By Alexa Gilker

ON JULY 18, Lynay Parker landed in the city of Kijabe in western Kenya, filled with excitement. Parker had been unable to join her husband, Stan, on the two mission trips he had previously led to Kenya as the youth pastor at Campbell River Baptist Church.

“It was a dream for me to go and be able to share in some of the things that he’s done,” said Parker.

Her first night in Kenya came as a shock, then, when she and the three women she brought with her spent a sleepless night in the dark hallway of a motel.

However, Parker’s impression of Kenya upon her return to Canada in early August was of a country full of “warm, loving people.”

Parker’s team included fellow mother Pam Matthews, Pamela Plantinga and 21 year old pre-med student Kristen Climie.  Together, the women spent two weeks in Kenya doing a ‘mishmash’ of mission work.

Campbell River Baptist is connected to Africa Inland Mission (AIM), an evangelical Christian  agency dedicated to building the African church. Long term missionaries Mark and Catherine Buhler had created a schedule that gave the four women a general insight into some of AIM’s ministries.

Once in Kenya, the team partnered with four local women and were then loaned out to various ministries.

They spent time with a group of women living with HIV, preached at a women's conference, encouraged locals to be tested for HIV so they could receive medical care and  played with orphans at the Ngorika Orphanage.

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The team also worked in an internally displaced persons camp near Nakura, where they participated in a three hour church service. This particular camp resulted from the post-election violence Kenya experienced in 2007, one of many crises in a country plagued with a history of poor governance and corruption.

Despite the despair in Kenya, Parker said, “I feel like we in Canada have a greater spiritual need than they do. God is their spiritual provider; they have nowhere else to turn.”

As well, Parker sees a need in the church in British Columbia to recognize Jesus’ call to take care of widows and orphans, a call that became blaringly obvious to her in Kenya.

“I've heard people say that there is no point to short term missions,” said Parker. “But if you partner with the nationals, they are more exposed to ministries, they want to be a part of their own, and you introduce them to a support network.”

It was Climie’s second trip to Kenya, and she credits short term mission trips with motivating her to continue with pre-medical school.

“The weeks I was there in the slum playing with all the kids made me realize the possibilities to minister that I could have overseas with my chosen profession,” she said.

“Our primary resource in B.C. is water; their primary need is water,” said Parker. She believes that one role of the church is to expose more North Americans to facts like this.

The team visited a village that had a water cistern built by the Rotary Club in Campbell River. Parker encourages the church in B.C. to copy such examples of generosity.

Parker plans to head back to Kenya next summer with her husband’s next youth team.“Our kids don't need another trip to Disneyland,” she said.

“Wouldn't it be nice if they went to Kenya for a week instead, to see what we saw and to minister?”

October 2010