The Trip of a Lifetime

I had been working in Busia for a little under two months and I began to see myself becoming impatient with the progress of the ministry. I would go to hang out with the kids on the street with my spare time. As I approached them I would find them there in a landfill type area huddled in a circle inhaling airplane fuel that has been dumped days earlier. After weeks of seeing the same thing it’s hard to continue to visit because it just breaks your heart. The kids come to our meetings we love on them, play with them, they are able to feel like a kid for maybe two hours. Then they go back to the streets and its right back to the street life. I deeply desired an answer. I knew God was with us but I was waiting on the next move

. It was after a meeting one Saturday that I received a text from my grandmother (MeMe) that was just encouraging and insisted that I needed to rest. For the first time in a long time I sat on the couch in our little apartment and I thought how rest sounds very good. I began to think about how as Christians our first job is the just simply receive the love of the father and become overjoyed with his amazing glory and grace. We are to let our cups overflow with his Holy Spirit, love, and joy. Out of the overflow of our cups we are to poor out the amazing blend of acceptance onto everyone we meet and it’s out of that that people wonder what it is that we contain and we can explain how to receive the joy of Jesus Christ.

 For me I had been trying to love these boys with a dry cup. I was trying to be a daddy for these boys and love without first letting my daddy love me. It’s easy to do not just in Busia but anywhere. We have to let Jesus lavish his love on us and when we know that love, and walk with that love then we are capable of spreading it in a loving way. If you read the book of 1^st Corinthians Ch.13 it states very clearly “If I speak in tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing.” That hit me hard. I was striving to be a light but I was not doing it out of the Love of Jesus but my own love. And what is going to change the hearts of these boys I cannot offer. Not with all the money or strategic plans in the world.

So I took my grandmother up on the offer I wanted to enter a time a rest and restoration with God. I told her I would keep her updated. It was later that night when I received a text from a friend of mine who was attending a ministry school ran by a women named Hydi Baker in Pemba, Mozambique. My friend told me I needed to come, it was a great place to rest and grow with God. I looked on the map and it would take traveling by bus across Kenya, through Tanzania and into Mozambique. I wanted to go but I had a couple of issues. The first being money. I knew I would never spend ministry money on a personal trip to see a friend in Mozambique even if I was going to rest. Second how can the director of a ministry that’s not even off the ground leave on a short notice? I began to pray and it clicked I called my Grandmother and told here my situation and like all amazing Grandmothers do she decided to help me and cover my trip cost in full! (gotta love em). Then I remember how I was not the only one in charge of the ministry my best friend and founder of the ministry itself Cornel was with me and it would make since to ease off and see how Cornel does on his own for a couple of weeks. After all I have to return home at some point and it will be up to Cornel, so it was time to show some trust and faith.

Next thing I knew I packed lightly and efficiently only carrying what I needed for I was traveling almost 2,000 miles by road to Pemba. Price was awesome because bus tickets were dirt cheap and the long rides would give me time to think, read, and write our constitution for our community based organization application. So off I went an overnight bus across Kenya to Mombasa (14 hours). I caught a straight bus across the border, down the coast and into the capital city of Tanzania. I stayed a night at a five dollar hotel and then boogied on down to Mozambique. Luckily for me it was Ramadan and all the coast is predominantly Islamic so I was able to experience loud prayers and Arabic sermons. I didn’t mind, in fact it gave me a great gateway to share my faith with a lot of my Islamic brothers and sisters. I made it the boarder after a 2 hour motorcycle ride, and a couple of broken down buses upon arrival was informed that as of two weeks before no one can get a Mozambique visa at the boarder anymore. I researched and nothing was on the internet any warning but tuff luck. I looked at my options and found that the best thing would be to travel back to Der Salam the capital of Tanzania (which I just traveled a 12 hour bus ride) and get the visa from the Mozambique embassy. So I was kind of enjoying the bus rides I had read more of the bible and listened to more worship music than I had in the past couple of months combined. So the next morning I left and after meeting, riding, sharing, herring and more ridding I had made the trip to and from Der Salaam and was back at the same border. The man asked me “Are you not tired?” I just said I feel more rested than I have ever felt in my life! 2 days later I was in Pemba and I found my friend Mary Catherine and we celebrated.

