Gladys K. Mwiti, Counseling Psychologist, Founder and Executive Director, has a Director of the Institute for Counseling and Training at the Oasis in Nairobi, Kenya. In addition to his work at Oasis, Gladys is chairman of the Kenyan Association of Christian Advisors. Her husband, Gershon, is the leader of the national African Enterprise group, the ministry of African consultant countries. Gladys and Gershon have three daughters and one son. At the November 1997 AACC conference, I spent some time with Gladys talking about her pioneering work in Kenya.
Tell me about yourself, your experience and how you are confronted with God.
I was born in the region of Meru in Kenya, near the snowy northern slopes of the mountain. Kenya. This is a pretty cold area. I grew up in a Christian home. My mother loves the Lord. She has always been a woman of prayer, and I love being like her. She used to take me to church and to huge agreements.
In Africa, we have huge evangelistic meetings, people sitting on the green grass under the sun. This is where I accept the Lord as my Savior. We were at a 3000-strong convention, and the gospel was preached by John 3:16. I remember that the preacher said: “This is not so much a sin that you committed in your life; that the Lord loves you so much, and what he asks of you, could you love me a little in return? As a seven-year-old, I did not see my sin so bad. I knew that it was my fault to lick the cream from the top of the milk, when my mother did not look, did not take, and did not eat bread from the cupboard. What I really saw in myself that day was a heart that was desired and willing to know the love of God.
I probably should mention that my father was a Christian. He brought my mother to the Lord before they got married. She was never in church, so when they met, my father took her to church, and she accepted the Lord as her Savior in the East African Renaissance in the late 1940s – 1950s, who transformed much of the Church in Kenya in the Gospel churches. Mom met the Lord in this rebirth, but then her father retreated. He left Christianity, he became richer, he became a businessman, a farmer and him, as if he did not need much from the Lord. He even married a second wife, and at home there was a lot of tension and stress. Sometimes, as a child, I wanted more peace in my home. Dad drank alcohol, came home sometimes and rudely my mom. I longed for fatherly love, a father I could trust. There was so much uncertainty with my father that when I heard the preacher speak of God who loved me, I longed for that security.
I knew that if this God was the God of my mother, I could rely on him as a father. When the altar was called that day, I literally ran to the front, joining a hundred other people. Now it is not unusual to dismiss or accept the light, ardent adherence of children to rebirths. Some people think that small children cannot make a decision for the Lord. But when I went to the front among a crowd of adults that day, an old man at the age of 70 years old, he was wearing a huge coat, and he had such a big, soft hand that I, bent over my knee, and just gathered me about yourself hugging me. I remember disappearing into his coat, and it was so cute and comfortable that I didn’t want to leave. I still remember the smell of his coat. He just hugged me, and it symbolized the acceptance of me, the child, into the church of Christ. He also represented safety and a sense of belonging. I was one of the brothers.
Since then, the church took me seriously, because next Sunday I was put on the table and asked to share my testimonies about what the lord did! I said, and today they tell me that some people were challenged, and they were disturbed as a result of my testimony. Since that time, I have not stopped talking about the Lord. I talked to thousands of young people in schools, ministries of women and ministries of couples. After I married my husband, Gershon, an evangelist, we continued to preach together. I went to college, got an education and taught physics and chemistry at school for about 14 years before the Lord called me at the Ministry of Counseling. How did you see the area of the counseling center and change the part of the world where you work? Some of us are literally pioneers in the field of counseling in countries. When in 1990 I started working at the Oasis Counseling Center, I knew very few people who were permanently in Christian counseling in Kenya. Therefore, I was in fact a part of the ministry of premiere professional Christian counseling. There are very few consultations, so most of my time is spent on the church being a community for counseling, rather than expecting people to collapse and then come to the Oasis.
The changes I saw are the changes that have occurred to some of us in this area. The consulting ministry in Kenya is professional, Christian and boldly prevents them in nature. Many people opened the door for us, since my husband and I have been working with the church for a long time. We were able to present programs such as couples seminars, along with our preaching and evangelism.
Trust in our way of life encouraged people to trust us. We found the doors swing open from the bishops to the people, and I think this is what helped the lawyer move through Africa. Yes it's true. The reason I decided to change my profession was because students continued to bring their problems to me. I found that the children had so many problems that I could not adequately help them. What really prompted me to counsel was the next story. I was the deputy principal. One morning, I was about to make a meeting for the Morning Prayer, when a girl entered the school, crying. I could see that she was really stressed. Mrs. Mwiti, I need to talk to you right now. Susan, now I can't talk to you, I was going to do the assembly. But I have to talk to you! She said. Ok, I said. Go to your office and I will talk to you as soon as I can get together. When I finished the meeting and entered my office, she was still crying. Now this girl was about 15 years old, and I brought her to the Lord a year ago, so I knew that she was a Christian. I told her, Susan, what? And she began to tell me this story: since I was saved, I was able to cope with the stress in my family.
