Global Access Conference 2015 Workshop Global Disability ... · Page 1 of 22 Joni: I am Joni Eareckson Tada and you are listening to a resource from the Global Access Association,

Global Access Conference 2015 Workshop Global Disability Ministry Models: Rural & Urban

Cynthia Bauer

Global Access Conference 2015 Global Disability Ministry Models: Rural and Urban Cynthia Bauer

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Joni: I am Joni Eareckson Tada and you are listening to a resource from the Global

Access Association, sponsored by Joni and Friends. Learn, connect and share at www.gaa.joniandfriends.org. Global Access, where disabilities and possibilities meet.

Cynthia Bauer: I guess maybe we should get started. I don’t have a lot of materials for you. I find

that when I go to a conference and people give me a bunch of materials, I put them in a bag and then I throw them away in a few months. I thought digital … I think all this stuff is available digitally for you as well. If you ever feel like e-mailing me, my contact information is on the brochures that I put there for you. I’m hoping that we can be somewhat interactive as we talk about this stuff. How many… I’ll ask a lot of questions in a minute.

The idea, the objectives, of this course are to present successful disability ministry models that can be adapted to both rural and urban settings, and also demonstrate how these models can be modified to suit your needs. I’m hoping that at the end we can have a little bit of a brainstorming session, to talk about different things that different people are doing and see how we can get ideas from one another.

I’ve found I’m always learning from other people. In this session we’ll talk about a little bit of my experience to say, who am I to have any business telling you about disability ministry models? Kind of looking at urban and rural disability ministry, kind of what we’ve done, and then how to implement it in your unique situation. Before going on too far, I want to show you just a real short video on what we do in Kenya. My organization is Kupenda for the Children. I’m going to give you a little bit of history of the organization, a little bit about what we do- and how we do- ministry in Kenya, and also now we are starting to do some in Tanzania.

Even though I am American, my actual experience in disability is almost all completely African. I’ve been working in Africa for fifteen years. I didn’t work in disability ministry before that. You’ll see when I tell you the story of how that worked out. It might- it’s not very loud- the song you are hearing in the background is actually the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili. I’ll read what the words say- is one out of ten people in Kenya have some kind of a disability, at least. It’s probably more.

In Kenya, people born with disabilities are sometimes seen as cursed. Some believe that witchcraft causes disability. Children with disabilities have been murdered because they were seen as a burden. Community attitude often impacts people with disabilities more than actual physical limitations.

http://www.gaa./


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Kupenda for the Children is working hard to change these misperceptions, through advocacy, education and medical intervention. Ultimately, these children will know that they are not a curse, but a blessing. Visit Kupenda.org and save a life.

That’s a tiny little nutshell of what we are about. I’ll give you a little bit more on it. Our mission is for children with disabilities to meet their God-given potential. We believe that every child, no matter what their ability, has potential for something. We don’t always know what it is. We have some children that have- because of some of our efforts- been able to go all the way through college, graduate, get jobs, be able to be independent. For some, it’s maybe they got to hold a cup. Every child has a potential, we just don’t know what that is. Our goal is to actually help that be revealed.

We do this through education. We do sponsorship of children to go to school, like Compassion International- that’s how we started. We do school furnishing of materials, we help build dormitories, we build classrooms. We also hire staff to work in some of the government schools to supplement the staff. We do medical intervention, supplying wheelchairs. A lot of the time now we are trying to connect them to other organizations that supply wheelchairs. We do a lot of stakeholder meetings with other non-profit organizations to help get them to provide those things.

We provide physical therapy and surgeries and so forth. The most important thing we do- that I didn’t realize when I first started was so important- was advocacy. The attitude of the community, the attitude of the church, the attitude of the parents is the biggest problem that we encounter. None of the rest of it matters if the people don’t have the right attitude because we have people that continue to kill children at birth. When I talk to people in Kenya I always make sure they understand: I do not come from a country without its own guilt. We just have more sophisticated technology to remove disability from our community.

In our advocacy work, we do a lot of outreach to parents and communities where you sit down- here is a group of like a thousand people who came to hear some of our kids play and sing and that kind of thing. We serve about eight hundred to a thousand children with disabilities at this point in Kenya and Tanzania. Because of the way our model is developing, the way we are starting to do our work, it’s getting more and more difficult to quantify our impact, because we are trying to push it out to local people for them to do it, but they are not required to give us reports.

This is where we are primarily located, in Kenya. Mostly, we are located here in Kilifi County in Kenya. Kilifi County is over four thousand square miles and has about 1.2 million people. Based on World Health Organization estimates, it means there is at least a hundred and twenty thousand people with disabilities in that community.


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I think it’s probably more because there is more, so much more disease. Malaria is the cause for at least half of our cases of cerebral palsy, meningitis, measles, those things are causing a lot of our children to be deaf. I think the rates are higher, just no one’s really done a real serious research, plus parents hide their children and don’t admit that they have them.

The way we started- there is different levels of us starting- and like I said, I’m going to get into the ministry models, but people seem to find this part interesting. There is a whole story, there is a whole book that was just printed last year, about how Kupenda came about. If you are interested in that it’s called An Unlikely Gift and you can find it on our website, it talks a lot about how things came about. There’s a lot about me, a lot about our director Leonard, who is the person on the ground in Kenya that runs everything.

