reactkenya.com Blog

June 2010

We are pleased and excited to announce that a long-coming page to our web-site has just been added! It’s called “Faces” and connects you with many of the children sponsored at either the Deaf School or the Handicapped School. Our hats are tipped to our good friends at Transformed International again for their incredible acts of service as they put all this together on a volunteer basis.

All the children sponsored are not represented here and so we decided not to assign individual children to individual sponsors for this year…it would leave too many left out. Instead, we are asking you to click on the names shown (keep clicking!) to download a single page complete with a name, picture, and some information to get you better acquainted with the faces behind the work. Print and post the page in a well-travelled location of oyur home or office so that you can remember to pray for the children at a grass roots level.

We are ever mindful of your continued support and encouragement in this work. Without your partnership, we could not “Reach African Children Together”. On behalf of the children, we say “asante”!

Johabeto Update, April 2010

Well, well, well…Here is a piece of exciting news for those of you following our Johabeto project. This coming summer, for all of July and August, there are 4 teams of volunteers travelling to Kenya to construct a new home that will be directed by our good friend Martin and Ruth Shikuku. As you can see from the pictures the well on the new property is being constructed and will be ready for the teams to use during the construction. It will be 30 feet deep when all is done with plenty of water starting at only 15 feet deep. Thanks to the Rotary Club of Barrie for funding this work. They have sponsored various projects for us this year and for this we are very grateful.

We are also incredibly thankful for our American friends that have raised the funds for both the parcel of land for this new home as well as the materials. Wow! They are arranging the teams for 2 weeks each to go and physically construct this new home. All of July and August are booked for this and teams will be hosted by our wonderful friends at Transformed International in beautiful Kitale, Kenya! For anyone interested, there may still be room to join a team.

The talented Jim Weick from south of the border has also constructed a model of the proposed home. You can check this out below.

We are pleased at how progress is being made on this project. Much preliminary work is being accomplished as the property has been fenced, the rear of the land has been planted with maize and a storage shed has been constructed for use by the teams coming this summer.

Thanks to all that are making these projects a success!

March 2010 Update

“We must not always look for extraordinary things to do, but we must become extraordinary in ordinary things.”

This past January, I (Michael) had the bitter-sweet joy of celebrating my 40th birthday and found myself at a unique place in life. It seems that middle-age crept up on me as I both looked back in reflection as well as forward in anticipation. About the same time I found myself both looking back with thankfulness at 2009 as well as ahead with excitement to 2010 and our partnership with you in Kenya. We are excited and thankful as we look ahead to this year with some unique projects that clearly have the fingerprints of God on them.

Another school year has begun in Kenya. It is because you have sacrificed that handicapped children are attending school in a country where most are seen as second class citizens and family members. This year, we were able to sponsor all the children we have previously sponsored as well as increase those numbers because of your partnership. For 2010, we have 79 deaf children sponsored and 42 physically/mentally challenged children sponsored in 2 separate schools in a town called Webuye, Kenya. This is in addition to the 2 homes that we are helping support on a monthly basis. This is more than we have ever sponsored in previous years thanks to you!

We are also anticipating a unique building project for 2010 that will provide proper housing for the children of the Shikuku home. ReACT has for many years believed in the vision of Martin and Ruth Shikuku and have come behind them in two ways. The first is to help sponsor some of the extra 40 children they have taken into their home and second to provide a means for them to run a family business. In January 2009, Manon and I along with our daughter Elia traveled back to Kenya to see this work and we were struck by the poor housing and living conditions they had. Despite the fact that we have never had a vision to undertake the work of building and raising funds for building projects, God has proven faithful in bringing alongside Martin and Ruth a wonderful family from New York that we had never met (up until last summer) to undertake all of this. Having grown up in a missionary family, Bill and Ron Pollock as well as their siblings are quite familiar with Kenya and have previously undertaken 15 similar building projects. They have taken the initiative to raise the funds and even arrange the teams to travel to Kenya to build a new home for Martin and Ruth! In the last two months, the land has been purchased and most of the funds for the building have been donated. For all of July and August of this year, teams of 15-20 will be traveling to Kenya from the United States to participate in this building project. Manon and I are in awe of a God that does so much more than we ever dreamed of as we link arms with so many other talented and gifted people and ministries!

We have always recognized that one of our weaknesses has been keeping people like you informed and in touch with the children you are sponsoring. Reporting on over 100 children with friends that volunteer their time, talent and treasure has been an increasingly large task. We are pleased to report that our good friend Daniel at Transformed International is working on changing that for us! This may take some time and we hesitate to make any promises, but we hope to be able to provide a face, a name and a report on the specifics on each child so that you can make a personal connection with them. Daniel has a fill-time Kenyan social worker named Anne that has done an assessment of each child and visits each one on a regular basis. From her work we hope to be able to pass more information onto you so that you can pray and see the fruit of your investment. We thank you for your patience in this as we ourselves learn better how to bridge these two worlds of ours.

