Pastor Enoch grabbed my hand.  “Come, I want you to meet my four mothers.”

     All four widows stood smiling, proud to claim this Pastor as family.  All four women had been married to Enoch’s father. 

   “Which one is “your” mom,” I asked.  

Her boastful stand and twinkling smile, gave her away. The bold matriarch with the green headscarf, was Enoch’s birth mom, but each love him with public display.  At his father’s death, Enoch expanded the commandment, “honor your father and mother” to include all four mothers.

Enoch partners with Pastor Simon Bulimo in the ministry of The Lord’s Widow Society ( a ministry Simon started while still at student at ICM Seminary).  Simon, Enoch’s mentor, is a 2002 ICM graduate, who models leadership, servanthood and the importance of a Biblical education.  Enoch is now a student at the ICM seminary in Kitale, Kenya.

 

Once a widow, an unseen member of African society, knows and feels she is seen, her life changes. Once she knows God “sees” her, the church “sees” her and she can “see” other widows, her life is never the same.

 

Before Pastors Enoch and Simon arrived, the widows of Chekalini, which means, “when did you last laugh?” wondered why they lived in a town with such a cruel name.  Their own town mocked them.  They remembered only tears.  A widow recalls the day her drunk abusive son steals her plot of land; the day she is branded a witch and shunned at the local market unable to sell her few vegetables; the day she learns she too has AIDS.  She remembers - and cries. 

 

Today, through The Lord’s Widow Society, hope and joy are returning.  The widow can be grateful God has placed her in “Chekalini.” She can now remember the last time she laughed.  A woman remembers the day she hugs her own goat, earns fees to send her daughter to school or exchanges what she has for what she lacks.  (One widow with AIDS, too sick to grow her own shamba (garden), invited a homeless widow and her five children, to live with her in exchange for labor on her acre of land.)  Both gain, when both give. 

 

Thanks to the work of Pastor Enoch and Pastor Simon, the vision of ICM and love of Christ, widows now laugh in Chekalini. 

To read more