One of the reasons that Kupenda exists is because I had discovered- when I was in Kenya, actually researching this animal. I’m actually a wildlife biologist. I actually don’t have any experience in special needs education, non-profit management. I didn’t go to seminary. I’m not really all that qualified to be standing in front of you at the moment. I was there … That’s what qualifies … It keeps me humble. I did research on this animal here called the Golden-Rumped Elephant Shrew. It has a big yellow rear end, looks like an anteater and a rat got together.

I was doing my research for my master’s degree in Wildlife Biology. It just so happened that there was a school that had just started for children with disabilities. It’s a government school, started by a man named Leonard Mbonani. He introduced me to some kids that had a variety of different disabilities, mostly cerebral palsy or deafness. I just got some information about some of the kids and got some of my friends to pay for the school fees. Being just a silly graduate student, I knew what I was going to do.

I thought, “That’ll take care of the problem.” As anyone who comes from an American context has been in third world countries and thought, “This is what it’ll take. We’ll just put some money into it and everything will be better.” You just keep going deeper and deeper. Honestly, I think some of my solutions caused us to have a longer time in getting success actually. That was about fifteen kids.

If you go back further, one of the big reasons that I had a heart for it probably, being a wildlife biologist, is that I was told that if I had been born in Kenya, it’s very possible I would have been killed when I was born because I was born without my left hand. This is the picture of my parents when I was a baby and me. My parents were actually pretty young-ish, they were twenty-two and twenty-four when I was born. My dad was a fairly new Christian, which made him a really on fire Christian.


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In America, we expect everything to work out perfectly. They always ask the first question, “Ten fingers and ten toes,” right? When I was born, my mom- at that point, you could get sedated if you wanted to because my grandmother had really scared her about pregnancy and childbirth. When she woke up, the looks on the doctors’ faces made her wonder if I died.

Then they told her- and she was relieved to know that what the problem was, was actually manageable. My father prayed a lot for healing for my hands and I share a lot with Kenyans and Tanzanians now when I speak in churches or I speak with parent groups. I actually play the guitar. Our director Leonard who is Kenyan himself, we kind of have our own little shtick we do where I play the guitar and he kind of talks about how no one else can play the guitar, but I can- and who’s disabled and so forth.

I always say, healing is really strong in African countries. I think it’s true for many places where missionaries came is that- especially if the country was already somewhat spiritual in terms of their original beliefs- it’s easy to take on the more, kind of what you’d call the more magical components of Christianity and that they come to Christianity because they want to be healed. Not that- I have no problem in people asking for healing- the problem we have is people think the reason they are not healed is because they don’t have enough faith.

That’s one of the big things we talk to people about there. What I say is, if my father’s prayers had been answered, and I had somehow sprouted a hand- which I’ve yet to hear out of any healing ministry yet- perhaps there wouldn’t be these children that are getting served. We don’t know how God works, but I think that God often answers our prayers in different ways.

Now, like I said, we serve anywhere from eight hundred to a thousand children. Even in that, we- as much as we try to provide resources and outreach to children with disabilities to make sure they get what they need- I also fight really hard to keep children who don’t need special assistance out of special schools. For example, this is a little girl who was actually born just like me. I meet with her whenever I go there. She is only five years old now.

We’d been doing this for ten years already when I met her. I’ve been- they were going to put her in a special school when I found her. I’m carrying water on my head here to show her how it’s done. She’d already started carrying it when I had shown her parents since she was a baby that I could carry water on my head. If you’ve ever tried to do that, it’s really hard. Ringing in my ears afterwards, and all that stuff. She is playing my guitar there and then she’s actually the one that’s on the cover of this book, which is the whole other story which you could read about in here.


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So, I want to get to you guys on the topic of what we are talking about today. That’s the real short intro to what I do. My question is, “What brings you to this particular workshop today?” Maybe a couple of people could tell me, what’s your reasons for being here?

[Audience – no audio.] Be sure to talk to me afterwards, because we are actually going to be doing a fundraiser, Climbing Kilimanjaro, and we want the people to come volunteer somewhere, after. Thanks, anyone else?

[Audience – no audio.] On that line, if people do have disability ministries here already, I guess my question is what kind of setting are you in? I’ve talked to a couple of people- you have India, Mexico, Ghana. Not yet quite started, but you are hoping to. Thailand, Australia, what kind- anyone who is involved in disability ministry already, what kind of setting are you in? How many people in here are in a more rural setting, where they are doing their disability ministry?

Ours is mostly rural. How many people here are more urban settings? More urban- okay, more of a city type of setting. What we are doing can apply in- I’m going to talk about some of the challenges and benefits of both kinds of things too, because we have different challenges when it comes to that. We’ll get to some more. The next question, the next question is- why do we need disability ministry models? My friend who was supposed to be leading this with me- unfortunately, the reason she is in disability is … she adopted four children with disabilities, but her son is at the final stages of Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy. That’s why she is not here with us today. She wanted to ask this question- why do we need disability ministry models?

Female: [Inaudible.] Cynthia: Yes, I will slow down. I believe that all the presentations are going to be accessible

because I had to submit them to them. If for some reason you don’t- I’m going to put on my Kenyan voice now- if for some reason you don’t, e-mail me through that brochure and I’ll be sure that you can have it. The question is, why do you think we need disability ministry models? Do you have a thought?

Female: We live in Tucson and we go to quite a large church. I deal with- I’m totally blind- I

deal with a lot of the blind community. They are just, they just don’t go to church.


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They don’t feel welcome. I feel very welcome at the church I’m at now. I did in the previous church, but I think they’re just scared.

