Kenya Global Project Background

For those of you I haven't had a chance to talk to yet, or for those who have escaped my endless amount of stories, I wanted to share a quick overview of my seven weeks in Kenya, the team that I joined, and what exactly we did. Hopefully this will clear up any confusion about they type of trip I was on.

At the beginning of June, I joined a group of 33 college students from the United States and Kenya. We were linked together by a christian group called InterVarsity here in the U.S., and FOCUS in Kenya. For those of you not familiar with InterVarsity (IV), it is a college ministry similar to Campus Crusade or Young Life. This ministry has trips called "Global Projects", where students travel all over the world to live amongst the people there, learn what God is doing in another part of the world, and experience outreach. The trips range anywhere from South America, to India or China, and to Kenya. The goal of this trip was to have a "missions training" experience and to be learners of the Kenyan culture and the Kenyan church. Our trip was led by Brian and Debbie Lee. They have led this global project for over 13 years, and have tremendous experience in college ministry. The Global Project itself has been around for 33 years.

The first part of our trip was a week of orientation in Ngong, which is right outside of Nairobi. After this week, my team split up into pairs for a 3 week period called our "ministry assignments". Our team spread out all over the country to work in orphanages, to do preaching and evangelism with local pastors, or to teach in schools. Rather then doing our own ministry during this time, we were stepping alongside of Kenyan pastors who were already working in the area. We also got the privilege of being able to live in a Kenyan home with our host pastor.

After the 3 week period, we joined back together in Kassarani, another suburb outside of Nairobi, for a week of exposure and training to other ministries in Kenya. Then, we traveled as a group to Mombasa ( on the Eastern coast of Africa) for a week of debriefing.

One big difference with this kind of trip was that we were not going to Kenya to "do" anything. We were instead going to "learn". Rather then a service oriented trip, this global project was geared toward training.