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The Congo travelers are arriving slowly.  Leon was already here setting up the activities for the group.

Barry Henning and 3 other team members will be arriving later.  Actually at 2am local time 8 hours after they were to arrive.  They were late because Air France cancelled their flight from Atlanta to Paris.

Pray for Perpetue.  She is still in Belgium because her daughter became ill with a fever and is hospitalized getting medical tests done.  Please pray with us that she will arrive on Saturday with her daughter well and safe.

Th 2006 Nairobi Team spent Wednesday with Shafkat & Sabia Kahn and Overcomers by Grace. We were picked up at Gracia Hotel by Shafkat and all of the young adults. Nabil was very excited to see us and started clapping immediately. We arrived at Shafkat & Sabia’s house in the morning and started the day with a little bit of singing and prayer.

Then it was time for academics. Each student has workbooks and projects that they have in a portfolio so that when they come they can work on specific skills. The team spent time visiting with them, working on academics and chatting with the Kahn family.

Next we did some exercise and walked up and down the Kahn’s street. The Overcomers were invigorated by the activity and cheerily greeted the neighbors. Next it was time for physical therapy and massages. Soloman, a friend of the ministry and long time volunteer, is a sports trainer. He comes several times a week to do physical therapy and massage with the youth and they love to tease him. They are pretty exhausted after therapy, so the last portion of our visit was spent coloring and visiting at the table. We were truly blessed by the time we spent with Overcomers.

Rest, snacks & tea after physical therapy with Solomon

Shafkat Kahn is an elder at New City Fellowship Nairobi and leader of Overcomers By Grace, a ministry with the physically and mentally disabled. One evening during the Nairobi Team visit in March 2006, the team had the privilege of hearing his story. In Shafkat’s words:

“My dad was retired and living on pension and my older brother Omi and I were not able to both continue going to school. My brother continued with schooling and I started Islamic studies–reading the Koran in Arabic, reciting and praying. My father saw that I would make a priest one day.

I was born in Nairobi, moved down to a town to live with my uncle during this time. There was an abandoned mosque there, and they brought an Imam*. I went and picked people up and we all prayed 5 times a day at the mosque. I was 19 years old.

While I was staying with them, my uncle died in a crash. I started to take care of my aunt, a widow, two orphan kids and a handicapped auntie. My dad at that time was in Mombasa, and I was working to support elder & younger brother to continue with schooling.

During one of my trips from Mombasa, I was in an accident. I was driving fast and the tire burst, the car rolled, I was thrown from the vehicle and the car rolled over me. I was taken up to the national hospital and life there was bad. They did not think I was going to survive. My whole family was there and they were told that I would not make it. Then I got a little better, that’s when I was first told, after about 5 or 6 months, that I would not walk again. That was the time when I felt awful… I wished I had died in the accident.

I was taken to the spine injury hospital and spent a total of six and a half years there, many many surgeries. I thought: “If I had died in the crash, where would I go? Heaven or hell?” That’s what we had been told all along, that after dying there’s judgment. If God was in a good mood, if your good deeds outweighed the bad ones, then he might let you into heaven, but if your bad deeds outweighed the good ones, you were definitely going to hell…. And I was not an accountant, so I couldn’t tell (everyone laughs)! So that really put a lot of fear in my heart, because I knew I had done some pretty good things, but I knew that I had done quite a number of bad things too.

So this was when I had smuggled in a translated text of the Koran into the hospital. Because ceremoniously a hospital is an unclean place, so you can’t have that holy book in the hospital. So reading through and reading about the prophet Muhammad I thought –is this man really a prophet? Reading about his lifestyle, how he spread Islam…eventually I came to a point where Muhammad says: “I am no new thing amongst the prophets, I only do what has been inspired in me, and I did not know what would come of me on the day of judgment.”

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