The bus ride from Kampala, Uganda to Nairobi, Kenya was very long and almost as uneventful – although I remember thinking to myself as I walked from emigration to immigration “Who would have thought I’d be walking across no man’s land between two African countries at 3:30 am?”. Part of the reason for my middle-of-the-night stroll & all-day bus ride was to check in with some of my African colleagues attending a world-wide gathering in Nairobi, Kenya of the Church Mission Society (CMS, which sent out the very first Protestant missionaries to Africa from the UK!).
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Students attend to their lesson. I was pleased to see the high enrollment of girls in the school!
CMS Africa, now an independent sister organization alongside other CMS entities such as CMS Australia and CMS England, organized and hosted this conference. CMS Africa has taken onboard the strategy and tools of Disciple Nations Alliance and, through this conference, shared with their colleagues around the world about their work in strengthening and planting new churches across Africa. To give their guests a first-hand understanding of the impact of CMS Africa’s work, they divided us all up into little groups and packed us off around the city of Nairobi, in order to see what local churches trained by CMS Africa were in their neighbourhoods all over the city. So I happily tagged along with some visitors who traveled to a slum nearby to visit a man named Meshak (named after the biblical character who hung out in really, really warm places with his buddies Shadrach and Abednego).
I thought I’d share with you a little bit about Meshak, picking up his story some 15 years ago with a DNA training and a local church “seed project” and has since grown into a great work of God helping hundreds of very poor kids – and untold future generations – to reach their God-given potential.
“When I went to this training” with DNA, Meshak admits, “it was like I was born again for a second time!” His eyes were opened, and in a whole new and deeper way he understood what God wanted from his church and their ministry in his neighbourhood.
In response, Meshak lead their church to start a school for neighbourhood kids. It was anything but easy, Meshak admits, and “we began without anything. It started in a room in the church, and the pastor and his wife and my 4 friends and I were the teachers and staff.” Three years later, in 2004, the ministry had grown to the point that it was clear they needed to start a secondary school. As the profile of the ministry grew, however, they ran up against the local authorities, who were not very supportive. They had trouble getting all the required papers and approvals from the government to operate a school, and at one point the police came and arrested their head teacher and put him a jail. “We lost a lot of money in the courts, but the same guys who came against us in the end became our friends,” Meshak says. Their new friends started advising them, helping with paperwork, and in general strengthening the school.