Editor’s note: Upon returning from her trip to Kenya earlier this month, Abby wrote the following reflection. Read also the prequel to this post, Modern times, ancient stories. I’ve never been in a place so desolate, so barren. Sand and scrubby trees stretched for miles. We drove for hours without seeing another person, save for one herdsman begging for water in 105-degree heat. When I stepped out of the car, the sand burned my feet through the soles of my shoes. Two weeks ago I traveled with a World Vision team to Turkana — a marginalized, isolated territory in northwest Kenya’s Rift Valley. When you arrive there, the locals tell you, “You’ve left Kenya.” They don’t consider themselves part of...

Editor’s note: Abby Metty will be in Kenya with World Vision March 25-April 8. John Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors. Right now I’m reading his classic, The Grapes of Wrath, about the migration of farmers in the 1930s from the Midwest to California and the downward spiral of poverty they endured along the way. A central theme of the novel is hunger. It focuses around one family and their search for work and food in increasingly desperate conditions. He writes, “How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him — he has known a fear beyond every other.” Over...