Interview: New Directions International Founder on Kenyan Christmas Mission Trip
Africa has been a major concern and topic of discussion among international policymakers, global relief agencies, and local churches around the world this past year. The Niger food crisis, the lengthy Ugandan and Sudan civil wars and rebel conflicts killing and displacing millions, and the high rate of HIV/AIDS infection in African nations are some of the enormous problems faced by the continent.
Dr. J.L. Williams, the founder of New Direction International (NDI) - a global missions and relief organization working extensively in over 10 African countries for over a decade – was recently in Kenya for his annual Christmas mission trip. In a phone interview from Kenya on Dec. 9 with The Christian Post, Dr. Williams discussed the mission in Kenya, including the successes and difficulties NDI faced over the past year.
When did you first begin your annual Christmas mission trips and why?
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I began my Christmas trips around 5-6 years ago for a couple of reason. First, I like to be somewhere on the cutting edge in mission for the major Christian holidays – Christmas and Easter - because that is what it is all about. So that is my personal reason. I also think it is a very important time for me to be alongside national partners in the area. And third, often times we have a team of high school and college students come over in December to participate in vacation bible schools, evangelistic feeding programs and soccer camps. One of the things we try to encourage is to get high school and college students from America to come and participate, hang out, play games, and befriend the children so they can witness and share with the people there.
On these mission trips, do you only go to Kenya or do you visit other nations too?
Zimbabwe is actually the first country we were involved in on the African continent and that was in 1982, after the independence of Zimbabwe. God has led us to be involved in a number of countries in Africa besides Kenya including Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and over in West Africa - Ghana, Chad, Mali, Liberia, and Cote d’Ivoire.
Can you describe the lifestyle of the tribal groups you are working with – the Pokot, Samburu, and the Rendille?
Our primary focus is to reach out to the out-of-reach, unreached, or under-reached groups in different parts of the world. The aforementioned groups – the Pokot, the Samburu and the Rendille – are all pastoralists. Historically, they are people that have not been reached or marginalized because it is difficult to reach them; they move around rather than stay in one location. Often times their enemies do a lot of cattle raiding, which have been going on for 30-40 years and they kill each other. It’s a very volatile and transitional group.
One of the first things we do in response to the request of people is drill a well which cost from $5,000 - 6,000. These tribal groups dwell in areas that are very arid and since they live with cattle, sheep, goat, camel and donkey, water is their number one request. So often times we will drill a well even before we build a church. But we try to put them together so physical water and spiritual water can go together. We also try to use church buildings for clinics, kindergarten and basic literacy programs.
How many churches are in the Samburu, Pokot, and Rendille tribes? Are they house churches or buildings?
We have built 10-12 churches among the Pokot and 3-4 among the Samburu. A very, very large church that serves as a mother church was built among the Rendille that will be able to hold 1,000 - 2,000 people and will act as an outreach center for the surrounding 50 Rendille villages.
Actually, churches are growing among all the people groups that we work with, and we have been involved in a number of helicopter evangelistic drop offs of national Samburu and Pokot evangelists in remote villages that can only be reached by helicopter. The national evangelists live among their people where they speak the language and share the same culture. These evangelists start the church and then we would come alongside that when the number warrants it – anywhere from 30-50 people – and we would build a small simple church. The average church building is from $5,000 to $10,000 depending on the size, but getting building supplies into these very remote places is very difficult.
We get hundreds of requests to help build churches each year. As you can imagine, refugee people, slum people who do not have the funds to hardly eat do not have the funds to build church buildings. So we try to help as many as we can.
How many people do each of NDI’s four major feeding center feed? Who are the people you feed?
We feed over 1,000 people. About 10-12 years ago we started helping 12 kids that we found eating out of a dumpster or garbage can around the market and felt that we needed to start giving them at least one bowl of soup a day. Now the project has expanded to 1,000 kids getting 3 hot meals a day.