Pemba left me in states of aw I was surrounded by a community of 400 radical believers from all around the world who all had come from different walks of life. Each person had a unique amazing testimony about Christ and what he had done in their life. It was a great experience. I was able to here many encouraging messages and meet many encouraging people. Jesus helped me find other people who also worked with street children and had ministries of their own. Herring their stories made me feel so at home and blessed and really made me miss the Busia Boyz! So I stayed for a week that felt like a day and I left back for Busia. To see Iris Ministry and where faith took a women like Hydi Baker made me so encouraged and I knew Jesus could do the same things he had done with Hydi in me as well. I made it back safe and sound to my home and new it was time to get back to work. I wanted this time no to go, go, go until I was burnt out and then seek God to repair my damaged soul. I had learned to make that restoration process a daily task. The first thing we should do as Christians is wake up, use the bathroom, and then start receiving the love of Christ through the supernatural nature of Holy Spirit manifested on an earthly realm. As a matter of fact why stop letting God love us. Let us just continue receiving all day even in our sleep. I hope that daily we can see the fruits of the spirit being displayed in our own lives. Imagine a life lived with Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness Faithfulness Gentleness and Self-control. It sounds heavenly, true. That’s because when you live life as it says in Galatians 5:22, you are in fact bringing heaven to this earth. A heaven people are dying to feel a heaven that will wreck someone’s persona of a life lived in the comfort of self-interest and self-investment. When the purpose of life shifts away from us and we humble ourselves to see how small we are and how big our God is its simple to see that the purpose of life is to spend these 80 years (if you’re lucky) just receiving Gods love he has stored for use since the beginning of time. As Daniel writes in Psalms 139 “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” God knows us, he loves us, he just desires for us to know him, to understand he is not a distant God that just sits on his thrown and observes but that he is love, he is alive and he is here.

When I started living with that mentality it made life, ministry, and my relationship with God a lot easier and more fulfilling. On the many bus rides I was able to finish the constitution. We gathered the selected committee members together and had our first meeting for the community based organization. I traveled to Kisumu for a hopeful visa renewal and on the same day Cornel traveled to the Kenyan Government office to submit the lengthy application we worked a month to complete. With some smooth talk and an abundance of favor I was able to get three more months added to my visa. With a divine miracle and Jesus present in the room Cornel walked in the office of the Director of Gender, Children, and Social Development and without hesitation the man smiled and asked what took us so long. We did not wait for two weeks like we were supposed to but Cornel left that day with a certificate of registration in his hand. Jesus.

 

To continue to follow our journeys please join our facebook group at The Shelter of United Love (S.O.U.L) Ministries and friend request Haden Hallman and Cornel Ojwang. Thank you for your support and prayers!

Believe Always,

              Haden Hallman

Falling in Love with this Never-ending Joy

July 4-July 30

I have come to the conclusion that faith and joy go hand in hand. The more joy you experience the more faith seems to follow and vice versa.