We are pleased to say that 100% of your funds go directly to the sponsorship of these children with nothing used for any overhead. We have several people along the way that volunteer their time, talent and treasure to ensure that these kids are properly cared for. We are always thankful for the team at Transformed International who monitor monthly if not weekly the various projects that ReACT has undertaken. Without Daniel, Anne, Meredith and Sean, none of what we do would be possible. As well, our Kenyan friends like Martin and Ruth Shikuku play a vital role in locating and caring for the handicapped children at a grassroots level. Jim at the Assists Projects here in Canada works hard to produce the charitable slips that we all look for around this time of year. (We hope you have received your by now!) We have found that partnering with other gifted and talented people like these as well as friends like you is far more effective than we could ever be on our own. Each one is the “Together” in ReACT.

Thank you to each of you for being “extraordinary at ordinary things”! The children of Kenya say “Asante!”

Michael and Manon Christensen

Relational Tithe

An interesting link to make you think…

Faith Today

Last winter, our friend Katherine and her 2 children children accompanied us to Kenya for 2 weeks. The trip went well and this month in Faith Today magazine, they featured an article on Scott and Kat’s desire to include their children as volunteers. Copy and paste this address to check it out… http://digital.faithtoday.ca/faithtoday/20091112/#pg30

Connexus

Wow! We need to say a really big “thanks” to our friends at Connexus Community Church here in Barrie. This past Sunday, the leadership team led by Carey Nieuwhof, helped promote the work of ReACT in a wonderfully effective way. Carey’s vision always expands outside the walls of the church and this week, his encouragement to the church was to make Christmas a giving event both locally and globally. (You can view his presentation below.) We are privileged to have friends and partners like all of you! Thank you!

Hole in the Wall

Yesterday, we spent the day in Toronto. This city seems to have everything an urban hub should have (except lack of traffic and a good hockey team!). We visited a friend’s studio, had lunch with family 2 blocks from there, and had a date at the end of it all. Both Manon and I were both born in TO and, all things considered, we love this city.

Nehemiah was a wine taster that worked for the Babylonian king well over 2000 years ago. He too felt much the same when it came to his home town of Jerusalem. For him, knowing his city was to know it only with broken down walls as the city sat vulnerable like this for over 140 years. After 140 years, it just blended in.

I was discussing various global issues with a friend about a week ago. We discussed the famine in Ethiopia in 1984 where over 1,000,000 people died from starvation. The conversation went from there to the 800,000 that were killed in the genocide of Rwanda. In Romania in the mid 90’s, there were apparently over 4 million abortions in a population of 20 million. At the end of it all, we were both left feeling pretty small in the grand scheme of things. Global tragedies seem to either overwhelm me and make me feel insignificant or, as too often is the case, I am simply indifferent towards them.

I imagine that the residents of Nehemiah’s home town also felt either overwhelmed or indifferent towards the broken down walls that surrounded their city. What else prevented them from doing something about it in years that it needed repair? There were generations that were born and who died and all they knew were the walls with holes. Useless defenses.

For me, the fight is either with indifference or the lie of insignificance.

There is little hope in the natural for an indifferent heart.

The overwhelmed heart need only look a little closer at Nehemiah’s story and see the Hand at work there. We find that when a seemingly insignificant amount of hope and action is blended together with other like-minded individuals, and the power of the Spirit, change begins to happen.

The people in this story simply worked on the broken section in front of them with a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other. They didn’t worry about all the other holes. The thought of one person fixing the entire wall themselves would have paralized them. They put their best efforts in on the task at hand and, as each one did that, history was made in record time.

But not without opposition.

Change always attracts criticism and fray.

Famine in Ethiopia. Tsunami’s in Asia. Homelessness in Toronto. Global food shortages. Political prisoners of war. Single moms struggling on in loneliness. The list goes on. Its too much on our own.

What part of the wall are you working on with the help of a strong Hand?

With the sword and trowel you’ve been given, change can happen as you join with others around the vision God had given you. As God asked Moses, “Whats that in your hand?”, have a look and see what ‘insignificant’ thing you have that He might just use.

With our time, talent and treasure, we are to “live creatively” as Eugene Peterson writes in Galatians 6 of the Message…

“Live creatively, friends! Each of you must make a careful assessment of who you are and the work you’ve been called to and then sink yourselves into that…each of you must do the creative best you can do with your own life.”

Creativity, a trowel and the Spirit.

Whats that in your hand?

The Pain of Equality

“Here’s the bad news. From charity to justice, the good news is yet to come. There is much more to do. There is a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response. And finally, it’s not about charity after all, is it? It’s about justice.

It’s annoying, but justice and equality are mates, aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.”

