A team from Fortville Christian Church helps hand out food bags in the Dominican Republic in early October.
Photo provided
“I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.”
— 2 John 12
When the mission team returned to Africa, some of the older children were gone from the school. Of those who remained, some looked so much more grown up.
It had been three years.
Yet when a team from Outlook Christian Church traveled to Kenya in March, there was — eventually — that sense of getting reacquainted, of friendships picking up where they’d left off.
“Within a day or two it was like we’d never left,” Mike Wilkins said.
2022 was the year when some Hancock County churches were able to once again have face-to-face interaction with their ministry partners overseas.
These relationships are a point of focus in many congregations. In addition to the ways area churches serve the local community (some of which were highlighted in a Dec. 17 story about churches’ Christmas benevolence), area churches have some presence and/or partnership in at least 25 countries outside the United States.
That ranges from a local person who felt called to go to another country and serve full-time, to a church building a relationship with a church or organization in another country. Sometimes the support is delivered via a larger church denomination or a ministry organization. Several local churches, for example, support World Renewal based in Greenfield. Also, some Christian churches support International Disaster Emergency Service in Noblesville.
After two previous Kenya trips were canceled amid COVID-19, a team from the church in McCordsville went to a school in Nairobi where it’s been visiting for about 10 years. Wilkins, part of the Outlook family and also president of Renewal Neighborhood Ministry, said it was challenging to stay up-to-date on various countries’ protocols — including countries along the travel route where the group would have an extended layover in an airport — but it was meaningful to be able to take a team there again.
Outlook partners with Missions of Hope International (MOHI). Some Outlook members sponsor children in the area, and those who go on the trip can meet the child(ren) they sponsor.
Years ago, MOHI started a school in the Mathare Valley, amid one of the world’s largeset slums, stretching through the middle of Nairobi. The first MOHI school started with about 50 students; now, 20,000 students are part of such schools throughout the slum and elsewhere in Kenya.
When Outlook teams visit, they offer a Vacation Bible School for the children and do community service projects. One year they helped cut a hole in slum shelter roofs and install a plastic cover, so dwellings could have some natural light. Another service project might be spraying for bed bugs.
Wilkins said it’s eye-opening to see both the overwhelming poverty and the Kenyans’ faith.
“The Kenyan believers are so dependent on their faith in their day-to-day life,” he said. “They are so dependent on God and on their relationship with God that they have this spiritual gift that we don’t have … We realize how far we still have to go.”
Hancock County churches support ministry in at least 10 countries in Africa.
Several from Brookville Road Community Church in New Palestine also went to Kenya this year, traveling with Mike and Martha Henderson, who lead the ministry Heart of Africa. One aspect of the work there is a widows ministry that helps women start businesses, providing a sewing machine or livestock along with a micro-loan of $100.
“We went to encourage the widows ministry that … helps mentor and encourage them to start a small business selling the items that come from their resource (dresses, milk or eggs),” associate pastor Andy Flink wrote in an email. “This gives the ladies an income and also a sense of purpose and community. There are currently 600 widows in the program, and we are working to purchase these resource items for all of them.”
During the trip, the group also met with ministry leaders working to get young men off the streets of Nairobi and into job training, as well as meeting with Kenyan church leaders.
Closer to home, a team from Fortville Christian Church traveled to the Dominican Republic in late September and early October, in a trip planned by Go Ministries. For years, the church has partnered with a Dominican pastor, Gregorio Thomas.
While there, team members painted homes, poured cement floors by hand, organized a children’s afternoon of games and fellowship, and offered a women’s craft night. They also passed out food bags and had a medical clinic day in the community.
“It was such a blessing to be with these wonderful people!” wrote group member Brenda Ayers.
