Finding common ground with Kenyan women inspires missionary’s faith

All the meetings Debbie Keller attended in Kitui, Kenya, during a Center for Mission partnership trip started in a surprising way — whether they were about community building and resources or gatherings with local women.

“Every time we attended a meeting, it opened with prayer and then singing and dancing,” said Keller, 63, a member of St. Pius X in White Bear Lake. “They would get up and they would dance with us and (share) the meaning of the song.”

Hearing the Kenyans’ music and seeing their joy transformed Keller’s heart during the 2017 trip she made with 12 others to the Diocese of Kitui, located east of the capital Nairobi.

Unlike an immersion trip designed to introduce people to the needs of a country or region, Keller’s trip was one of a number of visits that representatives of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Kitui diocese have made to each other’s countries since establishing a relationship of mutuality and solidarity in 2004.

Keller and other delegation members met with Kenyans in the Kitui county capital, Kitui Town. They worked on development goals and projects, including building and sharing resources, such as wells and water collection.

Keller, who at the time was president of the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women, met with members of Kitui’s Catholic Women’s Association and toured the construction site of a women’s college dormitory campus outside Kitui Town. They hope the campus will eventually accommodate more than 200 students. To date, the ACCW has contributed almost $50,000 to the project, Keller said. She also met with members of the women’s association from parishes around the diocese.

The trip was Keller’s first to Kenya, but she has formed friendships with some of her hosts, who have visited the archdiocese.

Finding common ground on hopes, dreams and sorrows, sometimes while sitting under trees on hot, dusty days in small communities around the diocese, was a witness to unity, both for Keller and the Kenyan women, she said. “The sharing of our stories was very familiar to us all and gave consolation, I think, to both sides.”

As a visitor, Keller said, “You have to go with a heart of humility and a heart that’s kind of vulnerable, because nothing’s going to be accomplished if you’re going to go there and save the world and you have all the answers.”

The Kenyans’ strong faith and welcome, despite the devastation of poverty and other problems, inspired Keller’s faith: “Their witness to me was probably more profound I think than mine was to them.”

For almost two years after returning from Kitui, Keller met with women at nearly 80 archdiocesan parishes in her role as ACCW president to talk about Kitui and raise funds for the dormitory project.

Remembering Kenyans’ deep faith, Keller said she tries not to take hers for granted, or underestimate God’s plans for her.

“You think you have a lot of experience in life after many years of walking on this earth and being a person of faith, and then the Lord still has more plans for you,” she said.