Ministry Has Made Me a Better Leader

If CFA were to end today, I would still be happy because I have learned many lessons.  I have learned to be a better leader and I have had a lot of paradigm shift.  But since leaders are always learners, I would want to continue learning through CFA, because it is the best place to learn.

In the year 2008, when CFA officially kicked off, I was lucky to be among the first people in this organization.  With the background of being a leader in various places  like school, church and association, I thought I was better placed to be a leader. In fact I thought that I was in the highest level of leadership.  Unfortunately I was disappointed.

I realized I was not even in a preschool of leadership and I still have a long way to go.  I managed to mingle and read from the gurus of leadership like Mark Miller and Dr. Henry Cloud.  I realized that they are among the most simple people on earth and always wanting to serve instead of being served.  I grew up knowing and seeing leaders as very important people in the room and are always being served.  I had to re-learn from these people that leaders are servants. 

My friend Duncan and I could not believe that Dr Henry Cloud gave us an audience, a thing that has never happened to us in our own country because “leaders are busy and they don’t have time (especially for young leaders like us).”  Recently in March, Mark Miller left his busy schedule to come to Kenya to train our leaders, something that those who were in attendance still appreciate to date.

I have also learned that leaders leverage themselves into other people. One cannot say that he is a good leader yet he is not mentoring anyone. While working with CFA, I have to change and constantly ask myself some hard questions like: whom am I mentoring now? Or, who is following me? CFA has made me know that I need to bring up someone as I also continue to learn.

Former Client Michael Mwaura is now a trainer and a mentor.

Lastly, I have come to learn that getting the right leader to work with our organization starts from the recruiting process. I had always thought the process of interview is a one day thing. Only to realize from Mark that it can go up to 6 months. There are so many things to look for during this processes. But what stands out for me is the fact that during this time, it very important to look for character. I have always admired people with the best qualification.  Most of the time when I am hiring, I have always leaned towards qualification more than the character.  Unfortunately, I had to reconsider my position.

Qualification is very important, but qualification without character is dangerous. It is better to have character even if there is no qualification. Skills can be developed as opposed to vice versus. But the best take would be a person with both character and the skills.
I would have not learnt all these if I was not working with CFA.  Thank you all who have been intentional in empowering us the Kenyan staff.

Creating Ownership Will Determine the Success of a New Center

We are happy to be opening a new center in Kisumu.  This would be our sixth center in the region of Kisumu, but 15 total in the country.  This time I want to do it right by creating a sense of ownership among the church members and the leadership.  To do this I have been able to do a lot of things differently.

First I had to let the church look for me but not the opposite. By doing this, I have the opportunity to ask them hard questions like: “What will you contribute towards this partnership in terms of material support?“

Secondly, I don’t hurry the hiring process.  I have realized through experience and by reading Mark Miller’s book: The Secret , that if you want to get the best employee it is better to spend more time during the interview.  With that you get to know the candidates better and what they really stand for.  This is exactly what I am doing with Manyatta African Inland Church(AIC).  These two candidates are worth knowing into details because they are the face of the church.  They are also the ones who would be able to turn the lives of these desperate/suffering people  we are dealing with.  I want a man or a women who when they open their mouth, it will be all encouragement to other people.  We are looking for people of integrity.  All this may not take one day.

Thirdly, I love to sensitize and to entice the church about the good things CFA does. I love to use the church pulpit to openly share the gospel about caring for people living with HIV and AIDS. It is very important for a subject like this to be shared openly on the pulpit because of the stigmatization comes from this same people. Last Sunday when I preached in AIC, I told them that Jesus still loves people living with HIV and AIDS even if they got it as a result of the bad choices they made. He will still die for sinner like them because He did the same to the tax collectors. I challenged them that they have no choice but to love these people.

Lastly, I use a lot of my time by selling the vision to the committee members and sometimes touring them around the already existing centers.  With these, I pose a question to them after the visit: ” Is this what you want for your church?”  If the answer is yes, I then ask them to tell me what they can do so that we can do this together.  If the committee owns the vision, then they can easily influence the whole church to support the program.

I am doing all these, to help our people catch the vision and run away with it.  At CFA we are trying to empower the local church to take up responsibility and support their own ministries.  I am aware that this will face a lot of resistance but I am sure it is an a achievable objective no matter how long it will take us.  We will keep on trying.

Thank God! Manyatta AIC headed the call and they have promised me to provide the clients with food enough for one month every year.  We want more of these.

Kindly feel free to advice Duncan and I on other areas we can engage our local churches.

Saving the Children

I don’t like watching horror movies because I grew up witnessing a lot of horrifying situations in my life.  One of them is seeing hopelessness in orphans because of HIV and AIDS.  The horror of seeing the parents die and then the children follow is not a pleasing one.  If the children are lucky enough, they find themselves in the orphanages, street corners, with grandmothers or with some poor relatives who may have other 10 children in the slum.  I said that was enough horror  in my life and I would not like to introduce more artificial horrors again.  I would rather live with the natural ones that I cannot avoid.

Today my best movies to watch are action movies.  Because I always want to put on my full gear and fight some of these vices in our society.  It always seems to me that people especially the government and the church are not fighting enough.  If we were fighting enough these vices would be decreasing, but they don’t.  So each time I watch an action movie, I want to borrow some principles on how I can fight the spread of HIV and AIDS especially on children because they are always victims in this predicament.  They did not contribute in any way.  It is more frustrating to learn that when they grow up, they are again victimized and stigmatized.  This is because our society is made to think that anybody with AIDS  is/was a prostitute.

At CFA we have intervened in a unique way: through prevention of mother to child transmission (MTCT).  We realized that this will save the lives of these innocent children. It is unique because many people would expect us to enroll the children in our program, but we don’t.  Instead we enroll their parents, especially their mothers.  We believe this is the root cause of the problem.

Without this intervention, an estimated 20%-45% of the babies born to HIV- infected mothers will acquire HIV infection from their mothers.  This figure could go higher in some regions especially those without health centers nearby.  MTCT of HIV may occur at any stage during pregnancy(5%-10%), labour and delivery (10%-15%), or breast feeding (5%-20%).  All these factors put the new born baby at a very high risk and that is why most of the children that come to our centers are always positive.

Good news is that at CFA we have been able to change this story by a number of interventions that we make. Some of them are:

1. We make sure that they are using antiretroviral drugs. Also called antiretroviral prophylaxis and treatment (ART).

2.We ensure optimal appropriate infant feeding practices.

3. We encourage safer obstetrical practices.

4.We ensure they deliver at the hospitals under the care of a medical personnel not under a midwife.  We help foot the bill.

5. We ensure there is proper care and treatment for the women and their families after birth.

By ensuring all these practices, we reduce the risk to less than 5%. Therefore, at CFA, we are caring for children more than one could imagine.  Today, none of the children born in our program have turned HIV positive.