Goodbye and Hello

Darlene and I, along with Jackton Omondi, Joel Njue, Victor Otieno and Robin Ndunda (all Team members at MITS) went to the Eastleigh Church at KCITI to say "goodbye" to Berkeley Hackett. Berkeley was one of the key people in getting KCITI and the Eastleigh Church off the ground.  He and Charlotte raised much of the funds for KCITI in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s.  After my four years as Director of KCITI, Berkeley continued as Director until Lydia Wanjiku was appointed in 2010.

It was sobering to say goodbye to someone less than 2 years older than I am, and someone with whom I worked so closely.  I mentioned in the previous post that Berkeley is the one who invited us to move to Nairobi.  There is another really helpful thing he did for me.  When it came time for Made in the Streets to leave the KCITI campus, due to overcrowding -- the industrial training was growing, the street ministry was growing and the church had a Sunday school of about 350 -- Berkeley was willing for us to stay on campus until MITS got its own building to work out of.  So he let us stay for more than 3 years after I resigned as Director and began full-time street ministry.  That was a great gift.  There was pressure on him to have us leave quicker, but he quietly let us stay much longer than some wanted.  By the time we moved out in March 1999, we already had a contract to buy a building and friends in the USA had already committed the purchase funds.  All that made saying goodbye a moment both for sadness and gratitude.

We met Charlotte for a short time.  She is doing well, confident of Berkeley's relationship to God and the happy life he now has, at home with the Lord.

And a wonderful thing about a funeral is the people you get to see!  There must have been at least 50 former students in the computer and electronics program from when I was Director. And we saw more than 30 of the youth group we led from 1992 to 1996.  And lots of the kids from the Sunday school who are all grown up now.  Plus several former staff members at KCITI who have moved on to other jobs.  Sammy Gitau was there -- he is the first street kid we ever met, and the one who brought so many more to us, including Francis Mbuvi, our MITS Administrator.  Sammy is now working in several slums in Nairobi as a community development person.  He has gone from living on the streets in 1992 to having his Master's Degree in Community Service and he has begun work on a doctorate.  What a Treasure!!!

Here is a picture of Sammy hugging Darlene.  

And we saw some of the women whom Tony Mauldin helped go to the USA to play college basketball.  There were 2 sisters, Maureen and Mercy, so I was asked to perform Maureen's wedding in June, after which she and her husband will go back to Texas.  And another former teacher at KCITI sent us a resume as she is looking for work.  I saw several people who have become preachers; I am really pleased about those guys.

Another special thing was that we sat behind a girl who was working for Good News Publishing International, who were asked to video the funeral.  She had on a black T-shirt with "Crew" on the back.  It was our own Anastacia Njoki, who completed our program in 2009, got an internship with GNPI, then a full-time job.  We have some really good kids who come through MITS.

So...a day to treasure!