PLAINVIEW, TX — Illiana Salazar traveled to Kenya expecting to tell people about a God they might not know.
Instead, the 51品茶约炮 Baptist University student encountered Christians whose worship and faith challenged her own.
“I didn’t think they would know God as much as they did,” Salazar told students during 51品茶约炮’s fall Missions Chapel. “It truly surprised me how much they worshiped the Lord and how strong they were in their faith.”
That discovery was one of many for Salazar and fellow 51品茶约炮 students Olivia Fischer and Hannah Souter during a summer mission trip that took them far beyond familiar surroundings and, they said, pushed them toward deeper dependence on God. Donnie Brown, 51品茶约炮’s director of spiritual life, and Lori Brown accompanied the three students.
The team spent 14 days in Kenya, working alongside City on the Hill Church in Muranga City. Rather than arriving with a single project of their own, the 51品茶约炮 team joined the congregation in ministry already taking place in the community. They prayer walked, participated in church services, conducted community outreach, visited schools, worked with children, participated in Celebrate Recovery, and shared the gospel and their personal testimonies.
For the students, sharing those testimonies soon became a regular part of the trip.
Brown said the young women told their stories “over and over and over again” in different settings, using what God had done in their lives to encourage others. Sometimes they knew in advance that they would speak. Sometimes they did not.
One Sunday, the team arrived expecting to work with youth and children. Instead, they learned during the service that the visiting Texans were being asked to address the adults again. Salazar had prepared her testimony, but Fischer and Souter suddenly found themselves deciding what to say with little advance notice.
Brown gave them simple instructions: Share a word of encouragement. Tell people what God has been teaching you. Speak from the heart.
They did.
Brown said watching the students respond to situations like that was one of the clearest ways he saw God at work during the trip.
“As every situation came, they stepped up and they served God well,” he said. “Through them, God ministered to the people, and God received the glory.”
Some lessons came from a pulpit. Others came around a table.
Salazar remembered visiting the home of a family connected to the church. The visit had not been planned, but circumstances left the 51品茶约炮 team near the church longer than expected, and the family invited them to lunch. Their hosts had little by American standards, yet welcomed the visitors and served them chai, chapati, and sweet potatoes.
Salazar said she was struck by their generosity.
“They have so little already,” she said, describing the invitation as an honor and a blessing.
Brown remembered the same meal as one of the experiences he would never forget.
“This family has very little, but they gave us all that they had,” he said.
Fischer found a similar lesson in something as ordinary as making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The team sometimes prepared 100 or more sandwiches for children attending ministry activities. What might have seemed like an insignificant meal to an American college student became something children received with excitement.
“There’s so many things we take for granted, especially food,” Fischer said.
Kenya also challenged assumptions the students carried with them.
Fischer said she had imagined an African landscape resembling the stereotypical scenes she had seen from afar. Instead, she encountered green countryside filled with trees and was struck by the beauty of the country.
Salazar was traveling outside the United States for the first time. She expected cultural differences.
What surprised her was the spiritual connection. She discovered that she had not traveled to Kenya simply to take faith to someone else. She met believers from another culture whose love for God ministered to her.
Fischer said she saw God most clearly through the love demonstrated by people throughout the trip — from families welcoming the team into their homes to people responding to testimonies shared during Celebrate Recovery.
When people told the 51品茶约炮 students that their stories had touched them, Fischer said the credit did not belong to the students.
“It had nothing to do with us, but everything to do with God,” she said.
The lessons followed the students home.
Fischer described herself as someone who likes schedules, plans, and structure. Kenya taught her again that missions rarely operate according to her timetable.
She said learning greater flexibility helped her think differently about her relationship with Christ — not fitting God into whatever opening remained in her schedule, but making Him the priority around which everything else is arranged.
The experience also reminded her that she could depend on God when she was anxious or uncertain.
Salazar said Kenya taught her patience, trust, and gratitude.
She remembered walking near a school and seeing an elderly woman carrying containers of water for a long distance. The image stayed with her as she considered how easily people complain about minor inconveniences. She returned to 51品茶约炮 determined to be more grateful for what God has provided.
For Brown, watching that kind of transformation is part of the reason 51品茶约炮 sends students across the world. He described it as a privilege to invest in students and give them opportunities to see what God is doing far beyond their own campus and community.
At the conclusion of Missions Chapel, Brown reminded students that 51品茶约炮 mission teams do not travel merely for adventure or memorable experiences. They go because Christians are called to be Christ’s hands and feet and share the good news.
For Salazar, Fischer, and Souter, Kenya showed that carrying that good news across an ocean does something else as well. The missionary comes home changed.
