PAOC GlobalEd

Simon Kathuga ministers in Mathare Valley, Nairobi, Kenya. It’s not a pleasant place but home to over ½ million people. The stench of the sewers, meandering through the slippery dingy alleyways between tin-walled hovels, makes walking uncomfortable and challenging. How can people live here?

However it is here that evangelist and passionate Christ-follower Simon Kathuga choses to work among the poorest of people in his country. Every week he walks these alleyways, enables over 300 children to attend school and be fed, passionately preaches to give them hope, and sacrificially gives of his time to serve His master. I’m humbled in the face of such dedication!

I spent a sobering day in the slums of Mathare Valley in Nairobi, Kenya. I was there with three of my ministerial colleagues from Canada, and introduced to the sounds, smells and squalor of slum life. One half a million (500,000) people live here. Absence of basic amenities of life like water, sewer, electricity, medical care or education, make their plight almost unbelievable. Yet they exist, denied normal community structures, threatened by unruly thugs, and in a sense voiceless against the injustices meted out to them. However there are caring people here, reaching out to the needy in the name of Christ. I admire their courage and care!

Lamumba Institute, built to train communist leaders back in the 1960s, is today a Christian University, in Nairobi Kenya, established to train hundreds of leaders for the church across the continent of Africa. I had the privilege to be with three Canadian church leaders in February, to listen to the voices of the university leaders to elucidate to us the state of the church in Africa today. It is a beautiful 23 acre site, very comfortable to accommodate a capacity of 1000 students.

2000 refugees sought safety on the church compound. As I listened to the pastor’s story I found it difficult to comprehend what it must have been like. I was in Soroti, Uganda, on the very compound where this happened just 6 years previously. Then I was told that they were here for over 2 years. As I listened to the story I realized this was truly a Christian community fulfilling the mandate of Christ, loving, caring and sharing.