My family has been under a lot of stress for a long time. Dad drinks heavily, comes home drunk, and then starts to fight my mother. We live in a puppet, and often I have to climb stairs when dad comes home. I have to put my ear to the keyhole, because I know that someday he will start beating his mother, and I need to climb into it in order to separate them. I am the first child, and I have three other brothers, younger than me, and a child about two years old. This week the tension was very high at home. Dad walked in at 3:00 last night, and I stayed to make sure he slept quickly before something broke out. But last night they did not fight. This morning I went downstairs to school, and my younger brother, who never went there early in the morning, was also dressed.
Our house was helped; the young guy who lives with us to help with the child was also dressed. I said: Mom, where is John going? and mom said: "We are leaving. Where? I asked. Who is leaving? Susan, stop asking so many questions. What I want you to do is go to your room, get everything you think is necessary, and come down. We leave in the next five minutes. Even dad? I asked. I am not talking about your father; I said we are leaving. I knew something was terribly wrong. Finally, I said, “But we cannot leave dad alone. If you think you love your father so much, then you can stay with him; if you think you love me, you will come with me.
But mom, it's not a question of love. Who is going to cook for him, care for him ... I'm confused. Someone should stay with dad! Finally, I said that I did not know what I was going to do, but I was going to stay with my dad. Then I took the school bag, and I ran to the school. Mrs. Mwiti, I want you to tell me, did I make the right decision? Now, in the teacher's college, they taught me how to teach physics, how to test chemicals and how to do laboratory projects, but they didn’t teach me how to serve children who are in pain. I looked at my heart and told myself, Gladys Mwiti, you had enough physics teaching and chemistry teaching to get out of here! For a while I felt this disorder, seeing how painful the children in the classroom are not focused, hungry, in pain, emotionally frozen. I went home, and I told my husband that I was in the wrong place, and the Lord said that you would go out! Therefore, by faith, I had to go back to school to study psychology. The only place I could study in Kenya is Secular University, United States International University, which has a campus in San Diego, California (mother campus) and this campus in Nairobi. I studied psychology so that I could have years. I continued to read and integrate the work of Larry Crabbe, James Dobson and others. Soon, the Lord made it clear that he wants me to begin my ministry work in the Oasis. The struggle was powerful, I mean very large, in creating this work in Africa, but it was very satisfactory.
So, was your job mostly with teens?
I work with everyone. When you talk about a ministry that is there with nothing else, you cannot say that I am a family, I do the youth. From the very beginning, I worked with young people, so I am very, very close to young people; I love them. We have a lot of youth counseling, which automatically goes to family counseling on marriage counseling, which leads to depression, stress management, conflict resolution, leadership training, etc. We started from a small urban population in Nairobi. Today, Nairobi is about three million, and there is almost nothing around. We have people coming to the consultation sessions from rural areas, 200-300 miles away. I lay back and I said: Lord, what else can we do now? The answer was to train community and church counselors. Then, sick people can find someone who can work with them, at least at the level of encouraging counseling, before they look for a professional. If we help lawyers set up counseling departments in the church, they can train other counselors to help with counseling. Then we teach pastors leadership skills. This is how we received training from mentoring consultants to reach rural communities and even the rest of the city, which we cannot achieve.
In 1990, we only focused on field consultations in Kenya, but by next year people came from the rest of Africa for three weeks in non-professional counseling skills, and then returned to their countries to create counseling ministries. Through this program we have 500 people scattered throughout Africa who are consulting. How did you get involved with consulting United Nations personnel when they were evacuated from Rwanda in 1994? In April 1994, the United Nations evacuated more than 300 of its employees and their families from Kigali. All hotels have been fully booked in Nairobi. This happened five days after the plane of the President of Rwanda was destroyed and entered early on the genocide. I just ended up loyalty, and a car drove up with a United Nations registration number. A Christian dry heber had a note on UN forms in which I was informed to report on one of the hotels in the city. I told my secretary to cancel my meetings, and I will call her from the hotel. When I entered the hotel lobby, there were bags and people.
The woman met me and took me to a small room: Gladys, she said, we need you to start something now. We have a fax from New York from the UN headquarters, condemning that all people evacuated last night should be interviewed. The instructions are that we cover them before they are deployed anywhere or sent home because they have seen such terrible things in Rwanda. We have created a room for you, and you can start your first group as soon as you are ready. I called my office and told me to reschedule everything over the next two months! When I consulted and analyzed UN personnel, he was later joined by the head of the advisory group from New York and two professional consultants / consultants from Canada. For two months we worked with the staff and their families, and it was so tiring.
How did you take care of yourself in the middle of this job?
