CMF International Consultant Dick Alexander recently returned from Kenya, where he was privileged to attend a celebration at the Pangani Center of Missions of Hope in Nairobi. And what a party it was! Here’s Dick’s account of what happened.

 On a beautiful Thursday afternoon in early October, more than 200 people gathered at the Pangani Center in Nairobi, Kenya, for a two-and-a-half-hour “branding party” and celebration of the Hope Partnership between Missions of Hope International (MOHI) and CMF.

The party brought together staff from MOHI, two groups of students from MOHI schools, and U.S.-based CMF leaders who were in Nairobi for strategic planning meetings with the mission and churches. Short-term teams from Cy-Fair Christian Church, Houston, Tex., and Swiss Cove Christian Church in Jacksonville, Fla., were also in Kenya that week and joined the party.

The October 2 celebration included worship, children’s poems, leader’s talks, gift giving, and prayer in honor of what God is doing through MOHI and its 10-year partnership with CMF in pioneering holistic urban ministry. The gathering also celebrated the official unveiling of new logos representing the holistic ministry of MOHI. The logo expresses in simple graphic form the four crescents representing aspects of MOHI’s exceptional holistic ministry — education, health, business, and spiritual development — around a dove, representing the Spirit’s power.

A second logo, now seen on both the MOHI and CMF websites, represents the partnership of these African and U.S. organizations that is fueling highly effective ministry. This year marks the 10^th anniversary of CMF missionaries meeting with MOHI co-founders Wallace and Mary Kamau in Nairobi, where they laid the foundation for an international partnership that now involves more than 40 U.S. churches supporting 13 ministry centers in Kenya with financial and human resources.

CMF’s work in Kenya is geared toward partnerships with exceptional African leadership to develop a holistic ministry model for reaching the largely overlooked urban poor. Sixty percent of the residents of Nairobi, the capital city of one of Africa’s strongest nations, live in almost unthinkable poverty, mostly ignored by their government. They are a harbinger of a coming tidal wave of urban poverty, which, according to some estimates may include half of the world’s population by the middle of this century.