A Trip to Kibera Slums with HEART

Esther through God’s Looking Glass

Gentle hands guide a pain-wracked body through the glass where legs, strengthened by nutrition, medication and God’s mercy bear a healthy body, a joyful heart and a smiling face.  Reconciled and redeemed by Christ, she is now a new creature; the old left behind & the new ahead of her.  Healed of past God concepts & renewed by God’s love, she has been crucified in Christ & able to embrace the abiding of the Lord.  She believes there is a call on her life and carries the sense of confident expectation that solid certainty brings. Hope for her child and the coming generation bring a peace to her countenance.  I sat in awe of the freedom filling the room emanating from the promise of life.

Each testimony told of the hardships, the fear and ensuing denial that come from the sentence of an HIV positive diagnosis.  Short and Sweet.  It was no longer their reality.  They were saved by the blood of the Lamb and the earthly angels God had put in their path.  Each woman realized the potential life carried for them.   Excitedly they showed us how to make candles; took us to their shop where they sold their crafts-purses, school uniforms, mosquito nets, aprons, dresses, blouses and men’s shirts they tailored; the beaded, be-jeweled and polished stoned jewelry; handcrafted blankets and many other wonderful gifts made by hands that once shook with illness. 

Now steady.

Now being held out to others in need. 

With uncommon compassion, the kind that can only come from one who has taken the journey before you, they visit other women languishing on the brink of death and offer them the same hope of glory.  We were blessed with the visual representation of “raham” or the “tender love of a mother for her child; to love from the womb”.  With no regard to time or space they pray, feed and help hold a bottle of oral re-hydration to dry lips. 

Quietly, one woman who understands the need for human contact will sit and hold a hand with full knowledge that soon this woman too will be free of the enemy’s plan. 

Through the help of Mom Gladys’s, Mary, Evelyn and others, each woman is given a chance to make a life for themselves.  We greeted graduates of the program walking the streets & purchasing food for the evening meal they will prepare for their family, by themselves, in their own home.   These women now give back to the program.  Self-sufficient, proud, shining with the light of He who has become their rock and strong tower.

Independent of handouts.

Dependent on God.