I can count it one of God’s greatest blessings on my life to have been taken to Kenya, not for a moment suspecting the relationships that would form and continue after returning home. That these connections of the heart would turn into a verbal dialogue between someone on one side of the world living with every imaginable convenience and another someone living in the almost unimaginable conditions of Soweto, Nairobi, Kenya is outside anything I could have dreamed up on my own.

That this is accomplished via the use of email by someone who holds the firm belief that email is truly one of our culture’s greatest hindrances to real communication, is my own positive revelation of God’s uncanny sense of humor. These are some of the recent communications we have received from our faraway friends.

Our sister, Peres, one of the leaders and, I believe, visionaries of the Mayatima group in Soweto, begins her every message with greetings and joy. When she hears that we in our small corner of the kingdom gather to think about and pray for their sometimes forgotten ones, even her emails seem to dance. Sometimes her news is hard: We lost two sons this week.

One was Alice’s boy. We know Alice--lively, dancing Alice--who shares her talents with other artists in the group by helping them craft and sell their work.

One is Beatrice’s older son, 13, who was beaten by another boy at school and died shortly afterward. We know Beatrice: Beatrice who danced with us in her lovely blue scarf despite her obviously tenuous physical condition when we were there. Beatrice who had shared with us earlier how her two children were her great joy because they never had to be told to do their homework and about whose goodness the head of the school had exclaimed.

Sometimes Peres tells us that “we are all doing very well here” and I wonder who among us could with such honesty say that while we held our dying sisters and brothers and wondered how to keep their children in school.

Most recently, Peres has requested our prayers for our sister Elizabeth, another of the Mayatima widows and mothers. We came to know Elizabeth on our first visit and we learned something of her arrival in Soweto from her upcountry home after the death of her husband and her subsequent banishment from that home. Imagine our joy to meet her again as she served us tea at the World Vision office on our second arrival in Soweto. It seems that she has been ill for some months now, and that is all we know.

Dennis, our brother in Soweto serving in Pastor Luke’s church and as the head teacher at the Sheepcare School opened by that church, finds a way to keep in touch despite the school’s absence of amenities such as electricity, water and teachers who receive any salary.

The school opened with children in classes up through grade six, and has increased one grade each year as that first standard six class has now reached class eight. It is obvious to see Dennis’ heart for these kids who had nothing to do but run in the streets before this school existed.

From one year to the next we watch as a small cooking building goes up and the environment club boasts growing the only trees in Soweto. But it was only in his recent email as he shared his thoughts about his class eight students’ upcoming completion of primary school that I learned that he himself has taken some of the orphaned students into his home to live.

He writes about Eric Omwoma and Thomas Omondi who now live with him, how confident he is that they (along with others in that class) will excel in the exams in November and thus qualify to continue in school. And then, echoing the concerns of parents everywhere, he is burdened by where, oh where, will he find the kind of money that secondary school costs. And he asks us…will we pray?

I think of the many ways that my self-sufficiency-oriented culture tells me to solve the problems that beset me – sickness? unexpected loss? lack of money? – medicines, counseling, and there’s always some way to find enough money. I am beginning to realize the gift our magnanimous Father is giving us in relationship with brothers and sisters who, when faced with troubles most of us hope we will never have, respond by saying…we will pray.

[The people of Soweto written about here all appear in the Stories of Kenya publication available in the church lobby.