by Pastor Dan Baumgartner

I arrived home on a Friday night after spending two weeks in Kenya, 30 hours on planes and in airports and moving across 16 hours worth of time zone changes. On Sunday I staggered into the pulpit at Bethany to preach a sermon. On Monday morning, Anne and I went for a run around Greenlake, and then settled in to catch up over a good cup of coffee at Peet’s. We talked for awhile about all that had gone on with Anne and the kids while I had been gone. Then I started to tell her a story from Kenya—and I started to weep. Not cry, weep. I couldn’t talk. She wiped the tears running down my cheek with an unbleached brown Peet’s napkin.

Our group from Bethany traveled on the day of the foiled terrorist plot in London, where we were scheduled to change planes. The heightened security and tense atmosphere due to those events made it clear that we would not only have to give up a bunch of carry-on luggage, but also any thoughts that we were in control of this trip. It was out of our hands.

Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, is a city of about 4 million people. Most of them seem to routinely walk at the edge of the small number of paved roadways, within inches of speeding cars! Nairobi also houses several of the larger and more heart-breaking slums in the world. In the Kitale and adjacent Soweto slums live something like a million people jammed into a three square mile area. Think of the whole population of greater Seattle living in Interbay. Now factor in little electricity, very little water and no sewage besides the open ditches. And children…everywhere. Half of the population in the slums is under 15 years old, mainly because so many of those older have already died of AIDS.

Kenya is not the hardest-hit African country in terms of AIDS, not by a long shot. Yet 8-10% of the people are HIV+. Think about what that would mean for you. One in ten of your family, friends and colleagues being ill with a life threatening disease.

Our hosts from Federal Way-based World Vision introduced us to Pamela, who lived in a little courtyard off a garbage-littered dirt street. Her house was an eight-foot square tin shack that housed her and her six children, the oldest being fifteen. Pamela had been bedridden for three months, on HIV/AIDS medication and was hopeful she was improving. She graciously talked to us and allowed us to pray over her. We heard later that she died the same day we landed back in Seattle.

Scott Cummins and I later traveled to northwestern Kenya, across the Rift Valley and through the highland tea country to visit several other Bethany ministry partners. Mbita is a town on the shores of stunningly beautiful Lake Victoria. Here, though, the HIV/AIDS rate is much higher. Why? Partly due to the ancient tradition that if a man dies, his wife must be inherited by his brother. Partly because of the accepted custom of polygamy. Partly because of the practice of fishermen selling their catch only to those women who will have sex with them. And partly because the shameful stigma of AIDS is so remarkably powerful.

How strong is that stigma? On nearby Mfangano Island I shared for 1 ½ days with 30 local pastors. At one point I asked them “What is the biggest challenge in your ministry right now?” I received back a dozen very good answers. But not one of them said a word about HIV/AIDS, which affects over 60% of the population in that area! Only when I pushed hard could we even talk about the disease that caused them to bury people on nearly a daily basis. It’s enough to make you cry.

And yet there were beacons of light. The World Vision staff members in Nairobi were remarkable. Most are native Kenyans, well-educated and articulate people who have unlimited career options in their country. Yet they choose on a daily basis to enter the hopelessness of the slums to love people in the name of Christ, help establish community health clinics and provide vocational training programs.

There are local pastors who find it important to preach the gospel in both words and actions- explaining God’s love in coming to a dark earth in Jesus, while also teaching people how to do organic urban farming that will help them feed their families.

And then there are the countless parents and widows we met and asked “Will you tell us about your family?” The answer was always the same: “We have two children, and now we also have three orphans with us.” The Kenya I saw was not busy building orphanages, but opening up its doors to give children real homes. We have much to learn. The problems are huge and extremely complicated, and demand all of our attention.

Americans tend to think that if we could just export our technology and culture, it would make things better. “Civilization,” we call it. But think about this. In Mbita, we stayed with Lillian and Ezekiel who, like many others I mentioned, are raising three children and have adopted three others orphaned by AIDS. Every evening after the sun went down on Lake Victoria, it was instantly dark. Most homes and roads had no electricity. So as soon as night fell, Lillian lit a couple of kerosene lanterns and some candles and we all sat in the living room. We ate a simple meal, talked, told stories, laughed and played with the children. Neighbors came over to visit. Then we would thank God for the day, pray for the needs we had encountered and go to sleep.

We could change those evenings by getting them iPods, computers, television, rap music and Monday Night Football, but it would be a big step backwards. They have a community connection and sweet interdependence which we have mostly lost, and I fear we will never experience again except in intentional places like the church. The answer is clearly not “give them what we have.”

What do we do with all of this at Bethany? I’m still wrestling. We continue with steps we have taken the last three years: we do something, not waiting for the perfect thing, but do something. We look hard at our own lives. We pursue relationships.

Bethany now has about 150 children sponsored in the Soweto slum through World Vision, and it does make a difference (contact Laurel MacKintosh to get details). I saw the impact that $32 a month can make. I spend more on coffee than that. For me personally, it’s time to take another look at living more simply to free up resources for those who have none.

We saw a Bethany-funded model latrine serving a community, and the boat we helped purchase providing access to the most AIDS-affected islands. We ate lunch with a group of widows in a house that a Bethany team helped to build. But most importantly, we got to know people we have much to learn from. We prayed, looked for God, laughed and cried together.

When the tears ran down my cheeks at Peet’s, I couldn’t help remembering the words of the theologian Jurgen Moltmann: "God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with him." I feel God’s presence in the weeping. I trust that the laughter comes soon.