            It was just a typical day of outreach in the border town of Busia Kenya. Cornel and I had finished our twenty million daily tasks early and we decided to pay a visit to the greatest kids in the world who also happen to be our street kids. We walked up and after hiding the paint thinner drenched rags they had been getting high on all day the boys ran into our arms and we squeezed them releasing the abundance fumes from the drugs into our cloths. We invited them to soccer the following Saturday and did our handshakes and made funny faces. Then God really put a boy on my heart, his name is Edwin. Edwin is 11 years old, covered with a skin disease and lice, and has no plans to go home anytime soon. Cornel and I took Edwin to the side of the boarder and we sat in a ditch if sewage (because that was the only place where we could get some privacy). We were followed by my favorite boy in the world Aruna Ogogo. Aruna is around 11 year old, his growth has been stunted by years of Drugs making him look a lot younger, he doesn’t know how old he is, he can’t count to ten, but he has a smile that will light up anybody’s world any day. It was in this gutter in the middle of nowhere Kenya with a couple of kids the world doesn’t even know exist that I experienced the most amazing, overwhelming, catastrophic, sensation of joy that I had every felt in my whole life. I had Aruna in my arms while talking to Edwin about how awesome he is and the answer hit me. It was not at a football game with 100,000 people, not at a church with the best worship band on the planet (though that’s awesome and highly recommended), not with the best looking women in the world, or best car, cloths, house, it was there in the simplicity of Gods excellence that I experienced what Jesus had been trying to tell me for years. Joy is simple. Simple doesn’t always mean easy. It took me selling everything I had, giving up my future in athletics, college, and any chance of a girlfriend I had to find joy like Jesus talks about all in the gospels. But the awesome thing was it didn’t stop there. Along with this overwhelming joy I was also ravished by overwhelming faith (Awesome). This divine faith in this God that has given me such joy left me in states of wonder that carried me through my days. We finished our talk with Edwin and Aruna and said by to the boys.

            To catch everyone up one the past couple of weeks of ministry and not leave anyone hanging. We had our meeting with the District Children’s Officers of Busia regarding the initiation of us begging the process to becoming a Faith Based Organization with the Kenyan Government. The meeting went absolutely amazing and we had so much favor. We talked and discussed the issue with the head honcho and he gave us great advice. Instead of becoming a Faith Based Organization which would take months and a trip to Nairobi to register first as a N.G.O he recommended us taking the path of becoming a Community Based Organization. The process would not be hard and we could work our way up to one day becoming a children’s home (Sounded easy until he handed us the paper work haha). First step form a committee, next write constitution. So we began right away. Luckily I listened in English enough in High school and did a couple of English classes in college so I had a pretty good mind set to what a constitution should look like. So for the past couple of weeks even up till now we have been getting everything in order covering every inch of what will be the foundations to this organization. Once we have installed the nitty-gritties it’s going to be fun watching Jesus blast us with his beams of joy, prosperity, and growth.

            I cannot talk about the past couple of weeks without displaying my gratitude for the Adventures in Missions team that has been working in Busia with the Church we had worked with previously. This team has been such a blessing for our ministry and they have literally been there for us every step of the way. They were able to poor into us so much but the best part about this team is the way they encouraged us unconditionally and relentlessly. I like to picture life as a colossal slip in slide and encouragement it the baby oil that makes that slip in slide even better. (Jesus

is the boogie board used to shred down it). Unfortunately for us but awesome for a lot of happy friends and family in the U.S/Canada this team returned home this week but because of their willingness and servants hearts a group of street children along with a small dusty town in east Africa will never be the same.  

We always made a joke that we as Christians travel to third world countries all across the globe thinking we are going to radically rock people’s worlds (which is very true) and then when we ourselves get radically rocked, it’s always an adventure. It’s pretty funny to think that God sends us places not as missionaries but to become missionaries to come back to places like America and awaken the thirsty lost soul’s trapped in complacency and obligation. This reminds me of another pretty cool heavy revy (Super Life Changing Revelation) I had when in a bible study with a couple of the girls in the group. We make jokes about Kenyan time and Mazungu time (white person time). Kenyans are always late, but what I have come to learn from Cornel (worlds latest person) it’s not because they are lazy or irresponsible it’s because the leave room to let Holy Spirit control their days and not a peace of technology on their wrist or  in their pocket. When you read the New Testament when Jesus was praying and getting personal time with daddy his boat left him. No big deal for Jesus he hops on the water with full faith that God is in control. I want to live life like that. Set aside all the daily obligations and set schedule and just live by the spirit and if your boat of daily responsibilities leaves you just have enough faith from the joy in your heart to simple walk on the water we call life. Thank you everyone for all of your support it truly is working and its such a blessing to be a part of!

 

For more information and pictures go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/331153680340551/

or friend request Cornel Ojwang / Haden Hallman on facebook.