I could not take care of myself until the end of two months; it was crazy. But my husband is a great guy; he can just sit and listen to me for a few hours, so he did a lot of debriefing for me. But by the end of two months I was planning some time with a professional consultant. I saw him in several sessions, but I was in such a state of mind that I could not return to work for another month. What I understood about UN staff members is that very few of them actually experienced any kind of injury. Their experience of injury was heard by gunshots and grenades. Some of them remembered how they looked at the mountains. For example, one of them said: I remember a dog chewing a human hand when we leave Kigali for Bujumbura in Burundi, and then ship it to Nairobi. I appreciated the fact that the UN wanted to get advice for its employees, whether people were injured or not. And some of them did not think that they were affected until the middle of their sessions. Then they just burst into tears. I still had more concern about the abandoned Rwandans. The UN was so concerned about their employees, who had lost a lot of one member of their family (they thought that some of them saw the colleges killed), but who was concerned about the millions of Rwandans? The men, women and children who saw blood, some of them lay under dead bodies for several days, some of them live for months who advise Rwandans?
I asked the head of the advisory ministry, the Nairobi office and the advisory group in New York what they were doing to help the Rwandans. The answer came back the same: nothing. So I went to the All-African Council of Churches, the oversight body of the Protestant churches is in Africa. What are we doing in Rwanda? I asked. What can we do, Mrs Mwiti? I went to the Evangelical Association of Africa, a body that takes care of evangelical churches. Nothing! I went to people who, as I knew, had regional branches operating in Nairobi, but not working in Rwanda! I was very upset, and so my husband once looked at me and said: “Gladys, you seem to be asking people for a long time about what they are doing in Rwanda. What are you doing in Rwanda? Me? I asked. I am too small. Too small? he replied. If the Lord wants you in Rwanda, is he not big enough for that?
I began to read, write and research. By the end of 1994, I had materials for training, but I did not know what to do with them. Someone heard about me and published these materials. By February 1994, we published the materials. By April 1994, they were transferred to Kenya and Rwanda, and we began consultations on injuries in Rwanda. Since 1995, we have trained 216 consultants in Rwanda. But since then, each of them has consulted or trained 60 people. Thus, today we have over 10,000 people consulting in Rwanda. Counseling and small groups are growing everywhere. We accept them through the process of healing ourselves, because you cannot bring healing to others until you are healed. They go home with Bible study materials and pastor notes that we have prepared. In group counseling, they support each other when they complete their healing. By the end of the 10-week Bible study, they are already coping with the needs of poverty, the needs of AIDS, and they are creating them in small development projects such as chickens and goats. Here are some of the programs we participate in Oasis. Over the course of the year, our three-week training of counselors developed through other programs, such as training people working with children from dysfunctional families, street children, orphans and children who have been abused.
What are your future goals?
The need for Christian counseling on the African continent is not just to deal with people and problems, but to help shape people's behavior. Я имею в виду всю проблему ценностей. Ценности, которые мешают семьям рушиться, ценности, которые удерживают детей от наркотиков. Я говорю о библейских убеждениях, что люди иногда не хотят быть достаточно смелыми, чтобы преподавать, и я думаю, что у христианских консультантов есть цель учить. Все больше христианских консультантов нужно обучать смело анализировать происходящее, а затем помогать родителям преподавать ценности своим детям, помогать руководителям понимать принципы руководства слугами, помогать отцам быть лучшими отцами.
Моя мечта для Африки - это всеафриканский учебный институт христианской консультации, в котором люди не просто изучают навыки, но могут придумывать материалы и стратегии для достижения массы. Если мы не научим людей жить, мы оставляем их в вакууме. Мы продолжим обучение консультантов, но нам нужно больше профессиональных консультантов, которые займут место в богословских колледжах, учебных заведениях и университетах, и убедитесь, что христианская консультация является частью учебного плана в этих местах.
Это моя мечта. Что бы вы хотели сказать членам AACC об их вкладе в консультирование в Кении и Африке? Я очень рад, что члены AACC смотрят за пределы Америки. Мне нравится это или нет, Америка - наше мировое влияние сегодня. Доллар стал международной валютой. Весь мир тяжело позади Америки. Мы получаем от вас больше, чем долларов. Когда фильм выпущен в Голливуде, он попадает в Найроби в ближайшие пару недель. С Интернетом связь между Лос-Анджелесом и Найроби мгновенно. Моя молитва заключается в том, что члены AACC поймут, что они формируют христианское консультирование по всему миру тем фактом, что мы в Африке знаем, что вы любите Господа, и мы следим за вашим руководством. Вы не можете отступить и сказать нам, не следует. Поэтому мы надеемся, что Бог живет в людях не только по своей валюте. Везде, где доллар находит свое место, христианское консультирование должно найти свое место.