Cynthia: I’m summarizing some because I’m being recorded here. You felt like a lot of people

who are blind don’t feel like they are accepted in the church and it’s not accessible to them, so they just don’t go?

Female: Don’t know if you saw the [inaudible] that I put on the GAA, yesterday. I went to

this church for two months and never was passed the offering plate or the communion.

Cynthia: You were never passed- Female: I went to the pastor- it was a small church and very into themselves, not really

reaching out. I finally asked him, “Do you have your offering plate up front, or in the back, what’s going on here?” “Oh, no, we passed it through the pews.” I said, “Could you have the usher tap me and let me know that it’s there?”

Cynthia: Because people are uncomfortable. Female: I just think that they’re uneducated, some of the pastors. Cynthia: That does seem to be it. Anyone else on why do we need disability ministry models?

Because people with disabilities basically, you’re saying, get overlooked in the church, right? That’s one of the reasons.

Male: [Inaudible.] Cynthia: We imitate, and I think we can learn, we are always trying. No matter how long

we’ve been doing disability ministry, there is always room for improvement. We always find creative ideas from other people. I’m hoping to share with you some of our experience with things that have seemed to work for us and by me sharing it with you, you don’t have to make all the mistakes that I did. You get to actually find out some of the things that we think work.

One thing that is kind of interesting- last summer we had, we bring volunteers to Kenya sometimes. Last summer we had a volunteer trip to Kenya planned, but because of the travel warnings against Kenya, we had to cancel our trip. Last minute we were invited to go to Tanzania, by a woman I know who has a ministry there, and invited to come and help reach out to children with disabilities in that community.

It was like, I got to see what we’ve been doing over all these fifteen years and say, “Okay, I actually applied it in a different context,” which we hadn’t done before.


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What I really saw is- oh, wait, as much as there is so much more work to do- we actually have come up with a little bit of a good model, I think, for starting a ministry. We are actually reaching out and assisting children with disabilities. I’m going to be focusing most on the church part. We work a lot with the governments and parents as well. The part that I’m going to focus on is the church, which is key to reaching out to children with disabilities, as well as making sure those children and families are involved. This is me playing the guitar. When I reach out in my community, usually the first thing that I end up doing is playing my guitar. We do this in almost all the different groups that I’m going to mention- at some point I played my guitar for them. It’s because our director in Kenya, I told him last time I went in January, I’m like, “I don’t want to bring my guitar. It’s such a pain.” He’s like, “You have to, you must.”

I bring it, we play, and we have... For people- I think that, especially in Kenya, as much as… I spent most of my life proving that I was not anyone who had any problems or disabilities. That’s why I actually was not familiar with disability issues growing up because my whole fight was just to prove I could do things just as well or better than other people, not to be labeled as disabled, or any of those things. But, according to the Disability Act, because I have a perception of it, that means that I legally would be.

I use that to actually be a bridge between the community that we work with in Kenya and disability and people who don’t. Because I actually have, I would say somewhat of a gift- I think I understand disability from the side of people who are not, because I did not grow up in the disability community. I didn’t really need extra resources or anything like that to be assisted.

I didn’t know. I was uncomfortable, too, around people that were different, at first. I was uncomfortable around people who had behavioral and intellectual challenges and I didn’t know what to do with people in wheelchairs either. So, I can relate to those people that might be dumb enough to pass the plate back, because they just don’t know what else to do. On the other hand, I did grow up …

Male: Where did you grow up? Cynthia: I grew up in New Hampshire. I do know what it’s like for people to say stupid things

to you. I can’t hide my arm. Often in public I’ll have my arm behind my back. A boyfriend told me once, he’s like, “You always have it behind your back.” It’s just a subconscious thing sometimes. I know what it’s like for people to ask questions, to assume inability, because one thing I’ve learned is you should always assume ability, not assume lack of it.


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I’ve had people try to cut my meat for me, all those things. I can relate also on the other side and I know that my disability is very much different than other people’s and every disability is very different, and not everyone has the same attitude about it either. I talk to people a lot about that when I’m Kenya.

Some of the things that we do, we work in- we have pastor workshops, church teaching, we do a Beyond Suffering class, and also parent support groups. Many of these are very interrelated. I’ll go through some of the stuff that we do. We’ve found that pastor workshops… I understand that some of you- depending on where you work- may not have pastors in place already.

I’m not sure, is anyone here from a country from which pastors … Sometimes that might not be an option and there are other ways to go about starting this. If there are, if there is already a church community around there, what we’ve started doing is calling all the pastors in the area. We do it by small regions. We go into very rural areas. You can see this church here.

There is a bunch of like aluminum stuff kind of stuck to the sides of some logs is the church. This place has about seventeen pastors, just last January when I was in Kenya. It’s usually all denominations. We invite all denominations. We tend to not have many Catholics that come, but we have a lot of Pentecostals, a lot of Church of Kenya, which is Anglican. We have a lot of Baptist. That tends to be a lot of the denominations around there. Probably the majority is Pentecostal.

In these pastor workshops we talk a lot about what they believe about disability. We listen. I find that the most effective ministry for disability is to first listen to the people that are going to the ones to be the leaders one day. We really need to know where they come from, because even though I’ve been working in Kenya for fifteen years, I can’t assume that I know what everyone else’s thoughts are. I think sometimes we come in with assumptions that might be wrong. Sometimes we come into pastor workshops and we have pastors that are very adamant about, “What we do for people with disabilities is, we bring them and heal them. If they are not healed, then there is something wrong with them.”

