As Executive Director for eduKenya, I am constantly looking for insights to help share our story more effectively. These are revealed while engaging in team meetings, or speaking one-on-one with different staff or donor partners. There are moments when I wish I could be a fly on the wall and just listen,  or write everything down, but I’m so engaged in conversation, or listening to compelling dialogue that I don’t write anything down.  

Often, the moments that I remember and write down are those when someone else sees something that I do not.  I say a prayer each morning asking that God would give me His Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13) and fill me with His wisdom (James 1:5). My hope is that through that provision I would have the ability to see God move. 

I fly back and forth to Kenya a few times a year, along with some of our US Board members, and on each flight we receive small bags filled with a toothbrush, eye mask, ear plugs and lotion. After a while, I saw little value in those bags because I had received so many and I didn’t have a use for them.  So, we asked some of the leadership in Kenya if anyone at the school could use them.  They said they could, so we handed them over and that was that. The last time that happened was this past December when we were in Kenya for graduation. Fast-forward to a few weeks ago in Mathare.

Stella, our Kenya Director of Development, had procured donations of fruits and vegetables from one of the local grocers in the upscale area of Nairobi. She was delivering the items to our school in Mathare for distribution to some of our most vulnerable families. Upon entering the school, she was met by a joyful Mama Rashid – one of our cooks and the mother of one of the Form 4 (Senior) students. Mama Rashid asked Stella if she noticed anything, and Stella couldn’t figure out what she was hinting at. She asked if the mask she was wearing was one we had made, but Mama Rashid told her it was not one we had made in our Community Sustainability Department.  She told Stella she was able to take the eye mask that had come in the flight bag she was given and she made adjustments to turn it into a high functioning mask for her mouth and nose.  She told Stella, “You see, God was providing for us before we even knew we needed it.”  Mama Rashid had eyes to see God’s provision. She saw the beautiful mystery of how God works.

That is a small taste of what God continues to do as we see discouraging headlines, high unemployment, new deaths added to a growing total, and political jargon and positioning at a nauseating level. I want eyes like Mama Rashid’s that see God’s provision, where all I saw was something I didn’t want or need. In these times where it is so easy to become frustrated, to pass judgement on others and to be discouraged, let’s ask God to give us His Spirit and His wisdom that it would allow us to see what He’s been doing way before we even realized we needed it. 

Adam