Mungu Ni Mwema

 About a week into my trip with the CCV team we were able to prepare food bags to take out into the community. We got to the community center in the morning and filled about 200 bags with common food and necessities. We created an assembly line to add beans, corn maze, cooking fat, and soap to each one. The money we had raised as a church made this event possible, and it was more than rewarding.

            We were able to return to some of the homes we visited on the prayer walk the very first day. It was an incredible feeling to know how valuable these bags were to the people of the community. We knew that these bags full of small amounts of basic foods would mean the difference between eating and going hungry for some. I love my perspective here. If we were home and received a bag of beans and soap it wouldn’t be much of value at all, in fact we probably pour that amount of food into the trash after a meal, but in Kawangware, that bag is GOLD, and we felt it!

            We gathered the youth with us and went out in the slum with the bags. The first house we went to was a single mom with 3 kids. We had stopped by her home to pray the week before and she was glowing with appreciation, so I was stoked to return with this surprise bag of food. She alone has to provide for the family of 4 and her husband left her with only 2,000 shillings in February (a little less than $20 for six months), before he left upcountry. She talked about how she has trouble finding work with small children, and how she often can’t provide meals for them. It killed me when she said she locks her kids in the house with her around meal times so they don’t see the neighbors eating. You can imagine the glow on her face when she looked inside that bag. She was speechless for a moment, but her face lit up in a smile I will never forget. “Asanti, Asanti, Asanti” she kept saying (Thank you, thank you, thank you) I can’t put into words the feeling I had as I watched her show the food to her children. This moment captured the beauty of life, giving joyfully and being grateful for the simple things in life. It’s hard to escape it here in Kenya, that’s why I can’t get enough.

     As we talked with this woman and returned to other homes near by I noticed another momma following us around. She was on the verge of tears and she was holding a young child who was glazed over with sickness. We walked over to her but we had already given out the bags we brought. However, she wasn’t interested in the bags. She heard we were praying for people, and she needed prayer. She invited us into her home and let us take the 2 seats, while she sat on a water basin. She told us that her baby had been sick for 3 months, and doctors aren’t able to find out why. He couldn’t be more than 9 months old and he clung to his mom. He was in so much pain to the extent that if you even moved him a certain way he screamed in pain. He wasn’t eating, and she was scared. She recently became a single mother when her husband went missing, and has no family nearby to help her. Her baby is her life, and tears streamed down her face as she told us how hard it is. We encouraged her to keep praying and to remember the comfort of God’s promise as my heart literally broke in half for her. We prayed together and she told us that she praises God for what she has, and what we did for her. She believes no less in the Lord given the rough time, and she taught me more than she knows. We were able to go back and grab an extra bag of food for her. She cried again as she glanced inside and she proceeded to say, "Mungu ni Mwema" multiple times which in Swahili means “God is Good”. She has a very ill baby with no idea how to treat him, no husband or family to turn to, and no money because she sacrifices work to take care of her baby. All she could say was God is good! I know I constantly talk about the faith of these people, but I’m still in AWE.

            Here’s the thing though… God IS good. He IS perfect, all-knowing, and all loving. What I’m learning most from these amazing people is that that truth can’t ever change. No matter what you have or don’t have doesn’t change who God is. He is GOOD and he has a plan for our lives and it is a GOOD plan filled with hope. He doesn’t give us things we can’t handle and He has a place set aside for us after this flawed earthly life ends, and it is GOOD too. He doesn’t change with circumstances, emotions, or struggles. He is God, and MUNGU NI MWEMA!