One idea our design team [...]]]> Wednesday was a super day!  This past year we renovated the CMF Mission Services Center.  We moved a few walls, replaced some of the art work and totally repainted the office.  Rather than one or two colors, we now have half a dozen colors in the various offices and cubicles.

One idea our design team had was to make a “wall of history.”  We picked out 50 things of interest, wrote up a little text, and then our artiste’ Joyelle went to work.  What a fabulous job she did in pulling it all together.  It takes up two walls in the hallway.  The walls go around the corner so are at a 90 degree angle, meaning you can walk around the wall of history when you walk down on hallway and then turn left.  Interestingly, the walls come together right by my office door so every time I walk out of my office I can see the wall.

I won’t say more because I want you to come and take a look.  It really brings CMF history to life.  Come and see! Robyn is due here in half an hour to take a look.  It will take about 15 minutes to see everything and read everything.

The lake is well known in Kenya [...]]]> What a great day for birding!  We drove from Nairobi down through the Rift Valley, going south to Lake Magadi, one of the lowest points in inland Kenya.  When we lived in Loita you could see Lake Magadi from the Enguruman escarpment, but I had never been there.

The lake is well known in Kenya as soda ash is collected there.  The factory has been in existence for years.  The lake floor is scaped and the salts are collected.  I think they are used in making cement.

Along the route we saws lots of birds, many of them lifers for me.  I’ll post a list in a week or two.  The prize of the day was the chesnut banded plover.  The bird has markings similar to many plover, with the major difference being that the band across the chest is a brilliant red rather than the usual black and brown.  We probably saw a dozen of the birds in a couple of ponds, sharing space with flamingoes, little egrets, and lapwings.

Happy birthday Dad!

The [...]]]> I preached on “Good News to the Poor” recently and heard that a study group was using the sermon and discussing poverty and what to do about the poor.  The verse about “always having the poor with you” came up in the conversation as it often does, which led me to do a little studying. 

The passage is found in a couple of places in the New Testament.  Matt. 26:11 reads, “For you will always have the poor with you, but you will not have me.” (NRSV)

The other passage is Mark 14:7, which reads: “For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me” (NRSV).  I underlined the section that is not included in Matthew, because I think it is critically important to how we interpret this passage.

Many people have taken the phrase, “The poor you will always have with you” as a statement of fact.  Some then go on to reason, “Since we will always have poor people around, what is the use of trying to help them?  We’ll never be able to help them all, so why even try?”  Therefore, the verse ends up being used as a sort of rationalization for not helping the poor.

But I believe this passage is saying just the opposite.  1) Since you will always have the poor with you, you will be able to help them anytime (or always). 2) But since you will only have me (Jesus)  around for a while, it is OK that this woman used her ointment on me, even though it could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor.

I would venture that Matthew’s point in the passage was not about how to deal with the poor, but was about the kindness of the woman and then Jesus’ comment about not being with them much longer.

 I would venture that Mark included it, making the same points as Matthew, but also adding the extra phrase to emphasize how we should interact with the poor.

It is likely that the phrase, “the poor will always be with you” that Jesus uses comes from Deuteronomy 15:11, “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’ ”

Do you have any thoughts?  Please comment.

“In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 1 in 5 girls make it to secondary school. Nearly half are married by the time they are 18; 1 in 7 [...]]]> The following quotes come from an article in Time magazine, Feb. 14, 2011.  The article is written by Nancy Gibbs and is titled “The Best Investment” (page 64).

“In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 1 in 5 girls make it to secondary school. Nearly half are married by the time they are 18; 1 in 7 across the developing world marries before she is 15.  The leading cause of death for girls 15-19 worldwide is complications from pregnancy.  Girls under 15 are give times as likely to die while having children than are women in their 20s, and their babies are more likely to die as well.

“An extra year of primary school boosts girls wages by 10-20%. An extra year of secondary school adds 15-25%.  Girls who stay in school for seven or more years typically marry four years later and have two fewer children than girls who drop out.

“When girls and women earn income, they reinvest 90% of it in their families.  They buy books, medicine, bed nets (to prevent malaria). For men, the figure is more like 30% to 40%.  Investment in girls education may well be the highest return investment available in the developing world.”

The CMF/Hope Partnership project in Nairobi, Kenya, allows girls (and boys) to be sponsored so that they can go to school.  Over four thousand children are being sponsored.  In the last two years, the first years the project had kids old enough to reach the eighth grade, 96% of the eighth graders passed their high school entrance exam, more than doubling the national average of 40%.  Both girls and boys are going to high school.

The project also has a microfinance program.  Currently there are 1144 people who have loans.  The repayment rate for the loans is 98%.  Two out of three who receive a loan are women.

I don’t have to tell you what would happen to these girls now in school or these women if they were not able to receive loans.  This project is doing much to end child slavery, sex trafficking, and prostitution in the slums of Mathare Valley, one of the poorest places on the earth.

“It’s a miracle!”

If you had been with me, you would have wondered. Several of us Americans were standing in the second story room of a toilet building in the midst of Mathare Valley, one of Nairobi’s—and the world’s—largest slums. The plaque on the [...]]]> I’ve asked my friend LeRoy Lawson to share the following comments:

“It’s a miracle!”

If you had been with me, you would have wondered. Several of us Americans were standing in the second story room of a toilet building in the midst of Mathare Valley, one of Nairobi’s—and the world’s—largest slums. The plaque on the building’s exterior honors Alan Ahlgrim, pastor of Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Colorado, because his congregation provided the money to build it.

The toilet building is fairly new, but looks old. It’s a sound but humble two-story structure; a community room upstairs (where a church has been started). Downstairs is  divided in the middle (men’s side, women’s side) with four small cells each, two toilet rooms, two shower stalls. There is no indoor plumbing. If you want to shower, you bring your bucket and shillings, pay the attendant and draw water from an outside tap, then step into the stall and bathe. The toilet is a hole in the concrete floor, a convenience familiar to third-world travelers.

The building, inside or out, simply doesn’t look miraculous. When it was built, though, it was the only such facility for 80,000 people. The previous one was a ramshackle outhouse perched over a tiny stream. Most people resorted to “flying toilets,” recycled plastic grocery bags into which they made their deposit, twisted the bag, and tossed it. To have a decent building for their personal use, one which they never could have raised enough money to build, seemed to the community leader standing next to me to be, well, nothing short of miraculous.

That was my first visit. In planning this Nairobi excursion with some other ministers, I had wanted to see what we teasingly dubbed the Alan Ahlgrim Memorial Toilet. Alan was my student at Milligan College many years ago, a leading minister among our churches, a really good friend—and very much alive. It was fun to tease him about his honor.

On my second trip to Mathare, though, the teasing stopped. Alan and his wife Linda were in this group. We visited the toilet building because on that day the community leaders were hosting a special event: planting young saplings in the area around their building. It was not clean work; the ground consisted of some soil plus decades of layered garbage. The trees would offer a welcome change of scenery.

The Americans and Kenyans were introduced to each other. When these grateful residents of Mathare Valley learned that one of their guests was Alan, it was as if the rest of us weren’t there. A celebrity was in their midst. They were in awe. They embarrassed Alan with their response. This man whose name was on their toilet building, this generous benefactor whose gift had changed their lives, had come to see them, and now they could thank him personally.

I’ll never forget that day.

LeRoy  Lawson

International Consultant