One of our biggest personal burdens right now is to be able to continue to feed these kids. Tragically, we might have to cut back or shut down some of the programs because of lack of funding. I think that it is ironic that the Tsunami sort of started the year and the multiple hurricanes ended the year in the United States. That means most Christians tended to give funds to those very horrific and real natural disasters. But it also means that a lot of people stop their giving to situation like street children or HIV people.
What other programs do you have available for the Kenyan children other than the feeding programs?
The children in our feeding programs in Kenya are not only being fed but they are in school all day, we establish schools in these slums. This December, we actually have our first class graduating. These kids have been with us, many of them before they were into kindergarten, and they have now gone through what is the equivalent of 12th grade.
I just spent time this afternoon with one of the boys who was originally one of the street boys over a dozen years ago and now he has a group of over 300 children that he is feeding and doing the same for them that we were able to do for him many years ago. So that is my Christmas present, it doesn’t get any better than that – to see a boy that maybe would not even be alive, or still be out on the street if he was still alive, whose life has totally transformed because of the gospel and the help of God’s. He is doing to others what we were privileged to do for him.
Most people think Kenya is better off than other African nations. Why does New Directions focus on Kenya rather than other countries?
Kenya is better off in many ways than other African countries, but that is a two-edged sword. Because of the fact that Kenya had a more peaceful transition from colonialism to nationalism than some of the other countries and hasn’t had the degree of tribal genocide that say Rwanda has had or Congo, there have been thousands of refugees from Ethiopia, Sudan, Congo, and Rwanda that have come into here. That is both good and bad. The influx of refugees have given rise to huge slums and townships where these people who come here as refugees and really have no jobs, no place to go, and no homes just end up in these townships.
But besides Kenya, we are equally involved in Ethiopia and have been since the famine in the 70s. We are also deeply involved in Sudan. We have thousands of Sudanese refugees in Kenya and especially in Nairobi and we have a ministry among them. We don’t just concentrate here but because it is stable. We have the opportunity to reach a united nations of refugees from other surrounding countries. Also, because it is a predominately Christian country rather than a Muslim country, we have greater freedom to evangelize and do social work. So we are just trying to seize the moment while we have it and for as long as we have it.
In addition to the difficulties you mentioned above, what other obstacles does NDI and mission groups face working in Africa?
With increasing natural disasters around the world, political instability, HIV/AIDS infections that is just devastating the African continent – among other problems that are just getting bigger rather than not smaller – we increasingly find it more difficult to meet all the needs and help all the people we want to. The Christians and NGOs are giving it their best shot, but we are like Jesus feeding the multitude. Similar to the parable that the harvest fields are always ripe but there are not enough workers, it is the same way when it comes to all these social things, especially when it comes to these feeding programs.
So when I get off the plane it seems like everybody is lined up with a proposal that they have needy children or hungry children that they hope I can feed. It is the most heartbreaking thing in the world to say, “I am sorry. We don’t have the funds to support the ones we have much less to support new ones.”
Is NDI involved in the project Hope Rwanda next year?
We are not personally involved in that because we got all on our plates that we can handle, but that is the thing that we love to see and love to be a catalyst for whether it is an individual local church or a megachurch that have greater resources that can come in and do something like that.
As they will increasingly find out, it is always easier with our American “know-how” to envision programs but the implementation phase is always a nightmare because everything that can breakdown and complicate will breakdown.
For example, I was talking to Franklin Graham last night – his Operation Christmas Child – they are not able to do it here in Kenya where they are deeply involved in medical work and so forth because the Kenyan government wants to tax every box. It is those type of things that cause you to pull your hair out when the government who should be doing everything possible to help you help themselves – because you are really doing what they should be doing – often times makes it as hard as they possibly can and destroy the program. That is the challenge.
America is a great land of abundance, you can get truckloads of anything and everything donated. The problem then is to get it from there to here and get it through corrupt bureaucracy and customs and then into the hands of people who need it. But when government are corrupt they don’t really care they are only in it for themselves and that what makes the kind of things we are doing difficult sometimes.
