No use trying to overcome love....it is impossible, even with God for He is love. So when He binds your heart to a people, a nation, best advice is to relent. Hii ni Kenya yangu.

 

Was it the numerous healings everywhere we travelled, the salvations in the dirt...sometimes as people sought a meager living from hopeful specks of gold....coming instead to the pearl of great price?

 

Or street boys (homeless and hungry), eating lunch with us at a fish cafe that served portions big enough for at least 2 people...watching them greedily eat what might have been their only meal for days; and then willingly and sincerely give their lives to Christ, the bread of life, the One from whom they would never hunger.

 

Or was it the woman on the last night preaching who asked for prayer for her very sick baby, and then 30 minutes later returned to the other side of the small church now asking for salvation because she said she had felt the presence of God as I prayed for Holy Spirit to fill the church and touch their hearts?

 

Or was it the believers in the mountain church that had tried being wazungu (white people) because that is what they had been told by wazungu was acceptable...then Holy Spirit spoke through me during preaching and told them Kuwa Mwafrica ("be African")...He called it their resurrection day and they revived before my very eyes and never will be the same?

 

Or was it the young men whom I travelled and ministered with that took me into their care and confidence as their own flesh and blood?

 

Or was it the hearts of the Wafrica (Africans) who said I wasn't mzungu (white) in my heart, but only had light skin...and when  they made this remark it was the utmost compliment because my heart was completely opened to them. And they had never experienced this with a mzungu before?

 

Or was it my dear and eternal Holy Spirit who changed my heart from discouragement and shock when first arriving to challenge me as He put it, "Dare to Be love"....not just love them or act loving but to BE LOVE. Well since this was impossible without Him, I heartily asked for His assistance in this challenge and within moments my heart transformed from a critical, Western, mzungu outsider to the heart of the Father.

 

I was the "Habari" girl (meaning how are you in Swahili). That became my opening line and introduction to just about everyone I met. As I learned more Swahili, I peppered my conversations with this language that is so sweetly childlike, it intoxicates. The language is as soft-hearted as the people.

 

And yes, there are major problems...infrastructure, economic misappropriations, poverty, disease, disregard for life; but this nation, Kenya of this continent Africa will be redeemed and those called by Him will usher in His vision for a people and a nation He has always treasured.

 

Amani ya Kenya! Nakupenda Kenya milele!

(freedom for Kenya) (I love Kenya forever)