Let Me Introduce You to Nairobi

So today we took a tour of Kibera.  The 2nd largest slum in Africa.  2 million people in 1 square mile.  At least 6 people living in each 6 square foot shack. 

First Love started their ministry here, in 2004, in a school called Raila Educational Center.  They started with a feeding program.  There are 1,000 kids there and we'll be working with the 6th and 7th graders the rest of the week in a Vacation Bible School type format called Kids' Club. 

At the feeding center they started noticing that kids needed more than just education.  So they started a girls' home for just a few of the girls on the school's property in the slum.

 The number of girls grew and they bought property outside of the slum- 5 acres in 2006.  I'll tell you more about that later.  85-95% of the kids are orphans, whose parents have died from AIDS.  None of the kids have it though. 

So here is the awesome way God makes things happen.  Tom and Linda Clinton, who run First Love, were involved in a ministry on the east coast of Africa.  On a layover, before a flight, they ate dinner in Nairobi.  He asked the taxi driver to take them to the poorest of the poor in Nairobi so he was brought into Kibera slum and saw a bunch of kids sitting outside at Raila and stopped there and talked to the director and from there the feeding program was born.  It just keeps leading to the next thing. 

When the kids in the slum great you they chant How are you?  Over and over in a sing song voice.  It must be the only english they know.

You remember Frida from the other day?  The first of the children that I met. . . we met her grandmother in the slum!
She took us into her house.  It was one room, with one bed, electric wires from the ceiling tapped from the power line.
Frida comes home there on school breaks. 

I'm in the photo with Joey and Anissa and Alea.