Churches Rebuilding a Slum

I am a bishop with the Assemblies of God church in the slum area of Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city. A year ago I attended one of Viva’s Vision Conferences, designed to get pastors involved in mobilising their churches to serve children in their neighbourhoods. In the local language we have a word, mabadkilio, that perfectly describes what’s happened to my ministry: it’s been completely transformed since this conference.

The slum I work in has 250,000 people, two-thirds of whom are under 18. The local government doesn’t provide any services in this slum: people have to leave the city to get health care, and water has to be carried in and sold because there aren’t reliable water pipes. As a result, the poorest often can’t afford to buy water. All the schools are on the outer edge of the slum, because of the high building density in its core. Most families in the slum have four to six people, and the majority of these families are in one-room houses. My church is one of ten operating in the slum.

The first thing my church did after this conference was to join with Viva and the city-wide network in Kisumu, called Arise for Children, and get involved in that community of Christians working on behalf of vulnerable children. I can’t explain how happy I am to be part of the network. All sorts of new opportunities have arisen because of my church’s membership; our church has grown markedly; and the neighbourhood is undergoing changes that are both deep and wide…

Like Mother... Like Daughter?

I’ve been volunteering with Viva in Bolivia for the last few months. (You may have seen my personal blog already.) I live with a local family in the city of Cochabamba, and work in different projects that are members of the Cochabamba network Viva set up with ongoing support from Toybox. So far the network is working out nicely for me because I get a taste of so many different kinds of projects and can really get a feel for how Christians are responding to children at risk in Bolivia.

One of the projects I’ve spent some time working in is a project called Fundacion Emmanuel that cares for the children of women involved in prostitution. This may sound like a very specific ministry, but these children have very specific needs. The project is open three days a week. They’d love to be available to the children every day, but they can’t afford it. They usually have 20 children a day, between six and 14 years old. There’s one boy and 19 girls! Good thing I was there to provide some male companionship.

Warming Up in Paraguay

All this week dozens of vulnerable children in Paraguay are having the time of their life, while at the same time building life-saving relationships with projects and churches that want to help them … thanks to the power of working together! We’re calling it “Colonia de Vacaciones”, or Vacation Camp.

It all started last Christmas when Red Viva Paraguay (‘Red’ means ‘network’ in Spanish) threw Viva Christmas Parties for almost 1,500 children in several central neighbourhoods of Asuncion, Paraguay’s capital city. These Christmas Parties are a great way to introduce kids to projects that want to help them, and for projects in our Paraguay network to get used to working together. Throwing Christmas Parties for hundreds of vulnerable kids takes a lot of teamwork!

Prayer at Work

God has been hearing from us a lot these past few days. Viva’s World Weekend of Prayer for children at risk was a huge success, with myriad prayer events going on around the world. We’re still waiting for news from many of these events, since it’s not uncommon for the people organising them to have no access to the internet, or even to electricity! But keep an eye on our website, since they’ll be coming through over the next couple weeks.

(Also, if you organised an event, please let us know how it went and what the results were on our feedback form!)

But for now, here are some of the things that went on during the World Weekend of Prayer that people have already told us about...

Ready, Set, PRAY!

As you may have heard, this weekend is our World Weekend of Prayer for children at risk. Around the world millions of people – the majority of them children! – will be involved in prayer events in churches, hospitals, orphanages, city streets and around breakfast tables.

But you don’t need to hold a special event to pray - if you’ve got a minute you could even just spend 60 seconds devoting prayer to children at risk. If the same numbers as last year are involved, then that would mean more than two million people taking a minute to pray – which amounts to almost 4 years’ worth of prayer for children over one weekend! Very exciting. So let’s look at what we can pray about...