Inspirational visit to Maseno West

A community borehole means these children no longer have far to walk to collect water


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Published: 01 August 2009

Barbara Taylor, President, and Jennifer White, Action and Outreach Coordinator of Manchester Mothers' Union report on a trip to Maseno West in Kenya.

Frenetic, wonderful, hot, tiring, amazing, basic, humbling, life-changing – just a few of the adjectives which we can apply to our experience earlier this year. We were privileged to visit the Diocese of Maseno West, one of the dioceses with which Mothers’ Union Manchester is linked in a cycle of prayer encompassing over 78 countries.

To Western eyes these people have little, with the majority surviving on less than one dollar a day. Yet they give sacrificially – to support the many orphaned as a result of HIV/AIDS, to enable children to receive education, to build larger cathedrals (the present one in Siaya holds only 300 so three services have to be held each Sunday morning, with many seated outside). Mothers’ Union is working to educate society about health and hygiene, to set up income-generating projects, and to support parish clergy.

We have so much to share with our friends around Manchester Diocese and are willing to continue speaking to Mothers’ Union and church groups, synods, and so on. The more informed the Church in Manchester is about its links (all of them), the more effective its prayer will be. We have linked a Sunday School to one of the schools we visited. We have ensured that a parish priest who requested prayer now knows members are praying specifically for him. Echoing Bishop Mark after his visit to Namibia, it would be wonderful if every one of our parishes, schools and Mothers’ Union branches had an active link – in the three Kenyan dioceses; in Lahore, Pakistan; in Namibia; in Nord Kivu, Congo; in Tampere, Finland; in Zaria, Nigeria.

What are our abiding memories?

The hospitality, the smiles, the poverty, the pride and the work ethic, but above all the deep love of the Lord Jesus. These people, who at first glance appear to have so little, continually give thanks to their Heavenly Father for all the blessings they have received from him. As Christians here in Manchester, we have so much to learn from them.


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