Bring the Light!

For the last week I, along with the CMF Reach interns that are here working in the CHE and Social Work departments at MoHI worked along with a large team from Arizona doing in Mathare village each day.  Before I get to what we did, first off for those who do not know, CMF sends out "Reach" interns every summer for about 8 weeks into Nairobi to work with MoHI.  This year we received 16 of them from various places around the United States to work in different departments of MoHI.

So along with 11 of the interns and Kenyans from the CHE and Social Work departments we spent the week out in the Kosovo village of Mathare Valley doing "Bring the Light".  "Bring the Light" is what we call the house visits where we add a small skylight into the home of a family in the slum.  The shanti, or house, that a family lives in is typically so dark that even in the daytime people have to use a candle or if they happen to have access to electricity they might have a single light bulb lighting up their home.  What we do as a group is come into the home and add a small hole into the corrugated tin roof and cover the hole with a piece of corrugated fiberglass where the sun can shine through lighting up the home.  While we do this and "Bring the Light" physically to the home, we can also evangelize and shift to bringing the light of God into the home.  It is amazing to see what a difference a small bit of sunlight can do for these families and its such a great evangelism tool.  It is somewhat hard to describe exactly what "Bring the Light" is but I hope these pictures below aid a bit.

This is one house when we first enter it before the skylight.  It is so dark that during the day they have to use that candle to light the room.

This is the small fiberglass skylight that will soon light up the whole house.  Look at the next picture.

After the skylight it makes a world of difference for a home.  This is the same picture as above, taken without a flash - only the natural light of the sun coming in through the ceiling was used!

One of the interns and me with a family that we "brought light" to :)

A couple of the interns and me with a young girl from Kosovo