Update 3

Hello! We have spent our day in Nairobi. Most of us on the team have not spent any time in Nairobi before today, and it was a very memorable experience. We went into Kibera which is the largest slum in Africa and the second largest in the world. The conditions were indescribable by words, and I don't know if the pictures we took will do them justice once we get home. Yet despite the conditions and the extreme poverty the people in Kibera have hope. 

We went to the WEEP Centre which is a home for women who are HIV positive. The women came to WEEP under the most desperate circumstances to find food, medicine, and hope. Women diagnosed with AIDS are stigmatized and cast out from their society; their husbands abandon them and they are forced to care for themselves and their children on their own. The women are treated as though it is their fault that they have contracted the disease, despite the statistics of rape - 1 out of every 4 women has been raped. In the WEEP Center, Mama Gladys gives women with AIDS and their children a safe place to rehabilitate. They are provided with food, a shelter, and the medicines that they need to survive. 

There are currently 12 women and their children in the WEEP Center. They are precious people! They love God and are not ashamed to tell you so. They will even tell you how blessed they are. 

Blessed. It sure gave our team pause to be around women who are seriously ill and living in deplorable conditions and who still consider themselves blessed. They all know that they are children of God, and that He cares for them and will not leave them. How true they are to consider themselves blessed.

We danced with the women and laughed until we cried! We sang with them and smiled until our cheeks hurt. And we prayed with the women. We prayed that the Lord would continue to bless them with health and the necessities needed for them and their children to survive. We prayed that God will continue to use the WEEP Centre as a place of rehabilitation for women in Kibera who have no other option. We asked for blessings upon Mama Gladys - what a remarkable women who has allowed her heart to be so stretched by God that she devotes herself day and night to the women who need her. And we prayed that we would never forget our experience today with these WEEP women; that our hearts would break for what breaks God's heart.

They were all so welcoming and excited to have visitors. They told us that "If our community sees white people choosing to come visit us, then that has a huge impact on how others in Kibera see us." We do hope that God will open the hearts and minds of those who stigmatize these women. They are surely missing out if they don't.

Tomorrow we head to Ngaamba. Our hearts may surely burst by the end of this week.

Until the next update,

Amber