Karibu Kenya!

Jambo!  My name is Janelle Linder and I will be a senior in the fall at Malone University where I am the captain of the women’s tennis team and sing in the University Chorale. I am majoring in Public Relations and have a minor in Missions and Cross Cultural Ministries. With that, I really hope to do some kind of non-profit work and my big dream is to create my own non-profit for those in need in third world countries.

I just returned from Kenya, Africa, one of God’s most beautiful countries I would argue. I, along with eight other female students and two male professors, traveled around Kenya for just short of three weeks for a service learning trip. Although we did not build anything or paint any walls we did serve the people in Maai Mahiu, a truck stop town with women who prostitute themselves in order to put food on the table and pay for their children’s school fees, in Kisumu at the Friends Theological Studies College, and in our hometown of Kijabe where we got to love on the local beautiful children.

The things that my eyes saw in Kenya were overwhelming. The poverty was nothing like I have ever seen before. The rich and poor people live right next to each other. My heart was touched by the younger children who cared for their younger siblings and provided for them while their parent(s) were trying to find work. The community that they have is incredible; everyone cares for everyone else and they watch out for each other.

In the upcoming months I will continue to process the things that I have seen and try to figure out why God allowed me to see/feel/hear/taste/touch such things in Kenya. God is so infinitely good and I am so blessed to have had the opportunity to love and be loved during my stay at my “home away from home”.

“It may take place in a foreign land or it may take place in your backyard, but I believe that we were each created to change the world for someone. To serve someone. To love someone the way Christ first loved us, to spread His light. This is the dream, and it is possible.”
- Katie J. Davis, Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption

Hallelujah I will never be the same,
Janelle