Day 4 – Mambu Badu (The best is yet to come!)

As we entered our last day of planning with our Daystar partners, we conducted our meetings today at Daystar’s beautiful Athi River Campus.  Besides our discussions, two highlights of the day were quality time spent validating our work with community development students and an energetic and highly entertaining performance by Afrizo,  Daystar’s premier singing group who many of you  heard and some of you hosted when they visited our church last year.  They send their good wishes to all those they enjoyed in Charleston.

After dividing up and joining student small group Bible studies, we also had the opportunity to meet with community development students from Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Burundi.  To say we were impressed with their passion, their visions and dreams for effecting positive change in their countries and communities, and their in-depth knowledge of how to accomplish community development work would be a gross understatement.  It is hard to describe where they come from, how hard they have worked, and how much they want to make a difference in the lives of their fellow countrymen and women.  Prior to meeting with the students, we thought we had accomplished the task of developing the detail of how a significant community development project would be selected, supported, and positioned to achieve goals.  After talking with them and hearing their support and enthusiasm for this Empower to Lead initiative and validating that these indeed were the types of students that with appropriate support after graduation could make a sustainable difference in rural or marginalized communities throughout Africa, we felt comfortable that what we had come to Africa to accomplish was indeed significant work.

Four days ago we came to Daystar University in Nairobi and began our day with the prayer, “Oh God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden,  through perils unknown.  Give us the faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us through Jesus Christ our Lord.” At the end of this first chapter of our work at Daystar, we finalize our time working not with unknown Daystar faculty but with trusted, respected, Christian colleagues.  We do not feel like our relationship is ending, but just beginning.  As we titled this blog, Mambu Badu – the best is yet to come.

The third highlight I failed to mention earlier was seeing our first zebras, Thomson gazelles, and wildebeasts grazing in the countryside on our drive to the Athi River campus.  To say we were “excited kids” would be appropriate.

Paula Greer