 

           

Learning How Strong My Daddy's Grip Is

Learning How Strong My Daddy’s Grip Is

When Paul is talking to God in 2^nd Corinthians about his weaknesses and God tells him that even in his weakness God is made strong.  When you put that in perspective of real life it really is true in our weakest times God seems to be there always, but as Christians are we supposed to be weak or strong? What I have come to realize is that the more we are humbled to how small we are the more we realize how big God is, that’s when we draw close to our father and go deeper into his brilliance. It’s like a brain freeze of a realization it hits me and I forget how powerful it is until it hits me again. The more I grow close to God I see my job is not to become a bigger, stronger, more perfect Christian, it’s actually about me making myself less and putting everyone ahead of me! Jesus is awesome and his light shines so much brighter when I’m not trying to figure out where my glory is! But instead through the possession of Jesus in my life show people how glorious he is.

            When my team and I left Busia Kenya in May 2012 I was curious to see how the Street Kid ministry would do without us there. We left the ministry in the hands of a man named Cornel who would be working under a Church in Busia Kenya. The deal was that the Church would help cover food cost and form a committee for the sake of being a strong, organized, reliable, consistent program. In turn my team and I would go back and raise support in order to come back, buy land, and build a rehabilitation center for the kids. After a working a summer at an amazing Jesus filled camp in the hills of Northern California, and doing two semesters at the University of Alabama  I returned as promised but what I saw  was not what was promised. In fact the ministry that my team and I had left was barely hanging in the mix. I had not broken contact with Cornel so I was aware what was going on but to see it with my own eyes on that magnitude was a shocker. Cornel was left to feed 40 kids two times a week, pay medical bills, transportation for the kids that went home and many other things without support from the Church. So we talked to Pastor about the issue we heard the pastors dream that he wanted land, his church to grow, and for classrooms to be built. The problems were A. We came to Kenya for the street kids. B We did not have building a church for 64,000 in our budget C. We came for the street kids because got sent us to help the street kids. It was in our second meeting with Pastor that we made clear our goals were the same as they were a year ago and he did not do what he promised us he would. So we told him not to worry because it was in the past. To make sure that did not happen in the future we wanted to work with the church but we wanted to be responsible for the kids. We figured it would take a little pressure off his back. He was fine and then the issue of land came up. We told him the land was going to belong to the ministry, and it would be in the ministries name. That’s when things went downhill. We don’t know what plans Pastor had for the land but he was angry that we were not putting it in the Churches name. So long story short we are not working with that Church anymore. Cornel was pulled in front of the congregation and banished from the Church and I was told not to come back.  All because of money not being in the hands of the Pastor but it being in the right hands.

            So we clenched on to Jesus’s hand and moved forward! And oh boy did Jesus rock our worlds. We were able to meet with the founder of a Street Kid ministry that has been running strong for over ten years and has over 100 kids! They directed us on how to get started as an organization, who to contact and just blessed us with encouragement. They informed us we made the right discussions regarding the land and the Church and that God was really with us! Amen to that! So we kept our heads up and kept the ministry running from our house. We were able to start a soccer team with the kids and play local orphanages. We were blessed with the help from 12 missionaries who were working with the Church we got kicked out of but still insisted on helping us (ironic) J.  And now with a month of work done we are moving into the next stage of the ministry we have a meeting with the district children’s officer of Busia Kenya on June 5. In the meeting we will start the process of becoming a FBO (Faith Based Organization) with the Kenyan government. It may take a couple of months to fully be labeled but until then we will be able to work towards finding the right land with the right price and the right foundation that can one day support the dream God has given us for the ministry. We have been looking at land the past month but we know that God will provide in his time not ours. Once we are ready to rock and we get the land then the process comes to farm and build.  Our Kenya team for the month of June was great. Brad, Whitney, and Casey all did an absolutely amazing job at helping get everything off the ground. Though Cornel and I are sad to see them go we know that they are going to do big things in the next chapters of their lives.

As for Cornel and I we have just said by to the team in Jinga, Uganda! We head back to Busia tomorrow, and we are super excited to see what God is going to do next!!

