Dallas church teams with Buckner to help AIDS orphans in Kenya

Posted: 5/11/07

Dallas church teams with Buckner
to help AIDS orphans in Kenya

By Mark Wingfield

Wilshire Baptist Church

USIA, Kenya—Sixty Kenyan 4- and 5-year-olds started school for the first time recently, thanks to the missions effort of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas and Buckner International.

Working with Buckner and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Wilshire provided funds for construction of a child development center in Busia, Kenya. The building now is open, and its two classrooms are being used to teach preschoolers—something not previously available in this area, where the opportunity to go to school begins later and often is dependent on a family’s ability to provide items such as a school desk. The Wilshire child development center comes equipped with its own desks for young students to use.

Children in Buckner care in Busia, Kenya, participate in a child development center.

Adjacent to the center is a kitchen, where lunch is prepared each day for the preschoolers. A medical clinic soon will be built on the same site, thanks to the donation of a Wilshire family.

Through KidsHeart Africa, Wilshire is sponsoring another 50 school-age orphans in the care of Buckner International. KidsHeart is a strategic initiative originating with Buckner and endorsed by CBF for church partnership. Wilshire was the first individual church to take on a child development center project through KidsHeart.

A five-member team from Wilshire traveled to Busia in late April, the third journey for Wilshire to this site. Through this trip, the Wilshire volunteers checked on the children in Buckner care and provided additional medical care, spiritual nurture and personal attention.

“The children had grown and overall looked healthier than last August when we were there,” said Linda Garner, Wilshire’s parish nurse and a professor of nursing at Baylor University’s School of Nursing. “Sammy was walking and running on a leg with no open ulcer like he had then.”

Previous Wilshire teams treated a variety of illness, such as Sammy’s skin ulcer, that would be commonly treated in the United States but for which medical care often is not available in Kenya.

Linda Garner, parish nurse at Wilshire Baptist Church and a professor at Baylor School of Nursing, examines a child in the Buckner program at Busia, Kenya. Many of the illnesses treated in Kenya would be easily prevented in the United States but often go untreated there due to lack of medicine and medical personnel.

Nancy Stretch, a nurse practitioner in Garland, and Garner examined 25 of the children for illness-related issues. “We were able to provide medicines for current problems as well as leave some for use in the future,” Garner said. “We also saw a few of the foster parents and a few folks from the community.”

They also were reminded how simple treatments make life-changing differences.

“I talked with one of the pastors of the church who walked to the camp to get medicine for his mother who had fallen and ‘dislocated’ her hip,” Garner said. “I couldn’t determine whether it was dislocated or broken. In either case, she could not walk and was having a lot of pain. He said the medicine we had given her in August helped her arthritis and asked if he could take her some more. I gave him the biggest bottle of Ibuprofen I could find.”

Mollie Menton also returned to Busia for a second visit on this trip.

“It felt as if I had never left,” she said. “It felt like home.”

Menton, a Baylor University graduate who now works for the Wilkinson Center in Dallas, served as trip leader and coordinated a Vacation Bible School for the Buckner children.

“We took puppets, which were a huge hit with the kids,” she explained. “Just imagine a puppet show that needs to be translated into Swahili.”

Near the child development center, Texas Baptists recently installed a water well that has brought hope to the community.

“What an amazing sight,” Menton exclaimed. “To talk with a lady who used to walk two hours to get water and now has to walk only 10 minutes is incredible. Also, the children drinking from the well just took my breath away.”

Garner, too, was moved by visiting the well.

“On the way back from the well, I met two women going to draw water with their huge yellow bucket. They stopped to chat and tell me how wonderful it is to have clean water for the first time. Previously, their water was dirty or ‘thick,’ and now they have clean water to use. The woman who was talking was so excited to be able to take clean water home to her family. She reminded me of the Samaritan woman described in the Bible who found the living water.”

Wilshire has made a multi-year commitment to Busia through KidsHeart Africa. By maintaining ties with the same location and people, a much greater impact results, said Minister of Missions Jason Coker.

“The most profound experience I’ve had in this partnership is seeing the change in the orphans. When I went to Busia for the first time in May and met the foster children, they all seemed dazed and confused—almost as if they were stunned and had no feeling. In December when I returned, it was like I met different children. They laughed and played. Their eyes contained hope.

“In the time span from May to December, these children were given a hope that fed their hungry bellies, clothed their naked bodies and sheltered their homeless beings. They were different kids. They were alive for the first time in a long time.”