HCHC Students Lead Mission Trip to Kenya

Dean and Xenia Franck, both in the Master of Divinity program at Holy Cross, were part of a team of HCHC students who spent their spring break in western Kenya. Dean had already been to Kenya a number of times and the couple spent two months there together last summer, an experience that gave them an idea.

“After visiting St. Tabitha’s Orphanage and School,” Xenia explains, “we decided to organize a team to go do some teaching and build a chicken coop.” The orphanage is in the diocese of the late Bishop Athanasius, whose recent untimely passing galvanized the Francks and others to help fulfill His Grace’s vision of self-sustaining missions. The coop is a permanent brick structure big enough to house 500 chickens, thereby providing food for the orphans and staff and generating income.

The team slept in tents, took bucket showers, and used pit toilets, but the lack of creature comforts was more than offset by the abundant comforts of daily worship and “the unity of our group and our positive relations with the local people. We are all like family now,” says Xenia. Reflecting on his many visits to Kenya, Dean says, “No matter how many times you go, a visceral experience like this changes the way you see life and ultimately changes you as a person.”