Поэтому я хотел бы, чтобы члены AACC помнили, что Африка больше страны; это континент с исламом, христианством и анималистическими религиями. Мне нужно восемь часов, чтобы лететь с востока на Западную Африку. Господь может возглавить членов ААКК, чтобы помочь нам другими способами, и мы будем этому благодарны, но в основном я хочу призвать всех вас следовать за Господом, потому что мы следим за тобой. Звучит как вызов более высокой ответственности! Позвольте мне кратко сказать, что о том, что я был много лет назад, Господь наделил мое сердце необходимостью ассоциации христианских консультантов быть аккредитованным органом. Потому что потребность настолько велика, что каждый может сам стать консультантом. У нас есть люди, которые едут на неделю, и они возвращаются, говоря, что я прошел обучение, и теперь я профессионал. Я так долго молился и работал, и, наконец, в 1996 году была зарегистрирована Ассоциация христианских советников Кении. Я являюсь нынешним председателем, и комитет по аккредитации прилагает все усилия, чтобы установить стандарты обучения и аккредитации. Его мечта сбылась. Уже сейчас многие другие страны Африки говорят: приезжайте и помогите нам сформировать наши собственные ассоциации. Очень скоро мы собираемся начать посещать различные страны, объединять их вместе и помогать им создавать христианские консультационные ассоциации в своих странах.
Это будет способствовать обучению, оно будет поощрять стандарты, и оно также сможет продвигать университеты или богословские колледжи в своих странах для создания христианских консультационных отделов. Когда это произойдет, мы будем искать AACC, чтобы время от времени посылать нам людей, чтобы приехать и учить в некоторых местах. В Oasis мы надеемся получить диплом по христианским консультациям, преподавать его в Институте, а также магистерскую программу. Нам нужны люди из Америки, чтобы прийти и помочь нам настроить ее так же, как и людей в издательстве, чтобы помочь нам с книгой old_resources. Насколько велики ваши сотрудники в Oasis, и как бы вы охарактеризовали свой подход к христианскому консультированию? Есть шесть штатных сотрудников, включая меня, а затем четыре неполных профессиональных консультанта. У нас есть 33 специалиста по подготовке персонала, потому что у нас есть огромная учебная программа. К профессионалам относятся пасторы, врачи, психологи, некоторые из которых учат в университетах-психиатрах и преподавателях университетов. Все они совершаются христианами, которые любят Господа и следуют нашей модели христианского консультирования. Наш подход в основном утверждает падшую природу человека, тот факт, что Бог хочет, чтобы мы трансформировались, а не просто чтобы быть спасенным, но чтобы менялись изнутри, и что, когда Христос приходит, он перевертывает вещи вверх дном, и нам нужно жить в соответствии с ним. Я действительно могу сказать, что около 75% тех, кто пришел к нам, если раньше они не были христианами, они становятся христианами во время консультирования. Или, если они слабы в своей христианской прогулке, их поощряют, прежде чем они уйдут. Наш подход не имеет прямого характера; его более эклектичная модель. Но это в основном модель, которая помогает людям познакомиться с Господом и жить в послушании ему к концу терапии. Телефонная терапия - прекрасное средство, которое поможет вам.
С какими проблемами вы сталкиваетесь в Oasis, которые могут быть уникальными для Кении?
Мне не нужно рассказывать вам, потому что вы видите, с этой проблемой глобальной модели, мы так же больны, как и все остальные! Высокий список - это семейные проблемы, семейные проблемы, молодежное восстание, злоупотребление наркотиками, стресс и депрессия. В основном проблемы связаны с изменениями, происходящими в Африке. Мне говорят, что к 2000 году 45% африканцев будут жить в городах. Жестокое обращение с детьми очень сильно возрастает, поэтому нет ничего уникального. Кения - это страна, в которой большинство людей ходят в школу, поэтому мы сталкиваемся с теми же проблемами, с которыми сталкивается любой другой центр, ориентированный на деньги, с материальным центром. Большинство наших племенных структур были довольно прочными, но со всей мобильностью людей столкнулись со всей обрушившейся структурой сообщества, приходом индивидуализма и самопожертвованием. Когда проблемы приходят, они едят из ядра. Разница в том, что у вас нет инструментов и старых_ресурсов, которые у нас есть в Северной Америке. В точку! И поэтому дезинтеграция будет быстрее, поэтому нам нужно постоянно работать. Вот почему я убежден, что церковь представляет пример. Я хочу быстро отделаться от бизнеса. Чем больше церковь делает то, что церковь должна делать, тем лучше для общества. Бог хочет, чтобы каждый человек использовал свои дары, а дар поощрения может принадлежать даже ребенку. Итак, я должен умножить себя, и чем раньше я это сделаю до 2000 года, тем лучше.
