Christians in Kenya and visitors from the U.S. celebrated the life of Berkeley Hackett during a May 25 memorial service at the Eastleigh Church of Christ in Nairobi. A U.S. memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday, June 23, at the Woodson Chapel Church of Christ in Nashville, Tenn.

Church members on two continents are mourning the death of Berkeley Hackett, a pioneering missionary to the East African nation of Kenya. Hackett, a missionary, minister and school administrator in Kenya, died of a heart attack in the capital city, Nairobi.

New on The Christian Chronicle’s website, read my report on a Church of Christ in Nairobi, Kenya, seeking to serve in an increasingly Muslim neighborhood — and see our online-exclusive photo gallery. The report is from a Sunday visit to Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood during my recent Kenya reporting trip. The Nairobi Church of Christ Eastleigh and the Kenya Christian Industrial Training Institute share a compound in Eastleigh, where immigrants from Somalia are buying up much of the real estate.

It’s a warm and sunny afternoon in this East African capital. In just a few hours I’ll head for the Nairobi airport to begin the long journey back to cold and Christmasy Oklahoma. It’s been a wonderful 10 days in Kenya, traveling alongside workers with Healing Hands International as they surveyed sustainable agriculture projects in rural Kenya.

Greg Clodfelter was in Oklahoma City recently for the Quest lectureship at Oklahoma Christian University. He’s on a fundraising trip in the U.S. through Thanksgiving with his wife of eight months, Sonia. I got to have lunch with the newlyweds while they were in town and catch up on their unique ministry in East Africa — battling the AIDS pandemic one child at a time.

It is almost impossible to describe what we have seen today. To put it best, beautiful, strong and resilient people surviving at what seems like the edge of the world here in Turkana, Kenya. The drought and famine (are) honestly hard to communicate. The magnitude … is much more intense than I had anticipated. Before we started distributing the food at this village, the chief and many of the people spoke to us. One lady said, “If you come back in a few days, we do not if we will even still be here (alive).”

The Kenya Christian Industrial Training Institute, or KCITI, recently appointed Lydia Wanjiku to its top administrative position. (In the U.S., we call this position “president,” but the term varies from country to country.) The institute is a non-governmental organization, but has close ties to Churches of Christ. For 14 years, missionary Berkeley Hackett headed the institute.

Jim Scudder, a missionary in Kenya supported by the Pleasant Valley Church of Christ in Little Rock, Ark., and his son, John, are safe after a kidnapping ordeal in the East African nation’s capital, Nairobi. “Details are very sketchy at present,” said Roger Pritchett, missions minister for the Pleasant Valley church. Scudder and his son were abducted early on Nov. 3 and were reported as safe about 2:30 a.m. (Kenya time) Nov. 4 (5:30 p.m. Nov. 3 in Arkansas).

The proprietor of an upscale salon in Nairobi, Kenya, was the guest of honor at a church-supported ministry’s 15th anniversary celebration. Nargis Manji, who operates Nairobi’s Narcisse Salon, has hired and trained six former street children in the art of hairdressing, manicure and pedicure. She even sent a few of them to a special training program overseen by cosmetics giant Revlon. The six trainees were among the hundreds of Kenyan youths helped by the Made in the Streets ministry in the past 15 years. The Eastleigh Church of Christ in Nairobi launched the ministry in 1995, and missionaries Charles and Darlene Coulston oversee the work.