They prayed with church elders and villagers. They helped on community building projects. They saw brilliant purple flowers and strange plants, and ate lots of pumpkin and sugar cane. They held live chickens for busy storekeepers and walked dusty roads beside goats, ox carts and chickens. They visited local schools. They each received an African name, and they blogged about it all.
Six youths and three adults spent a month in Kenya this summer as part of a mission trip, including chaperones Al Badgley, Ramona Holmes and Mark Jones and teens Hunter Badgley, Devin Braaten, Abby Jones, Margarette Jones, Jolene Lemieux and Hannah Wing.
“As the trip goes on we would realize how truly welcome and loved Kenyans can make you feel. The land was beautiful as were the people. Kenyan people are beautiful and the girls our age are quite stylish which as you can imagine can be a little intimidating. The land is different from ours, flat with green hills and the trees and plants are all different as well. They are tropical looking and sometimes it is like walking through a Doctor Seuss book,” blogged Abby Jones.
One hour outside of the capital Nairobi in the town of Kangundo, the group stayed on the grounds of a local church where they shared fellowship each evening after the day’s adventures and work. Downtown was one paved road, surrounded by small farms.
The air smelled terrible – a mix of rotting vegetation, burning plastics and open latrines. But the people were wonderfully warm. “We expected to be welcomed, but there was no way we expected the level of hospitality they showed us,” said Hunter Badgley, 16.
Wing, 16, said she was impressed by the Kenyans’ focus on family, friends and religion. “God is not a habit to be made. …God is just at the center of everything they do.”
Wing said the trip made her want to help Alaskans overcome the distractions of living in a rich, western country to focus on God. “We have so much to give them (materially). But you know, they gave us so much in terms of spirituality and how we should be living.”
The youths also endured a month without a shower and learned how it felt to be a racial minority. “At first, it’s very weird,” said Braaten. “Coming from Haines, we stuck out like a sore thumb. Everybody knows you’re not from there. But after a week I was seeing them as white, in a way.”
The youths drank gallons of tea with milk, learned elaborate greeting and hand-shaking rituals, and were impressed by the level of discipline among children. “They go to school from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and when they get home, they help their parents haul water and cook and clean. They always have so much going on. Here, you have so much free time,” said Hunter Badgley.
Badgley said the high point of the trip for him was when about 100 students came forward to rededicate their faith while he was preaching at a school. “It felt like I was the leader, out front, praying over all these people. That was an amazing experience.”
Braaten said the trip made him want to see more of Africa, Asia and the rest of the world. Badgley said the trip made him want to return to Kangundo. “I would love to go back and see everyone. It was like we left family there.”
Margarette Jones, 15, also said the trip spurred her travel bug. Now she wants to take other mission trips and is considering spending her senior year abroad.
“We all wanted to show God to these people…but we got God shown to us,” she said, about the country that is 85 percent Christian.
She said an especially powerful moment on the trip was visiting with a dying elderly woman. “She said, ‘I think God kept me alive to meet you guys.’”
Jones said she liked living in the Kenyan countryside, walking everywhere and eating fresh fruit daily.
Although she said the meals were often repetitive, with the same ingredients cooked the same way.
Lemieux, 17, said her lasting impressions included the farmers there giving them gifts of vegetables and pumpkins, and the spirited dancing and singing at their churches. “Even at schools, they do singing and dancing.”
“They have troubles, but they know Christ. You could really tell that God was moving through them. He was there,” Lemieux said.
The group helped build a mud hut used for a kitchen behind a local church and in the construction of a community center, which involved tying rope to stones to raise them to the second story.
“Efficiency is of less importance to them it seems, but they have their ways and it works for them,” wrote Al Badgley, after a day of manual labor mixing mortar and raising a wall.
The building is called the Alaska House and commemorates the missionaries and the town of Haines. The local youths left more than $6,000 in local donations with the church there.
Their trip included stops in New York City and London. In New York they sailed past the Statue of Liberty on the Staten Island Ferry, got caught up amid the throngs at a Jewish pride parade. and stopped at the Times Square McDonald’s. “There was a constant line flowing. I don’t think the people working there ever got a break,” Braaten said.