Students, families minister during Kenya mission trip

The first time Ashley Ratcliffe traveled to Kenya in 2005, she accompanied her grandmother, who taught a class for Wayland Baptist University’s Kenya degree program there. That trip awakened in her a desire to return to Africa, this time with a bigger purpose.

She got her wish recently as she participated in a Wayland Mission Center three-week project in Kenya.

Ratcliffe, a junior secondary education major from Lubbock, served on the education team, charged with working at the Christ-Like Academy in Limuru.

Her group worked with the small Christian school started in January 2009, serving lunch daily and helping the four teachers with their duties. The group also led a Vacation Bible School one week and brought new clothes in extra suitcases for the students, who range in age from 6 to 12.

Linus Kirimi is vice principal of Kenya Baptist Theological College, which partners with Wayland to offer degrees to ministry students. He and his wife, Liz, Wayland on-site program coordinator at the college, started the Christian school where Ratcliffe served.

“I had always wanted to go back to Kenya, and I liked working with children in the schools,” said Ratcliffe, who said she’s long felt a call to missions and wants to be a teacher.

The visiting Americans were also able to attend the graduation ceremonies at the theological college, where 30 students earned degrees from Wayland. The event lasted four hours—quite a change from the Plainview campus version of around 90 minutes. Ratcliffe attributed the difference to the celebratory nature of the event.

“It’s really a big deal for people there to get a college degree, so they really have a big time,” she said.

The education team also included Courtney Warren, an incoming freshman at Wayland and the daughter of WBU assistant professor of management Kelly Warren, who traveled with the group to teach a leadership class.

Her brother, Cameron, a junior media specialist major at Wayland, and mother, Sheri, also made the trip, making it the first international excursion for the family of four. While Cameron took the class his father taught at Kenya Baptist Theological College, his mother and sister served at the Christ-Like Academy.

Courtney Warren, a pre-nursing major, and Ratcliffe also worked with a medical team as they set up a clinic in Masailand, treating minor medical issues for about 800 people.

Warren noted the experience made her realize how much Americans take for granted as Africans travel from far away just to receive ordinary non-prescription pain medication and treatment for minor medical cases that are so easily treated in the United States.

Courtney Warren of Plainview, an entering freshman pre-nursing major at Wayland Baptist University, visits with a Masailand woman named Emily and her baby Charity at a home while on mission to Kenya recently.

A construction team built desks for the teachers at the school and put a tin roof over the kitchen area in order to free up more classroom space. Discipleship and evangelism teams also were able to make many visits and share the gospel, with great results.

“The Kenya trip was quite successful, and quite a few persons professed faith in Jesus for the first time,” said Rick Shaw, director of the Wayland Mission Center and the Kenya program and the trip leader.

In addition to their other assignments, the Wayland group traveled to Kakamega in western Kenya, where they visited a church led by a Wayland-Kenya graduate and ate dinner at the home of the deputy mayor.

African church services made the biggest impression on Courtney Warren.

“They were free in their worship services and it is a lot different than ours. It taught me a lot about worship,” she said.

Her family left Africa moved by the warm and welcoming nature of Kenyans, even when they had little to share with the visiting Americans.

“The thing that impressed me the most was how friendly and hospitable the Kenyan people are. In the slum areas, they welcomed us in and would fix tea for us and apologize that they didn’t have food to give us,” Sheri Warren said. “They have so little and yet they’d offer their best to us.”

Warren, a first-grade teacher in Kress, also marveled at how few resources the teachers have at the school and how large the classes are. One teacher had 37 children, and yet the students are well behaved and attentive.

“They have benches to sit on and her homemade posters but nothing else to work with. It amazes me that they are able to sit there and pay attention all that time,” she noted, also surprised by the education system in general. “They promote according to ability, not age, so there are some older than others but on the same learning level. I was amazed by the whole thing.”

Warren found the mission trip rewarding in all aspects, and she “can’t wait to go back over there,” even though she initially was anxious because there were so many unknowns and things to do in preparation. Her daughter agreed, noting that she’d “go back tomorrow” if possible.

Religious education and English major Bradley Sell, a senior from Clarendon, spent his three-week stint on the construction team but got the added bonus of preaching twice on the trip, with the help of a translator.

While Sell said he feels a call to ministry with students, he believed the trip was ordained by God to open his eyes to his work around the world. And although he originally planned to go on a mission trip to Kosovo and Macedonia, other conflicting events left Kenya the next opportunity for overseas mission work.

“It was good for me, because we have several Kenyan students who go to my church. So, it was good to know more about their culture,” he said. “Over the past year, the Lord has been working on me and making me realize I know nothing outside the Bible Belt. I think he wanted me to experience (Kenya) to help in my ministry here in the future. …

“I was really affected by how universal the need for the gospel is. The people there who knew the Lord were so joyful, even though they didn’t have a lot of material things or even food. Those without the Lord were not joyful, even if they had more. It put things in perspective for me. The people were very giving, and it was neat to see that. It’s also made me see the urgency of sending people out everywhere and how big the world really is, yet how small it is at the same time.”