx. 200,000 beautiful people.  Most live in 10x10 tin shacks, often being filled with families of 7 or more.  The situation appears dire.  Sewage and heaps of rotting garbage litter the landscape.  I breathe through my mouth so that I don't vomit.  Toddlers in tattered t-shirts are playing boats with plastic bottle caps in puddles of brown water.  There goes a stray dog with a litter of new pups bumping and biting through the trash.  Chickens and pigs and babies are playing in the same dirt.

But you wanna know the crazy thing?  Many of these 200,000 Kenyans are completely content.  They have learned what it means, as the apostle Paul once said, "to be content in any situation."  The Christians in Mathare Valley Slum have the joy of the Lord.  Those who don't know Christ do not have that joy.  Pending three weeks here has really shown me the truth of our good news once again.  The people who have the gospel are much happier than those who don't.  It is just a fact.  If you are reading this and don't know Christ and don't believe it, come to Mathare yourself.  See the goodness of the Provider God.  It is absolutely amazing.

I have been teaching Science and English and Christianity at an elementary school here.  I love working with the older kids, the 7th and 8th graders who are really starting to get life figured out.  They ask tough questions.  They make me think.  And they are better at math than me, so I let Shemiah teach the math!  On top of that I am teaching a writing course to young adults, ages 19-27.  We've learned how to write resumes and prepare presentations.  I'm also teaching a course that I've called "Basics of Biblical Interpretation" to that same group.  I am loving it.  I will miss this place.  Believe it or not, the sewage is normal now.  I am beginning to see through the material world and into the deeper reality of the spiritual world.  What does a nice house buy?  A shiny car?  Not peace, that is proven here.  God is really good.  Really.

In Him,

John August Hundley

As a staff team we worked for 10 hours over four days seting up partnerships and deciding where we would place each team.  It went surprisingly smoothly! Tiffany was assigned to a city called Nakuru, which is about 4 hours drive from Nairobi.  She'll be working with teenage mothers who have been rescued from the streets and are being rehabilitated from drugs and abusive relationships.  She was paired with a girl named Andie, I'm excited to hear about their friendship when we see each other again in three weeks. Please pray for peace for me, as I'll be concerned for her safety while we're apart.  I was paired with a young man named Shemiah from Bozeman, Montana.  We're going to be working in Mathare Valley Slum with a church there that is really involved in the uplift of the community.  I know that I will be changed by some of the most materially poor but spiritually rich people on the planet.  Please be praying for my relationship with Shemiah, we're going to need words of encouragement for one another for the difficult setting.

                                                        Shemiah, Me, Andie, and Tiffany

Coming back a second time has been incredible.  It has been a litmus test of my growth in the Lord.  I am a very different person than I was two years ago.  O how the Lord matures us.  I'm excited to head into the slums in the morning.  Kwaheri.

Mathare Valley and Maasai

On Wednesday we prayed as we walked through Mathare Valley Slum, which I described in the last post.  The smell of sewage stuck to our clothes.  Last night we worshiped together with the Maasai tribe of Kenya.  They are famous for their ritual jumping.  I loved seeing them praise the Lord in their culture.  Enjoy.  Tiffany and I are enjoying our time together here as we serve the students on the team.  Many of them have been shocked--as I was my first time here in 2010--by the openness of the Kenyan people to the gospel and are excitedly sharing the good news of Jesus Christ wherever they go.

In Nairobi!

The rain just stopped pouring down, good news for the Kenyans.  We spent the day on a scavenger hunt around Nairobi getting to know the city.  I was following around a group of five students as they stumbled through this busy city, all of them on their first trip in the third world.  I had conversation with a Tibetan Buddhist under an overhang of a skyscraper in the pouring rain about the salvation of Jesus Christ.  "In Christianity," I told him, "salvation comes first, and then the good works come as a response to the love of our savior."  I seem to find Tibetan Buddhists everywhere.

Yesterday we spent the day walking through the Mathare Valley slum, one of the most decrepit living situations in the world today.  Their hope in Jesus is astounding.  With less to distract the poor they seem to figure out what the world is really about much quicker than those in the world's one percent.

Tiffany and I are having a wonderful time learning to minister together to the students on the trip.  We are both leading small groups, mine being five men, hers five women.  It was so wonderful to hear their responses to the depravity of Mathare; all of them were excited for ways to change their own lives in order to join in the mission of Jesus Christ that is already strong in that Valley.  What a beautiful thing it is to watch the love of the Lord grow in the students. 

Please be praying for the staff team, especially for wisdom in the process of deciding where and with whom the students will be sent on their 3 week ministry assignments.  These meetings can be long and stressful, and we are all already tired after long days.  We need your prayers.  I will try to post a video next week, I've got some awesome footage of our experiences here so far, so... stay tuned!  :)

In Him,

John

Hello again, friends!

We arrived in NYC and have had our first staff meeting and our first large group meeting with the team.  Seems like an amazing bunch of students ready to rock (or get rocked).  I took a video of our large group meeting to offer you a little taste of what we're in for.  We're going to try to keep our blog updated with videos throughout the summer, but it will entirely depend upon the availability of capable computers in Kenya.  Nairobi should have a few Internet Cafes that will work, but once we leave the city the odds quickly deteriorate along with the availability of technology and internet access.  Regardless, we'll keep you as up to date as is possible.

This is the director of the Global Project, Brian Lee, giving a short talk about what the GP might look like.  Brian was the officiant of our marriage last August.

We take off tomorrow at 6pm EST from New York's JFK airport.  We'll have a 12 hour layover in London before continuing on to Nairobi.