Posted: 12/19/03
| American and African youth embrace camp with enthusiasm on the first day of meeting. |
In Africa, youth witness a miracle of loaves & fishes
By Jo Upton
CBF Communications
When Christian teenagers from North America and Kenya visited the Baptist Children's Centre Orphanage in Nairobi, the true spirit of cultural exchange occurred.
“School was out on break, so the community had been invited to attend the day camp at the center,” said Melissa Browning, a member of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco who serves with her husband, Wes, as a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Global Service Corps worker in Kenya. “We expected 50 kids to attend, and since there were 60 campers, we felt prepared.”
But the unexpected happened. As the teenage campers arrived at the center, children came running to greet their buses–all ages, all sizes. The crowd continued to grow until it reached 200, making the lunches planned for 50 a predicament. As camp staff advised the campers of the lack of food, they answered with one voice.
“Before they could finish whispering the word into the students' ears, they each replied, 'Give my lunch to the kids,'” Browning said.
While campers led children in games, crafts and Bible stories, adults divided sack lunches into smaller portions. Browning said the room grew silent as someone asked, “What should we do with the extra food?”
All the lunches had been provided, with four huge bags to spare.
“It was the miracle of the loaves and fishes happening all over again in a poor slum outside Nairobi,” Browning said. “As we gave away our own lunches, we had enough for everyone to eat.”
That evening, the campers shared their feelings about the events of the day. A young man from Kenya, whose father serves as pastor of one of the larger churches in Nairobi, stood up and thanked the volunteers for coming and sharing the experience in the slum. He said the event helped open his eyes to circumstances in his own country.
The summer trip to Kenya was several years in the making, a joint project between Passport, a CBF-affiliated camp program, and Africa Exchange, a non-profit organization under the CBF ministry of global missions.
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