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James Mureithi, UPI Fellow, shares his story and his vision for UrbanPromise Kenya. James is currently a part of UPI's school of leadership and will be returning to Kenya in just a few months to launch his ministry. Inspiring words from an incredible leader!
Who would have thought a boy in a small village in Kenya, walking barefoot to school, with an avocado or a piece of sugarcane for lunch, would one day step through the doors of Eastern University? Talking about myself now can be a bit embarrassing and may sound like blowing one's own trumpet. I can't help but believe that everything that has helped shape me is on this page. Poverty would not stop me. Neither would the lack of school fees or having nothing to eat. Not even domestic violence and abusive relationships were enough to stop me. I was determined to work hard to secure my place at a public university. I knew I could do it-going to college was all that I wanted and I believed in the brighter future that would come afterward.
At times, the temptation to quit and try my luck somewhere else was intense. The odds were against me. The scourge of a polygamist family was following me.
My call to ministry came at a turbulent time in my life. My mom had just run away from her troubled marriage as the third wife. I had just graduated with my first degree, and was hoping to get a job to support my mom and educate my sister. I hesitated at first to be a church minister since I was surrounded by many troubles, but after one year, God’s call was unequivocal. I accepted it and over time became an associate pastor in my local church in Kenya.
I have been involved with developing and managing a village youth group for about a decade now. Part of what my friends and I have focused on is helping orphaned children. One highlight has been our annual Christmas party. We provide snacks and play games, pray with them and offer each child school materials and Christmas gifts. The joy we see on their faces upon discovering that someone cares for them is indescribable. I want to see more of that joy and want to be able to do more as God helps transform my dream into reality. I want to create more opportunities for those children. They can be like any other children in other parts of the country and world.
Imagine going through elementary and high school without touching a computer keyboard.
That’s the challenge most aspiring scholars have to overcome in Embu, Kenya. I acquired my own laptop at age 32. Currently less than 21% of Africans have access to the internet. In a global economy, that puts children in Embu in danger of being left behind in a rapidly changing world. I want to change that by establishing a nonprofit - Youth Promise Kenya. Through a partnership with UrbanPromise International, I will launch a new affiliate site based on their youth ministry model. With a focus on digital literacy and information access, my vision is to transform the lives of children & youth in the community through education, information technology & spiritual growth.
I often draw inspiration from the Bible and James 1:27 states “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
I’ll be returning to Kenya in just a few months. I can't wait to be reunited with my wife in the near future and to continue serving alongside her. My eyes are open now. Now I see that the hardships I went through were God’s tools to prepare me for this future ministry, which I am now embracing wholeheartedly.
Whenever I remember my experience walking 4 miles every day to high school, it makes me want to support vulnerable kids so that they can access high school education. I believe in giving young people opportunities to become change agents in their families and communities.
When Jesus told children to come to him in Matthew 19:14, he knew they were needed for His kingdom. Today, what are we hoping for our kids? What are we doing for them? Whatever good thing we do comes back to us and to our generation many times over.
Read some inspiring words from UPI Fellow Vanessa Mwangala! Vanessa is here in the US for the next two years and has a dream to go back to Malawi and expand her girls' empowerment organization, Voices Awake.
From a country where there is an outbreak of everything ranging from diseases, hunger, corruption, to prophecy, I got to experience my share of all of these. The first prophecy I got was, “you will be a great woman”. In my mind, great meant wealth and power, so I raced through life planning to make money and gain power by working ridiculously hard at school, and grasping every opportunity along the way. Then I met Jesus, who opened my eyes to the reality that life was what I was living when I was chasing grades and meeting deadlines. He made me listen to my heart and see the desire he had placed in me and my heartbeat went, “girls, girls, girls.” I looked around me and saw the plight of a Malawian girl.
She lives to be second best and her failure is not a surprise but expectation. She is defined by the duties of her body and her worth comes from her ability to get married and have children. Her qualifications don’t get her a job but her body parts do. She bears scars, and hides tears, and is told her gender is what proves she is weak. I saw a girl who had accepted the oppressed role, and grows in it. As a mother, she makes sure her children are clothed and fed. She produces food from no money and hustles to pay her kids way in school. She sobs in the night, and laughs her way through the day as she tirelessly takes care of her husband and children. Through it all, she is still told, “You are not enough, you are weak, so dependent, you do nothing but gossip, a gold digger, the world would be a better place without you”, just because she is a WOMAN.
As I looked closer, I saw how I was this girl, and was being prepared to be this woman. I was already being told how to channel my thoughts, manipulate my body towards satisfying the man who would marry me. I was as good as the man who marries me and my ability to make my marriage last before I had even met the man I would marry, before I was even half way done with high school. As I experienced these things, I made up my mind to not be that girl, and not to grow into that woman.
