What's So Blessed About Being Poor?: Seeking the Gospels in the Slums of Kenya

Two lay women who have chosen to live among the poor in East Africa, one a Maryknoll lay mission, and the other, a New York attorney who left her law practice to become a lay mission with the Franciscans minister to the poor in Kenya. Slavin first met Salvador when she was volunteering as a lawyer working in a justice and peace program in Kenya. Slavin was intrigued by the well-known phrase Blessed are the poor. After approaching this seeming paradox through unrewarding library research, she decided that she would join Salvador in her ministry to AIDS orphans to try to understand how the poor can be blessed. This account tells of their experiences as they worked together with the poor, primarily AIDS orphans, in the slums of Kenya.

Susan Slavin is an attorney in the area of family law and women s rights who is now a Franciscan lay missioner. Her home is in New York. Coralis Salvador is an experienced Maryknoll lay missioner who has served for more than ten years among the poor in Kenya. Her home is in San Francisco.