Then we come to some places where the pastors are, “Of course we need to take care of people with disabilities, it’s what God says to do.” I have both those people that could show up and I still can’t make an assumption about what their belief already is. We spend a lot of time, we have an all-day pastor workshop, and probably the first at least hour or two is getting their beliefs about what they believe about disability in the Bible. We often ask about healing and suffering, and even a lot of them, what their experiences are with healing and what they believe about that.


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Then the other thing I’ve found- and this is just on the pastor workshops- to be really effective from my experience is… Pastors all read the Bible. They are pastors. At least we assume they do, we hope they do. What I found is when I ask certain questions, I try not to talk at them about what the Bible says about disability. I first want to see if they know already.

It’s interesting because what’s been happening as we do more and more of these, is the pastors end up teaching each other. For example, I’ll ask a question like, “Tell me about some examples of disability in the Bible.” They are all popping up with different Scriptures, reading to me about the blind man that was healed, telling me about all these different healings, usually.

Then, my second question is, “Tell me about people with disabilities in the Bible who were not healed.” Every time I’ve done it, there is at least a couple of pastors who know. They’ll tell me about Moses, he had a speech impediment. They’ll tell me about Mephibosheth. Anyone know who Mephibosheth is? Jonathan’s son, who David invited to the banquet table as he was, even though his legs didn’t work.

Female: He was David’s friend. That’s the name of our ministry. Cynthia: That’s the name of your ministry. That’s right, I met a couple of you guys. Female: The King’s Table. Cynthia: The King’s Table. There is another group called Mephibosheth Ministries- I’m

excited that I can actually say the word now. It took me a while. They come up with some that I’m not even sure are true or not. They start talking to each other because- what I find has been beautiful in some of our pastor workshops- is in the end, they find that they’ve come to the answers themselves, not that I’ve just said it. I think sometimes, especially me as an American coming and leading it, I want to be sure that I respect their intelligence, that I respect who they are and they are capable. I’m just asking questions to help lead them in a direction that I think is the right one.

Sometimes I learn from them, too. I learn every time. One thing that is a gift, at least in my experience in Kenya and Tanzania, is the pastors tend to have a real hands-on look at the Bible. When there is drought in the area, the churches get together to determine what they are going to do about famine and the people that are hungry. Because they experience suffering so much, once they know the right thing about disability, then they go forward.

During these pastor workshops- at the end, we ask pastors to please talk to their congregations about what’s happening, and they preach in their churches, and we


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usually find soon after that, we start to have kids pop up, showing up at our office, who have disabilities that need to go to school.

Many times these families are integrated into the churches. These pastors literally go out into the streets and the alleys and the country roads and find these kids and bring them in. Just once they know the right information.

One thing I’d say about what I’ve experienced in America versus Kenya with disability is in Kenya, I’ve found, once they know the right information, they seem to take action on it. Whereas, in America I’ve found they know the right information and just don’t care. That’s been my personal experience, because in America our biggest problem is we don’t like to be inconvenienced and we are individual, which doesn’t work very well for people with disabilities.

Kenya and many other countries that are not developed as much, they tend to, from my experience, have more of a community already. If we can get them to accept people with disabilities as part of their community- because they are really great at raising each other’s children, unless that child has a disability, and therefore they are cursed, and therefore you need to stay away from them.

But, once they change that, they actually already have a community structure that’s really great for disability. Because people respect their pastors in our area, the pastors are the ones that are going to tell us where the different people with disabilities are and will actually call us if there’s children that are showing up sick.

We also do church teaching, and this is our director Leonard and me, co-preaching at a church. I call it co-preaching because when he translates for me he usually expands on it. I know enough Swahili to know that he is changing it. I try to get him to do the preaching when we go in, but he says he doesn’t prefer to do the preaching part. He is a really great teacher and public speaker, but he needs that interaction. I’m like, “You’ve done this enough, why not save the time and just do it yourself?”

I think he also- and when I’m in Kenya, I listen to Leonard and do what he says a lot of the time. He is like, “It’s effective coming from you, actually.” If it is, I’ll say, “Then I will.” In this, I actually- now I’ve perfected a sermon. I seem like I’m the best preacher ever, because I do the same sermon in multiple churches. It’s the best way to do it. I feel bad for pastors who have to come up with something new every time.

Mostly, we speak about the parable of the great banquet. We share some of the personal story and stress that the people that were invited to the banquet were invited as they were, not to be healed, but just to be part of it. Again, I’ve


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experienced in our community that the whole thing about healing has caused a lot of damage, a lot of hurt, a lot of pain for a lot of people with disabilities in that area.

Some people who need God more than ever are feeling rejected, and it’s their pastors who are saying that. We have one teacher actually who happened to have AIDS and her pastor told her she needed to stop taking her medication to prove that she had faith that God would heal her. Not too long after, she passed away. That’s when I first realized what a big problem it actually was, that concept. Many of those pastors don’t come to our workshops. We count on the other pastors to talk to them. Most of the pastors who invite us to come to their churches or want to come to these workshops have disability in their family. Because disability is so high in the area, it’s pretty easy to find a pastor that’s been impacted by disability.

We do church teaching. Again, this is where we have a pastor workshop, which ends up leading into congregational training as well. This is the first church. I don’t know how well you can see that picture. I apologize, it’s a little blurry. This is the first church we started working with in Kenya. It’s within the same compound of a special school.