As I got out of college, I decided to use what I experienced to empower myself and other young ladies who would not have the same opportunities and exposure that I had due to extreme poverty and illiteracy. It was time to break the cycle. I started a girl’s program called Voices Awake, whose mission is to awaken the potential in girls by equipping them holistically to fight against harmful traditions for the positive transformation of their lives. With the support from UrbanPromise International, this project started in August 2013, and we have reached out to over 100 girls in Dowa keeping them in school, providing basic needs and getting some out of early marriages. This year, Urban Promise has sent me to Eastern University, where I am getting an education in Organizational Leadership and receiving training from the UrbanPromise Health and Wellness Center in how to recover from adverse childhood experiences and trauma. The knowledge gained will be used to establish Voices Awake as a trauma-informed girl’s organization in Malawi and engage in deeper outreach to more girls. My vision for Malawi is one where every girl is adequately empowered to transform her life and community. I stand, live, and walk with these girls everyday as we change Malawi. And now I choose to believe that when that prophet said, "You will be a great woman", it was not because I will have a lot of money and power, but because I will make a huge impact in other women’s lives.
Read an update from the field from executive director Peter Gamula, of Mercy Care Malawi. He shares about Malawi's current food crisis and how it's impacting the children he serves.
Malawi, the warm heart of Africa, is facing many challenges. Rolling blackouts, rising fuel prices, high unemployment, and understaffed hospitals make for a pretty dire situation. We’re also in the middle of our worst famine in decades.
The president has declared that the country is in a state of emergency because of the hunger crisis. Due to drought, poor agricultural practices, and high population growth, millions are starving. One of the girls in the community shared “I cannot attend classes because I need to help my mother search for work so that we can buy maize”.
Hunger is the greatest enemy for development of any country. Families are separated. Girls are giving in to older men. Boys are forced to go outside the country searching for jobs (child labor). Children are starving and lives are lost. Some families live on one meal for a whole day. This is contributing to the increase of HIV/AIDS as people do whatever it takes just to have something on their plate.
Our efforts to educate the youth in our program have been paralyzed by the drought. The number of students who drop out is increasing each and every day. Most kids go to sleep with empty stomachs and it’s hard for them to concentrate in class.
I visited Chikumbutso who has withdrawn from school. He has the money for school fees and owns a school uniform but he is still not attending school because of the hunger situation.
He asked me: "How can I learn without eating anything?" in response to my inquiry about his commitment to school.
Hunger is hitting us much harder than we can endure.
It is challenging to encourage kids and students to come and work hard toward their education when they are sleeping with empty stomachs. The coming months will be more challenging because these families will pull their kids out of school to work in the gardens to farm food for the next harvest.
My ministry (Mercy Care Malawi) offers kids who attend our after-school program the chance to eat a balanced meal. This not impacts the children, but also the parents who have peace that their child will receive at least one meal each day. Our feeding programs are vital to the health of our communities and with UPI’s help, we’re feeding hundreds of kids each day.
Join me for a virtual dinner this month! I’ll be leading the live webinar and you’ll get a tour of the ministry in Malawi, meet some of the kids, and get a glimpse of life in the village.
Buy meals for some of our children and sign up here!
Blessings,
Peter Gamula
Read an update from the field from executive director Peter Gamula, of Mercy Care Malawi. He shares about Malawi's current food crisis and how it's impacting the children he serves.
Malawi, the warm heart of Africa, is facing many challenges. Rolling blackouts, rising fuel prices, high unemployment, and understaffed hospitals make for a pretty dire situation. We’re also in the middle of our worst famine in decades.
The president has declared that the country is in a state of emergency because of the hunger crisis. Due to drought, poor agricultural practices, and high population growth, millions are starving. One of the girls in the community shared “I cannot attend classes because I need to help my mother search for work so that we can buy maize”.
Hungry is the greatest enemy for development of any country. Families are separated. Girls are giving in to older men. Boys are forced to go outside the country searching for jobs (child labor). Children are starving and lives are lost. Some families live on one meal for a whole day. This is contributing to the increase of HIV/AIDS as people do whatever it takes just to have something on their plate.
Our efforts to educate the youth in our program have been paralyzed by the drought. The number of students who drop out is increasing each and every day. Most kids go to sleep with empty stomachs and it’s hard for them to concentrate in class.
I visited Chikumbutso who has withdrawn from school. He has the money for school fees and owns a school uniform but he is still not attending school because of the hunger situation.
He asked me: "How can I learn without eating anything" in response to my asking about his commitment to school. Hunger is hitting us much harder than we can endure.
