HEART

“HEART”

We arrived at the HEART compound in Nairobi around 9:30 Sunday night. I can’t wait to tell you all about the place we had for our home-base while we were in Africa, but first I need to tell you about the HEART organization.

HEART stands for Health Education Africa Resource Team and was founded by Vickie Winker in 2000 to deal with the AIDS crisis in Africa.

People have a lot of different ideas about what missions work is all about. Medical mission trips have become increasingly popular and obviously occur when a group of people with medical experience provide health care for the poor. Habitat for Humanity is a form of missions which provide housing for the underprivileged. There is a myriad of other such service oriented missions organizations.

The other type of mission trip that people think of consists of Christians or other religious groups sharing their faith with others. Religious missionaries have been around for many centuries and work anywhere in the world, but often times we think of them going into third world countries. Over the years, these religious groups have realized that the best way to get their message across to these people is by providing for their physical needs first.

HEART incorporates both of these modes into the work they do in Nairobi and throughout Kenya. I’ll tell you about the different programs as we encountered them during our two and a half week stay. But I just want to warn you that we covered a lot of ground while we were in Africa, not just physically either. We did a wide variety of work with an assortment of different Kenyans.