KIBERA, Kenya -- You've heard of the blind leading the blind? Now get ready for the one about the blind leading the deaf.

It was in February, I think, that I got a call from LEAMIS International Ministries telling me that during my August mission trip to Kenya, I would be leading the copper foiling workshop.

What, you may ask, is copper foiling?

That was my question too.

Copper foiling, as I discovered during our pre-field training in March, is a craft technique in which thin sheets of copper are cut into decorative shapes. Then, solid-core solder is melted onto both sides of the copper to give it substance and texture. The resulting piece can be painted and used as a little ornament, hung in a window or what have you.

One of the main purposes of our trip was to teach cottage industries to some of the people of the Kibera slums near Nairobi. It was thought that industries like soap making, candle making, jam making and paper crafts would give some of the women of the church ideas for items they could make and sell. New Life Restoration Centre, the Kibera-based church with which LEAMIS was planning the trip, has a co-op which church members could join in order to sell their items, but the workshops would be open for anyone interested in learning the skill.

During our pre-field training, Bill and Bobbie Joy -- a retired couple whom I've known for several years through a domestic missions group in which we're all involved -- taught me and Kylene McDonald, who would be my assistant in the workshop, how to make a copper foiling project.

But I was never comfortable with the workshop. My initial attempts at duplicating what I had been taught at home turned out horribly. I went to the Joys' home in Sewanee for a refresher course and discovered that I was using the wrong type of flux to clean the copper before applying the solder. When I tried the right product, I got much better results. That was reassuring, but I still had doubts about my ability to teach the workshop.

I even worried about my luggage -- one of my two checked bags would be stuffed with rolls of copper foil, which I feared would look strange on the security X-ray, and the same bag would also include a bottle of liquid soldering flux, an acid which I wasn't completely sure was allowed under British Airways' luggage regulations. As it happens, the bag was opened and searched (the U.S. Transportation Security Administration leaves a notice inside to inform you) but as far as I can tell nothing was removed or disallowed.

I worried and worried about the workshop, and to be frank I didn't have the same sense of excitement and anticipation prior to the Kenya trip that I'd experienced prior to my Nicaragua trip in January 2003.

I fretted about whether I was bringing enough or the right kind of supplies for the project. I fretted about whether the Kenyans would be able to obtain the right kind of supplies once I was gone. I told myself that I was barely qualified to do copper foiling, much less teach it.

I talk a good game; when I got the chance to layspeak a month or two ago at my home church, First United Methodist, I repeated a common line of mine; missions trips are for everyone, because God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called.

Kenya was only my second foreign mission trip, but I've been on enough domestic trips to know that when you commit to such an effort, God gives you the grace to get through it, and you often end up doing things of which you did not consider yourself capable. Based on my experience, I understand this, believe it, and talk about it. I should, by now, have committed it to memory.

But sometimes, even though I should know better, I become as insecure as anyone else about my own abilities and forget who is really in charge of the trip.

Finally, our team got to Kenya and it was time for me to start teaching. I had started to relax a little bit until Kylene pointed out on Monday morning that I'd brought the wrong type of scissors for the workshop participants to cut out the fine details required by some of our patterns. I had brought one pair of fingernail scissors, but that wasn't enough to go around. I gnashed my teeth even further.

That's when God -- displaying that sense of humor for which he's so famous -- revealed that for my first two days of the workshop, my students would be from the Kibera Deaf Welfare Association. I would have to work through a sign language interpreter, which would complicate the process of giving individual instruction.

Things got off to a rocky start. I explained to the class that the soldering iron was very hot and they should be careful around it -- but then I accidentally burned my own finger. I kept forgetting the students were deaf and trying to address them directly, instead of through the interpreter. One time when I did remember to go through the interpreter, I mistakenly spoke to one of the students who looked a little like her rather than to the actual interpreter.

We had planned on obtaining the paint in Kenya rather than bringing it with us, and sure enough the church managed to buy small cans of paint from a nearby vendor. But the plastic cup into which we tried to pour some of the paint melted when we weren't looking, leaving a big blob of black paint all over the classroom table.