It is challenging to encourage kids and students to come and work hard toward their education when they are sleeping with empty stomachs. The coming months will be more challenging because these families will pull their kids out of school to work in the gardens to farm food for the next harvest.
My ministry (Mercy Care Malawi) offers kids who attend our after-school program the chance to eat a balanced meal. This not impacts the children, but also the parents who have peace that their child will receive at least one meal each day. Our feeding programs are vital to the health of our communities and with UPI’s help, we’re feeding hundreds of kids each day.
Join me for a virtual dinner this month! I’ll be leading the live webinar and you’ll get a tour of the ministry in Malawi, meet some of the kids, and get a glimpse of life in the village.
Buy meals for some of our children and sign up here!
Enjoy this guest post from writer Randy Petersen, Director of Scripture Engagement at the American Bible Society. Randy's been a long-time friend of UrbanPromise and he recently taught a workshop at our international Summit!
My friend Bruce Main taught me the word praxis. I'm sure I had run across it in some theology text, but Bruce was actually using the word in a sentence, like it meant something.
We were meeting at a South Jersey diner a few years ago. Bruce was giving an update on the ministry he founded, UrbanPromise—a lifeline for kids in Camden, one of the country's most violent cities. I was sharing plans for a new small group program at my suburban church.
"Don't forget praxis," he said.
"Of course," I replied, trying to hide the fact that I didn't really know what he was talking about. "I mean, who could forget praxis?"
"Well, a lot of churches do. They're very focused on orthodoxy, which is great, but they don't seem to care so much about orthopraxy. Don't get me wrong. It's important to teach people right beliefs, but that's only half the story. The Bible is full of challenges to practice what you believe. Praxis."
Paul and James and Us
I learned something from Bruce that day, and not just a new word. In the years since then, I've been taking note of the many Bible passages that emphasize action. James is a paean to praxis, but so is Romans 12. We can't pit Paul's faith against James's works—they fit together. We are saved by grace through faith, but we are created to do good works (Ephesians 2:8-10). While much of the Old Testament Law is about what people should not do, the prophets in particular call us to positive action. What kind of fasting does God want? To feed the hungry, to work for healing and freedom (Isaiah 58:6-7). Jesus picks up the prophetic call ("Do unto others…") and other New Testament writers join the chorus.
Our faith involves doing. And this goes beyond the activities of worship and fellowship. We are specifically called to care for those in need.
Romans 12 gives us a great game plan, starting with worship and orthodoxy but drawing us outward into service. We are to be living sacrifices with our minds renewed, but we live out God's will. Along with the rest of the body of Christ, we use our varied gifts in service and hospitality. The "body of Christ" is generally an image of church unity, but this image also helps us see ourselves as those who together do the physical activity of Christ. We are his arms and legs as we work on his behalf, carrying on his mission. And what was that mission? As he explained it,
". . . he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free the oppressed
and announce that the time has come
when God will save his people."
(Luke 4:18-19)
What is Scripture Engagement?
At American Bible Society, we've been putting a lot of thought lately into what Scripture engagement really means.
Is it just reading the Bible? No. Is it defined by a certain frequency of Bible reading? Well, that helps, but it's not the whole story. True engagement would require some reflection, wouldn't it? Don't we need to reflect on the text in some way, to interact with it? Isn't this how we challenge the people we lead? We try to help them see themselves in the text and—more importantly—encounter God there.
And that brings us to praxis. When we encounter God in the Scriptures, our lives change. His word lights our way, it burns within us, it does surgery on our souls. Full engagement needs to lead us to the point of becoming doers and not just hearers.
'Tis the Season
This is a season of charitable actions. Your church may be gathering cans of food to give to the poor. Some will invite the homeless to Thanksgiving meals. Christians in many places are leveraging Thanksgiving, if you will, not only thanking God for his blessings, but also sharing those blessings with people in need.
This charity is not just good stuff for churches to do. It's more than a few extra items on the church calendar. Nor is it just a respite from all that preaching and teaching we do. I'd suggest that it is a vital piece of Scripture engagement and its proper outcome.
I just spent a day at the UrbanPromise Summit. The ministry founded by my praxis pal has grown into a nationwide, even worldwide, operation. Yesterday I stood in the back of a room where I used to hold drama workshops with five kids. Now there were 240 people there—ministers of the gospel conducting innovative youth ministry in poor areas of Trenton, Birmingham, Toronto, Honduras, Malawi, and elsewhere. These ministers, mostly under 30 years of age, were investing their lives in the work of sharing God's biblical promises with the next generation. All day long they were quoting Scripture, exploring its message, and talking about how to stay anchored to it. They were also abuzz with the joy of their work, providing this anchor to kids who desperately needed it.
This is praxis, a vital part of Scripture engagement and its proper outcome.
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