In Kenya, all the schools are connected with the church, for the most part. This church now, after many years, they actually go to the local school and bring the children in for services and for Sunday school. We even now have been training people in sign language, we offer free sign language workshops. One of the pastors of this church decided he wanted to learn sign language because there is a school that has a lot of deaf children next door.

He then went forward and trained three other people in his church so that they could do translation as well. One thing that can somewhat be a benefit or, depending on how you look at it, it could be an obstacle, is because they are small, people tend to do a lot more stuff and don’t have giant programs in place. We also work on making the churches accessible. This is one of our volunteer trips, this is making a wheelchair ramp to the churches. I’m from New England where accessibility is still a problem because our churches are old and historical. Some of the wheelchair ramps they even make… When we come in and see a wheelchair ramp that’s been made, the angle is like this…

We are like, “These people are going to die.” It’s just not quite understanding. We sometimes, if it’s not been done before, we come in and build a wheelchair ramp at a church. The thing that’s really cool that we’ve seen start to happen- I’m talking about disability ministry, we don’t work with just once church; we have lots of churches and a lot of what we are doing is starting them up and getting them going.


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One thing that’s really cool, after we built the first wheelchair ramp- at this church is where we built the first one, it was the first one in all of the county- the bishop came to see it and said what a great model this was for other churches.

But, what I love is the church decided on their own, they are like, “What if someone in a wheelchair wants to come and preach? We need to build a ramp to the front.” They did it on their own, because it doesn’t cost a lot to build a ramp. It’s just, once the idea is there and the example is there, the goal is that they follow that, and they come up with it on their own. We also, some of the churches, they not only bring children into the churches, but they actually go out to the people. What you see over here is some of the women from one of the churches. Once a week they come into a school for special needs and help clean the school. They also help to feed some of the children there who have difficulty with feeding. Some of the people from the church come at lunch time to some of the schools and help with some of the children with cerebral palsy who can’t feed themselves and help to take care of them.

We also, some of the churches have started to do services. There is, I should probably make sure you understand, we have three boarding schools that we support. The children do have families for the most part and go home on school breaks. They come at least once a semester- two churches will come and they actually come and they do a service for the children, but they are also … Those churches also usually raise money to provide food for the school, too, and they offer that up for that the school on that Sunday. [Inaudible.]

What’s that? They don’t really. Actually, one of my board members actually used to work for Compassion International and he has a son with cerebral palsy. He is from Kenya, but he lives in America right now. He said Compassion International has not done a very good job when it comes to disability, from his experience. Compassion is in our community and we are trying to work with them about that. Because, like I said, we are trying to work with more non-profit organizations that could work with disability in some way or another.

I think one of our new niches, if you will, in the future, one of our new roles is to help other non-profit Christian organizations include people with disabilities in what they do. Because I’m not sure you need to have an entire disability organization, what if we just get these ministries to just remember certain things, to include people with disabilities?


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This goes to a class, has anyone here taken the Beyond Suffering class by Joni and Friends?

Female: [Inaudible.] Cynthia: You are in the middle of it? Okay. I took it a few years ago now and we modified it

quite a bit. We did an entire, eight hour a day, weeklong course in Kenya, a couple of years ago. What we did is we selected the top, the people who had already shown a great desire to do disability work in the area, some are parents, some are pastors, and a couple are community leaders. We spent like a whole day just talking about the theology of healing, the theology of suffering, all the real easy subjects to cover. We let them share their stories. We also spent a long time talking about the causes of disability.

Anyone who’s experienced any place like Kenya know there is a lot of myths surrounding the causes of disability. Some of them are spiritual, some of them are Christian even, in their nature. They think God is punishing them. They think someone- in our area along the coast, there is a big problem with witchcraft. Just when I was in Kenya last time, at a funeral, the grandfather was murdered because he was accused of having killed the person that the funeral was for.

There is a lot of that. People will say, “This is the person who caused it.” They get killed. They have a lot of witchcraft, a lot of more charismatic things- like again, God’s punishing you, they are not healed because they don’t have faith, that God is trying to teach them something until they learn their lesson. All kinds of stuff like that. This class is a real… and only the people who are going to be super-dedicated are going to be part of it. This part is more towards those who are not from the country that you are hoping to have a ministry in, or already have a ministry in.

I’ve found that- personally, I think the key is to train those who are going to be the leaders in the community. If you can find the people that are the leaders from there… No matter how long I work in Kenya, I will never be Kenyan. I will never know the language well … I’ll never know the- I’m always learning things about the culture even now. I do have the blessing, and I know it’s not always the case. There aren’t always people that you can find that can do this. I feel like my job is to help equip the leaders so then they can go forward and do the ministry.

What happened out of this one-week class is one woman who had two children with autism, started a parent support group for children with autism. I’ll show you that in a minute. We also had, one woman had her son, who had a disability, who was a really good singer. At the end she’s like, “I don’t know why I didn’t encourage him to go forward and sing more in public.” Now he is actually leading worship at the church.


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Out of that- many of the churches were actually teaching about disability in their churches, had invited us to come and speak. One woman was actually teaching the Sunday schools and focusing on disability. Some have started committees at their church to see how they could help with disability. Many of them are going out into the communities and finding more children with disabilities and bringing them in.

Some of the challenges in terms of the ministry… We talk about and try to figure out how to include them. One thing that is different- well, many things are different- but, one of the things that’s different in terms of challenges is the churches might not be accessible, but people will do what it takes to get people in, if you have the people with the motivation to do so. Transportation becomes really difficult as well. I know now, now that I have a little bit of a reverse missions experience… is I didn’t know about how difficult things were in America for disability until after I’d done stuff in Africa.