Here in the U.S., we assume that there's always newspaper around, always plastic bags, always a wastepaper basket. But when you're in a corrugated tin building in the middle of an African slum, you have to think and plan a little more carefully. I hadn't planned as carefully as I needed to, and I found out there were a million little items and accessories and supplies that I couldn't take for granted the way that I might here in the states.

But you know what? It all worked out in the end. We used a simple design, an elephant, in order to teach the basic technique. The teens loved it. Also, since we didn't end up having the same students all week, we never progressed to the complex designs and my lack of tiny scissors never became an issue.

The deaf students, and my hearing students on Wednesday and Thursday, asked good, perceptive questions. It's clear they were thinking about which of the supplies would be available in Kenya, how much they would cost, and what that meant for the selling price of the finished product. Kibera Deaf Welfare Association plans to investigate selling copper foiling projects as a fund-raiser.

"Special thanks ... to John and Kylene, who have aroused our interest in the copper foiling craft," wrote coordinator Elizabeth Shiakamiri in a letter to the church and LEAMIS at the end of the week. "We will endeavor to improve on this skill to a level that will enable us to earn a clean living. We will also reach out to the other deaf in Kibera and eventually in the nation."

After two days working with the deaf group, copper foiling was put back into the mix with the other cottage industry workshops -- jams and jellies, soap making, candle making and paper crafts. By that point, we had worked out the kinks in supplies and materials -- and now, with hearing students, I was able to give individual instruction and advice directly, rather than through a translator.

Along the way, we learned more about the craft. Bill Joy had told me to use only solid core solder, but when we ran out the Kenyans could only find rosin core -- even at Nakumatt, the Nairobi equivalent of Wal-Mart. The rosin core solder worked just fine. It left some ugly brown spots on the surface, but since we were painting our finished products, that was irrelevant.

Meanwhile, the other cottage industry workshops were going swimmingly as well. We marveled that the participants were asking such good questions. Pastor Paul and the elders of the church are determined to follow up on what was taught and turn it into a source of income for some of the slum residents.

Our teammates on the construction team were busy as well. They had found and adapted a pattern for a small school desk and were showing the Kenyans how to build them. All the construction used hand tools, not power tools.

Up until our visit, the preschool had been using wooden benches as desks. One bench would be turned on its side, and the young children would sit uncomfortably on the side of one bench while using another bench, turned right-side-up, to write on.

The church members noted that while our desk design was perfect for the older kids, it took up needless room which might prevent as many children from fitting into the classrooms for the younger grades. So a second desk design, with room for three children sitting side-by-side, was added to the mix.

The construction team also helped begin work on an additional classroom wedged into a corner of the church, between two existing buildings.

On Thursday and Friday of the week, demonstrations were held of an inexpensive water purification system. Indiana-based missions group New Life International (despite the similar name, there's no connection to the New Life Restoration Center, the church with which we were working) has developed an inexpensive (at least by U.S. standards) purifier which uses common table salt to produce chlorine gas. The purifier, powered by a simple car battery, can be mounted between two filtering tanks and used to produce purified drinking water.

Typhoid is a problem in the slums, and so a pure water supply can be a life-saving improvement. Again, the questions asked by the church members were perceptive and indicated how seriously they take the prospect.

The empowerment and economic development aspects of this trip were a dream come true for LEAMIS founders Rev. Debra Snellen and Gail Drake. LEAMIS has been organizing missions trips for several years, as well as conducting training for other missions groups, churches and programs. But Gail and Debra's dream is to do more of this type of project -- helping the victims of poverty to help themselves.

LEAMIS will work closely with Pastor Paul in the months to come, to monitor the progress of our cottage industries as implemented by the church. Pastor Paul hopes to travel to the U.S. later this month for a conference, and LEAMIS is talking about a return trip to Kenya next fall. LEAMIS staff members might travel to Africa for as long as a month, while volunteers would be recruited for a more-normal two-week trip.

Our trip last month just might have been the start of something big.

TOMORROW: Bwana asifiwe!