Thank you for your support and prayers! Our hope is that your world gets turned upside down by the radical radiant love of Jesus Christ. Amen

Haden Hallman

 

 

 

 

And So It Begins...

Habari following family!
  Blessings and thanks for all the prayers and support,we have safely made it into Busia Kenya! We traveled across the Atlantic and into London and God even did amazing things there before the real mission even started! We were able to meet and bless many people with the true love and power of Jesus. After London we flew down Europe and upper Africa into Entebbe Uganda which is where we were picked up by Cornel. We then drove to Cornels sisters house and ate our first kenyan meal; chapati, rice, and stew( it will be the first of many).
  Seeing our house for the first time was pretty amazing. We have a 2 bedroom house with running water and nice furniture. Walking down the street was a work of God as well because we were able to see some kids that WERE on the street, homeless, now working and living with relatives. It has truly opened our eyes to see all of the humble people that make Kenya what it is! After one day of settling in Haden and Casey left to Katali to visit another street kid organization by the name of Challenge Farm. There we truly saw where faith can take you, a woman named Sherry with the name passion we have has done so much for street kids, we look forward to meeting with her continually and learn her wisdom she has gained through the years. 
  We returned and have been spending time with the kids and meeting with the leaders of the Church we are working through trying to get everything ready to begin the next step of the ministry which is to buy land and really pour unconditional love into the kids. Thank you for all of your love and support! Please keep our safety in your prayers!

Hey Guys,

    This is Haden and Casey we are two young men called by Jesus to do big things in a small town in western Kenya. Just a little history behind Street Kids of Busia Ministries; It all started when I (Haden) went on a nine month mission trip around the world after my senior year of high school. I went with a organization called Adventures in Missions where myself along with 19 others went to Nicaragua, Thailand, and Kenya all for three months a piece. It was in the last location, Kenya, where I was introduced to a highly overlooked problem that occurs in many 3rd world countries, street kids. I met a man with a burning desire to help the street children of Busia Kenya named Cornel Ojwang. Cornel was loving and compassionate but had little resources to help the large number of kids, his only support came through missionaries passing through the area as well as the local Church Cornel as well as my team attended. My team: Michaela, Elisa, Anna, Jake and I did the best we could to aid the children in the short 3 months we were in Busia. A lot was accomplished but a lot still needed to be done. I left with the Street Kids on my heart and now after a year I have been called to go back in order to help Cornel and Busia Deliverance Church. Little did I know God would put amazing people in my life such as my friends Brad Petrey and his wife Whitney and my other partner Casey who is a continuous miracle in aiding this adventures I'll let him tell you a little more...

     I, Casey, having just come off hiking the Appalachian Trail, really sought out to find what God's plan for my life truly was. While on the trail, it gave me a lot of insight of how beautiful God and His creation really is. The whole span of the 5 months I was out there walking I had a lot of time to reflect back on my life and build my character spiritually. It wasn’t until being back for about 6 months did I finally understand God's calling for me. After an altar call one Sunday morning I accepted that nothing in this world is mine and that I would give everything up for Him to use me for a greater purpose. I then knew from my travels and my passion for God that mission work really feels like what I would be made for. Having being involved with a bible study the guys were telling me about a guy named Haden, that I had known from high school, was going to be speaking at a men’s prayer breakfast on his testimony from his mission trip. After hearing the testimony I was more than intrigued and had to know more about how I could get involved. God led us together and now we are combining forces with my labor skills of masonry, farming, and carpentry and his passion for God and these kids, we have come together to buy a piece of property over in Busia, Kenya where we are going to be cultivating the land for crops and building a house to make it self-sustainable so that these kids can have a chance at life. We hope to help the church by feeding them and having a place for them to come and have fellowship in Christ. We pray for God's hand to be upon us and we hope to have the support from all of our readers whether that would be through prayers, encouragement, or if led financially, any of which will be of great value to us and the kids. Thank you for reading our first post and please be looking for more to come in the future from us as well as Brad and Whitney.                           Thanks and God Bless!

SKB Ministries