People had come to me and said, “I couldn’t believe that just a few months ago we had a workshop at a church and one of our panelists was in a wheelchair, a pretty hefty wheelchair and we actually couldn’t get him to it.” I couldn’t believe… and it was only five miles down the road. In Kenya, we just strap people onto motorbikes and just go, which isn’t necessarily the best thing but …

Female: Do you primarily live here or there? Cynthia: I primarily live here because we are very- I have ten staff in Kenya. My job is to

make sure that they are paid, and that we get the resources that we can. Also, I feel like if I’m there, they would look to me more than they should. I think it’s important that it’s Kenyan-led, if at all possible. I have Skype calls every week with our director. I think when God called me to this, he also called Leonard to it at the same time. He is like a father figure to me, even though I’m technically his boss, I guess. He only uses that card when it’s convenient for him that I’m involved.

We also have, from the Beyond Suffering class, we actually brought people, we invite pastors to the schools. One thing that my friend who was supposed to be leading this with me, had said that she did in her ministry in America, that we’ve used in Kenya as well is, some people have a hard time because their pastors just don’t seem to get it.

The key is the pastors- you need the pastors on board. You start with the pastors and it can’t be- I don’t think it’s ever effective if you come with the chip on your shoulder and the whole list of complaints. Actually, after I started Kupenda and the stuff- I’ve been doing this in Kenya forever. I just realized, after having gone to my church for five years, I’m like, “We don’t have a disability ministry here.”


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My pastor was very enthusiastic about the idea, excited about it. When I talked to him about it, with another friend who’s leading it, I said, “My role is not to come here and demand things from you. I want you to know that. My job is to help you, because many people call asking if it’s accessible, about all these different things,” and it makes him feel like they are just demanding things. He doesn’t know about disability; he doesn’t know what’s right.

I said, “What I want to do is help you with that. We want to help you to meet those needs of those people. We are not going to come and yell at you for demands because disability is across all ministries, it’s not just one.” One thing we tell people is, it’s part of children’s ministry, adult ministry, facilities management, all those different things. It’s not just one thing. We are like, “We are here to help provide that input for each aspect of your ministry that you are doing. To help to be sure that you are including people with disabilities.”

Say for the facilities, we’ll help you to make sure it’s accessible for people with disabilities, but that shouldn’t be a disability budget item. It should be a facility’s budget item because it’s the law. Some people within the church just need to step up to help with that. To say, “How can we help you with the service?” Because honestly, most pastors are good people, most pastors want to do the right thing. Many pastors are stressed and overwhelmed. If we can help them to understand how they can do it, because a lot of times, they just don’t know how. Our job, as people who have been doing this, can come in and tell them how.

Not always are there pastors, not always are there churches in place. In terms of ministry, sometimes you have to start from the very ground up, which is with the families impacted by disability, because they will always exist. When we came to Tanzania, the very first thing we did is call all the families that we could with disability, but how we did that was through the pastors, because the pastors know the community. Put the call out to them, and we had about twenty-seven families represented. We did a lot of interviews with them, got their information and let them share their stories.

We could see what needs they had and then- there is another parent’s support group. For some reason it’s blurry up there, I’m sorry. Then we can take the information we are getting from the parents and actually provide it to the pastors. They know this is the need in your community, this is what they need. Out of that, we now have some pastors’ support groups that are connected to churches- sorry, parent support groups connected to churches.

Because what I found is, I’m not a parent of a child with severe disability. Over the last few years, I’ve been really trying hard to see the world through the eyes of a


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parent who has a child with what I call dependent disability, because it’s very different than some others. When a parent knows that their child will never be able to be fully independent. That we really need to come together to support these parents, because … When I first started, I saw parents that killed their children at birth and it made me angry and I couldn’t believe this was happening. I didn’t know how hard it was, to be a parent like that.

I think the answer, of course, is not to do that. But, not to just tell them not to do that and end there. It’s like, “Don’t do that, let us come alongside you and help you with raising this child. Help with the church- that’s the part of the church that I think is the one of the biggest gifts, is that community. I think coming alongside, and I think a lot of people- if I didn’t know after doing ministry in Kenya for ten years, how could someone who is not even doing that know?

To understand the people in the church. I think they want to do the right thing. They want to do what’s right, but I don’t think they know what’s right, and I don’t think they always know how hard it is, because until you’ve lived it, I don’t think people can understand.

Many parents I’ve talked to feel that this disability has been put on them. This child is theirs to have to take care of and they shouldn’t share that burden with anyone else. But, I found it’s a gift to share your burden with others. I think in other areas we do that with each other, that’s what the Church body is about. In these support groups- this is one of our autism support groups. That’s actually Carissa, who would have been here. Most of the women in the support group are single moms, because like much of what happens around the world, it’s too much for a marriage to bear.

They don’t know very much about autism at all. But, one thing that was really interesting on my last trip to Kenya when we spoke in a church, it just so happened that the pastor’s wife had had a stroke several years ago that caused her to be disabled in terms of how she walked. She is very slow and some of her speech was affected. We called, we told the pastor to bring the people with disability into the church for that sermon. He did, and afterwards, the parents all gathered. We talked to them for a while and the pastor’s wife sat with them and talked to them about how they could start a parent support group for disability.