Bono’s speech to the National Prayer Breakfast
February 2nd, 2006

Global Village

My parents were married on July 13th, 1968. As I stood looking at their wedding pictures a number of years ago, I noticed something obvious that I had missed up until then.

“Dad, why was your family not at the wedding?”

My parents were both born and raised in Denmark although they had met and married in Toronto. My mother’s family immigrated when she was only eleven years old while my father came years later on his own. His response to my question is something I have pondered much since then.

“You don’t realize that back then you didn’t just jump on an airplane to go for a wedding even if it was your son or brother’s wedding.”

That’s not such a remarkable response, is it?

Think again.

In all the history of the world, in the history of all mankind, we are the first generation that has the privilege travel and communication on such an enormous scale. We are the first ones capable of bringing unprecedented influence and change globally.

My grandparents were both born in the late 1800’s and have since made the journey to another City. Back then, news of famine or war or tsunami was heard of with much delay. It would have come to them perhaps as half-rumor and half-truth. Information they received from far away could not be trusted much less acted on given their lack of resources and poor timing.

In the 1960’s, a man named Marshall McLuhan, a University of Toronto professor, coined the phrase “global village”. He envisioned a time when the world would change and become smaller through the advance of communications and technology.

Today, you and I live in that world.

Today we watch the world’s events unfold from the comfort of our couches as we see it “live on CNN”. Tsunami’s in Asia. Famine in Africa. We see children dying due to simple lack of simple medication and the basic “rights” of food and water. Like Lazarus placed at the gate of the rich man, hoping to stir compassion, we have the needy from around the world placed at our gate as we turn on the TV or read Yahoo news or flip through radio stations. We cannot escape Lazarus these days. These things are no longer half-rumor and half-truth as they were a generation ago. We are the first to have the tremendous privilege to not just watch it “live”, but more importantly to act on it and make an impact across the globe.

Privilege is a two-edged sword, however, since with it comes a tremendous responsibility.

I don’t believe that any generation prior to this present one will be held globally responsible like ours. “When much is given, much wil be required.”

Think of all we can do to make a difference! We have the ability to invest our time, talent and treasure in a way that no previous generation has ever been able to. We have been given incredibly much here in the West.

But it has not been given to be used exclusively for ourselves.

Thousands of years ago, God gave a promise to three consecutive generations, first to Abraham, and then Issac and Jacob. “I will bless you so that you will be a blessing to the nations.” (Gen.12) Blessing has been given to us for a purpose. That purpose is not to live the most comfortable life possible but rather to use what we have been given to be agents of change both locally as well as globally. Today, that promise still stands. We are designed to be channels and not reservoirs of all God has given to us.

We are living our lives in a new world. Unlike Columbus, many of us are not even aware of this new land we walk in. We have within our grasp, tools that no other generation in the history of mankind has ever had. We can and must be agents of change not just in our local communities, but especially now on a global scale as we pray and dream together with our Maker.

What is He asking you to do in this New World?

City of Blinding Lights

“A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”

We are all a part of a city whether we know it or not. We are all building something whether we are conscious of it or not. Its not that what we are building should be visible, but that it cannot be helped but be visible. What comes to mind when someone mentions “Las Vegas” or “Rome”? Perhaps you have never visited, but you know of these places and their reputations. Africa is known as “the Dark Continent”. A place of poverty, corruption and suffering. It is here that we pray that the Light of another City shines brightly, making a noticable difference. A difference that is visible on an personal level but perhaps not globally for generations to come. But always visible. Never hidden.

Like a city on a hill, our first-ever blog is posted for all to see. We are pleased that you are taking the time to pay a visit to our updated website. Our hope in revising this site is that we can better keep our friends and sponsors updated on progress and change by giving updates and news as it happens.

Many of us have seen the daily struggles of third-world orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) as we casually flick through the TV channels, but too few have realised the hidden riches that these children also possess. Kid sisters like Faith and Eunice are healing wonderfully (as seen above) in the Juma home after their parents were violently killed in the clashes of 2008. Deaf twins like Allan and Brian whose contageous smile and sheer delight at the prospect of an education, despite their dark history, would make all of us feel blessed. We want these lives to be like well-lit cities instead of the dark shanties they once were. These stories should be told with lots of noise and neon lights.

And so we welcome you to pay us a visit. Come into this place and explore it’s streets. Find a corner that you can call home either here with us or with another community and become a part of the larger city even as we too are finding our place as a part of the larger city. In 2009, our partners rose to the occasion and sponsored 102 children through our various projects and as we look already to 2010, the needs are overwhelming. Already we have had 134 potential new physically and mentally-challenged students come knocking as they look for a place to settle in this corner of town for the next school year. There is room for growth. There is still much to be done.

Join us in our journey as we all look and march to a much larger, brighter City.