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Journey to Kenya
Service, relationships to be focus of July trip

By Melodie Woerman
Editor, The Harvest

The diocesan mission trip this summer to Kenya will be about more than just outreach to people in need, according to trip organizer Deacon Steve Segebrecht. It will be about building relationships and making connections.

Segebrecht, of Trinity, Lawrence, has gone to Kenya several times on medical missions as a physician specializing in otolaryngology. But this diocesan trip will be different, he said. “This is a journey,” he said. “That’s when you go outside your comfort zone. This isn’t just a trip or a visit. It’s about going somewhere you probably would never go. You go with a purpose.”

That purpose will be three-fold, he said: to provide hands-on service to people in the Kenyan village of Maai Mahiu, to get to know Masai tribal herdsmen and discover what their needs are, and to build relationships with fellow Anglicans in the capital city of Nairobi.

Segebrecht said he is excited that Bishop Dean Wolfe is making plans to go on the trip, as are Campus Missioners the Revs. Craig Loya and Susan Terry, along with seven students from Kansas colleges.

Support for MDGs
Segebrecht said this trip will help participants discover ways they can participate in the Millennium Development Goals, an eight-prong effort designed to reduce global poverty and hunger by 2015. “The MDGs are our faith lived out,” he said. “By sharing, our faith grows and deepens. It will transform the people who go, especially the student peer ministers, who then will lead other students in support of the MDGs.”

An important aspect of the trip, he noted, is the chance to build bridges of understanding with Anglicans who might not understand Episcopalians. When tensions throughout the Anglican Communion are running high, the chance to fulfill the MDG of building global partnerships is especially useful, he said.

Segebrecht said he’s aware that traveling halfway around the globe to minister in rural Kenya might not be people’s first pick of destination spots. But he encouraged people to consider it, for their own sake.

“I’m asking people to stretch a little bit,” he said. “The place where we find growth is where we stretch. When we step outside our protective environment, we will grow.”

Scholarships needed
Segebrecht said he hopes to raise money to provide partial scholarships for the college students who are interested in going, with each students kicking in $1,000 on their own. So far he has enough to send four students but wants to raise another $12,000 to enable the other three to go.

He said anyone wishing to contribute to these student scholarships should send a check, payable to “ Kenya scholarships” and sent in care of the diocesan office, 835 SW Polk St., Topeka, KS 66612.