She is taking that on herself to make sure it’s led and continues to go on, because I think bringing parents together to be able to share with each other is one of the biggest important things and it can be very effective in the church and how to include people with disabilities in their ministry.


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Male: Does that stay somewhat unstructured for a long period of time when they are beginning to evolve into the moving of the whole structure around it, and sharing?

Cynthia: Yeah, with the parent support group, they have become more structured, it’s been a

couple of years, in terms of- they meet regularly- what they’ve become… it’s going from program to relationship really and they have become like a family to one another. I wouldn’t say it’s structured in terms of a church programmatic view, but it’s structured in terms of they meet regularly.

Our social worker meets with them to be sure that they are getting … One of the things that I recently talked to them about is coming together to actually lobby the government for an autism classroom in the schools because there is nothing being done for autism in our particular area.

We are trying to do that in a different branch of what we do. The government is supposed to be doing it already. We’ve encouraged that, as parents you are the voice that can change things, instead of waiting for us to throw money at it. Again, that’s part of the reason why I feel that, even though I would have loved to live in Africa, I don’t think that’s my role.

Male: [Inaudible].

Cynthia: My best answer is to share with you a story of that.

We know that parents aren’t always going to come forward. The parents that do come, one thing we tell them in the groups is like, “You guys are here because you care. But, you know there is other parents who aren’t here, that are keeping their kids.” We find kids chained to their houses, locked in rooms. We just had a child die from dehydration because they just left her outside with no ability to walk or access to water, and she just died.

That’s a whole- like I said, there are so many stories. We’ve found that we want the pastors to go out and go into those communities. But, we personally do go out into those communities as well and find them. So, the answer, in this story I think, is probably a good example of how to do that. This guy’s name is Pastor Keke in the yellow shirt. He is a Maasai pastor. Maasai are the people you picture typically in Kenya with all the robes and the traditional style. He was at our pastor workshop just in June. He had heard that there was a child, through neighbors, through his congregation, that said there is this girl right here that had cerebral palsy, which caused her to be unable to walk and affected her speech and probably her intellect as well.


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He went to that home as referred by neighbors. When he got there, these parents refused to admit that she was there. We’ve encountered that a lot. People will say they are not there. The thing that I love about Pastor Keke is he didn’t give up. What he actually did, later he followed up by doing a crusade in the community, like an outreach evangelistic crusade in their village.

The mother was a Christian, the father was not, and the parents both came to the crusade without their child. But, Pastor Keke, thinking ahead, had actually brought a little boy that had an intellectual disability that was apparent. I think he had some physical as well, and he was one of the dancers. Because they do a lot of dancing and singing.

The parents saw, “Maybe our child actually has more ability that I thought.” They came up to Pastor Keke afterwards and said, “I’m sorry that we lied to you. We do have a child here. Please come back.” He came back and met with them and invited them to his church. The mom, Christina is her name, has been coming to church ever since. In the church, she is really excited, she loves the music, she is clapping, she is singing. Pastor Keke says, when she’s not there he misses her because she brings so much vibrancy to the church.

The mom told the dad about this and he said what she was doing and how amazing it was. The dad said, “I don’t believe you. That can’t be possible.” He came to the church to see for himself. Ever since then, he’s been coming to the church as well. It’s a lot … That’s just one story. There is many, many stories like that. I would be more than open to sharing with you more in the future too. It takes a lot of hard work, but what happens is that parent then goes and tells other parents.

We have one parent in Kenya who literally rides on his bicycle, because when you are working in a rural context, it’s really difficult to get out there. We sometimes have to drive like for three hours and then have to walk five miles to get to just one child. In that context, that’s where the urban and rural stuff comes in. It’s more difficult to get to them in the first place. This man who has been an amazing advocate, his son was deaf, he actually took in another child that was deaf.

You would think that deafness wouldn’t be a big deal, but it’s a big deal in Kenya. He goes from hut and hut and he looks and he hears. When he finds someone that needs our assistance, he comes and tells us, or also makes connections with local churches in the area. Again, I know that’s not always possible, if you don’t … I find that the church is the key and the pastors are key. Once you start with them, they can find the other ones in the homes as well. We meet with parents under trees, we meet with parents at churches, we meet with them in all kinds of settings.


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So, I guess the question for you- and we just have a few minutes left- is what kind of setting would your disability ministry be in? What about any of this might apply to you, or maybe what are you thinking your next steps might need to be, or your challenges? Especially if there is something I didn’t cover that you would like, or if there is something that I’ve said that maybe is new to you. [Inaudible.] Sorry, I didn’t go over that, I skipped it. Our general response, there is a general response, not the specific model, but this- again, this is targeted towards places like Kenya and Tanzania, but I think it applies everywhere: first listen and then humbly share what you know.

My friend Carissa, actually who is here, said it’s really important to just talk to what you know. That’s when I tell you, when I’m saying the things I’m saying, I’m telling them from my experience in a little limited part of Kenya, and now a limited part of Tanzania. A little bit of a limited part of my own experience. Only share what you know, don’t make assumptions. Try as hard as we can, it’s kind of impossible, but try to share Scripture without cultural bias. Because it’s amazing how Scripture is taken in a place where they actually still herd sheep and goats, and where they actually still farm.

