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Fellowship
Baptists in Missouri Help Change Children's Lives in Kenya Chuck Arney still remembers the stories that moved him at the 2005 Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly. They were stories of 13-year-olds raising siblings and grandparents raising grandchildren because AIDS had taken yet another parent’s life in Kenya. They were stories of extreme poverty that deny many children a chance at a better future. "Then [we heard] the beginning of the seeds of hope that child development centers could offer," Arney said. CBF field personnel Melody and Sam Harrell had just launched a new initiative called Change for Children, which supports eight local communities’ dream to build integrated child development centers in Kenya, giving enrolled students a chance for a better future. "Our role is coming alongside these communities to give them the backup they need in these efforts and to help them succeed," said Sam Harrell. Arney, pastor of Cornerstone Church in Lee’s Summit, Mo., returned from the Assembly convinced that CBF of Missouri needed to help. Two years later, CBF of Missouri is partnering with the Harrells and the Kenyan community of Ngerenya, where Missouri funding has built a children’s center in the Ngerenya community. CBF of Missouri is also raising funds to supplement support of the center’s staff and provide a daily meal for the 80 students enrolled. Meanwhile, local residents are developing income-generating projects to support the school. It’s a missions philosophy affirming that Kenyans "have something … to offer to make a change," said Harold Phillips, CBF of Missouri’s coordinator. Phillips was one of five people who traveled in October to Ngerenya, a rural area of 10,000 people near the Indian Ocean. The team planted trees around the center and taught and played with the children. They distributed de-worming medicine, mosquito nets that will prevent malaria for up to four years, school supplies and hygiene kits provided by summer campers at PassportKids, and stuffed teddy bears prepared by children at University Heights Baptist Church in Springfield, Mo. "We made bears with pockets, and kids wrote notes," said Janet Hill, children’s minister at University Heights Church. "We then had a prayer service for the people who would receive the bears." That sort of church involvement is what Phillips hoped this partnership would generate. "We wanted to do more than raise money and give it to the project," he said. "We wanted it to be an experience that had some personal involvement. [Change for Children] helps us to have our eyes opened to a part of the world and some needs and challenges beyond where most of us live." Thus far, Change for Children has also included education and feeding projects, development of a technology center and a preschool, and the construction of wide-span pedestrian bridges that provide safe access to school for children in remote areas. It’s all work toward the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, which focus on improving quality of life among the world’s poor by 2015.
But Kenyans aren’t the only ones changed. "An equally important benefit is the change that occurs in the lives of those who commit to be partners in the initiative, using their God-given gifts, resources and skills and discovering God in the process," Harrell said. That’s one reason CBF of Missouri will continue sending teams of church members to Kenya to teach, play with children, do construction and provide medical services. CBF of Missouri will also provide half-scholarships for Missouri pastors to experience the missions partnership firsthand.
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