I think sometimes the Bible is easier to understand in some of that context because the parables apply more in Kenya. Some things they take literally- that’s a positive thing. Some things they take literally- that’s a negative thing. Like when it says, “sell what you have and give to those in need.” Some of my friends do that, it’s not just a spiritual thing, they actually do it. Let them give their input on what they think the Scripture says. Also, allow for creative solutions from the community. Because we can come in with our ideas and our models- models are good, but they are just kind of a blueprint to start with. Let the community brainstorm on what might be some creative solutions.

There is a step that we’ve been doing that I wouldn’t have imagined, like for example, we are starting a communication center. That’s going to be with government funds, because there is a classroom, but also it’s going to government staff. We are going to be supplying the curriculum developer to be overseeing the program. But, I would never have thought of that. It’s because our director has been doing this for a while there and understands. Other people are like, “We already have this community.”

Does anyone know about L'Arche communities, have you heard L'Arche, that one? Henri Nouwen? L'Arche community is a community, it’s mostly of adults with disabilities. When I took our director to the U.S. to see the L'Arche community, he is


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like, “We can easily do this in Kenya,” because they already have a community in place.

Just helping, giving ideas of our experience, so that people can come up with creative solutions themselves. Any other thoughts? Maybe like what kind of, what are some of the things in your own ministries that are challenging? [Inaudible.] Places that have been highly evangelized are kind of sick of people telling them what to do, too, from the outside. It’s hard for me too, because I have to balance that, because of where I’m from and because of what I look like, because of my skin color.

I have learned at the beginning to be careful of what I said because they had, for so long, depended on outside aids, still in many cases. I’m afraid that if I say something like they’ll take … I try to make sure that any time anything is being done financially, and I think it’s always done through my Kenyan counterparts, because they see me and see … I don’t know how real they are sometimes. They might just do what I say, when it’s just a thought, because they think they’ll get resources from it.

I have to be really careful about that too, because I want to know from them what’s most helpful and I don’t want it to be about just throwing money at the problem because that’s what I thought was really going to help at the beginning. Of course we need resources, but if you just keep throwing resources at it, your ministry is going to be very small. A ministry has to be led by the local people. It has to be going forward that way because otherwise, its’ just going to be stagnant and you won’t be inclusive, you won’t grow.

We would have had maybe one church if we went the way we were going. Now, when we tell them … We come in trying very hard to say it’s not about- I think my director, now that he’s seen where I live in the United States, he is like, “Listen, she doesn’t have money. Really.” Anyone else, in terms of anything that you would have a question on a disability model? Again, a model- it’s like a start. But, then, be open to it changing.

Male: This isn’t a model question, but do you take care of the adults in these places? Cynthia: That’s one of our big challenges right now. We have children that shouldn’t be in

school right now, but they still are. We are trying to figure that out. That’s when our director came to Kenya and visited a L'Arche community to see if … We are really trying to see if we can- because there is nothing else where we are in Kenya, there is


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not as many services as there are here- we are actually depending on the church a lot more than how the church would be here.

Just this last January, we lost a little girl, who was very special to me, her name is Emily. She died of pneumonia, from untreated malaria. The pastor was the one who referred her to us in the first place. I forgot your question, what was your question again?

Male: If you take care of the adults. Cynthia: Who takes care of the adults? After that all happened, it was a really hard time, I’m

still kind of dealing with it. The pastors, after I had a workshop with the pastors and I told them about what happened to Emily, one of the pastors said, “We need to do something about these children.” I’m saying that they also need to be doing something about the adults. I think that once they get out of school, as we’ve existed long enough for children to be aging out of school that still have dependent disabilities, we are really trying to figure out.

Because we don’t want to send them back into a situation they were in. If the parents are older, just like here, it’s too much. We are really trying harder to work more and more with the churches to see if the churches can come alongside and help, actually take people into their homes. Again, one of the key things that’s beautiful to me in my experience in Kenya is that people are much more open to people being in their homes than we are here. I had a Kenyan pastor come and speak at a mission’s conference in the U.S. He said, “You people out here all say you’ll die for Christ.” He is like, “You won’t even inconvenience yourself for Christ.” Which I think is a big American problem. When it comes to disability, it’s kind of a big inconvenience. I think that in Kenya because they are already more open in their homes, they are more- hopefully if we can get the right mindset, we’re hoping- it’s a long challenge, it’s a long road. We are trying.

There is also a large community that just started in Kenya. Again, they are small communities. You can’t depend on just one program. That’s why I think the churches, if they are all doing their part, then there is not as much need for the larger programs to happen.

Male: What did you say about L'Arche? Cynthia: L’Arche, it’s: L-’-A-R-C-H-E. It’s the ark. It’s a French word and it’s a community,

it’s where people with disabilities, usually adults live in community with people that don’t have disabilities as a family structure, not an institution, but they live in houses.


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Maybe five or six of them in one and they have a true relationship and friendship and they are a family.

Male: [Inaudible.] Cynthia: Yeah, it’s like that. Any other questions or comments? Feel free if you want to talk to

me later on about anything. I’m more than happy to share with you about that. There is a lot of information on our website, you can look at our annual reports, all that kind of stuff, if you are interested. It’s 11:30, you guys are free go to, if you want to come talk to me, feel free. Thanks so much.

Joni: Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada. Thank you for listening to this audio resource from the

Global Access Association, sponsored by Joni and Friends. To find more disability resources and to connect with others involved in disability ministry around the globe, go to www.gaa.joniandfriends.org and sign up for a free membership today.

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Global Access Conference 2015 Workshop Global Disability ... · Page 1 of 22 Joni: I am Joni Eareckson Tada and you are listening to a resource from the Global Access Association,