A Light in Darkness

College life at OU, her sorority, her friends and family, they were all here. The only thing missing was her heart. Rilee Spence left it in Africa, following her fourth mission trip to Upendo Children’s Home. She had always planned on returning. However, she could have never imagined the circumstances that would lead her back.

“It was a month after trial when I found out the kids were really struggling, like the kids that were abused were having a really hard time,” said Spence, former OU student and missionary.

All of the luxuries and security at Spence’s disposal grew dull as she yearned to be with the children she had fallen in love with time and again. The children, who were already without parents and a stable home, needed her help more than ever.

“At first I wasn’t surprised, but I was very scared and told her no immediately,” Rilee’s mother Kelli Spence explained, “but I knew that was something that she would not give up on.”

Halfway through her sophomore year, Spence left OU to spend seven months in Kenya with the kids that stole her heart. She would leave behind hot showers, her studies and her support system, but she knew that was where she needed to be.

“Why I moved there is because on our fourth mission trip, everything with the trial happened, and I just knew that if I was having such a hard time with it I can’t imagine how the kids are feeling,” Spence said.

Spence’s mother was not the only unsurprised by her decision.

“She had been talking about it for a while and I knew her heart was at the orphanage,” Rilee’s close friend Meredith Scott said, “I was not shocked, that was the right choice for her and she needed to do it.”

On that fourth trip to Kenya, Spence’s former classmate at Edmond North High School was caught sexually abusing children at the orphanage. According to media reports, Matthew Durham, 21, was found guilty on seven counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places in June 2015. The allegations involve six girls and a boy at an orphanage where Durham spent time in 2014.”

Spence testified in court before Durham’s conviction in March 2016, “A federal judge sentenced a former missionary from Oklahoma to 40 years in prison for sexually abusing children at an orphanage in Kenya.”

The revelation came as a shock to her and the other student missionaries. “He had been on every single trip with me,” Spence said.

Upon returning home to Oklahoma, he was arrested and wouldn’t see his day in court until nearly a year later. “We found out when we were on the trip,” she said.

Five of the alleged victims testified against him in court. Durham testified that a demon named “Luke” was inside him and making him do horrible things.

These are the circumstances that led Spence to leave her life in Oklahoma behind in December 2015.

What started as a mission to help the orphans turned into so much more for her. “I just knew that I had to be there for them,” she said.

Following her fall sophomore semester at OU, Spence took a leap of faith and packed her bags. “It was the hardest thing that me and her dad ever had to do, was putting her on that plane,” Kelli Spence said.

Spence moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Juja, just 45 minutes outside of the capital Nairobi. For seven months she went without the common luxuries she had grown accustomed to in Oklahoma. Anything special her mother offered to send, she would refuse. “If they can live like this, some of these people live on dirt roads, I can live like this,” she said.

A day in Kenya for Spence would consist of volunteering at Upendo, which currently houses 37 children, helping families in the village and teaching English. She felt this trip required more time and resources, “just to be a light for some more people,” she said.

Securing the resources necessary for an extended stay in Africa was not easy, but made possible through donations on Spence’s GoFundMe page.

“If we told her that we weren’t going to support her financially, she would have gone anyway, she would have found a way around it, she’s that headstrong and independent,” Kelli Spence said.

This trip began to look very different than her shorter stints in years past. Spence began helping support children’s school fees, hospital bills, groceries and even a new water pump for the orphanage. Every dime of Spence’s personal savings was put toward impacting lives in Kenya.

Most importantly, day in and day out, she was there to support the children.

“My babies need me,” recalled Kelli Spence about Rilee’s initial declaration to move. Providing emotional support for the abused children was not easy, as Spence was only 19 when she left the states.

Spence felt as though to truly help, she had to stay long-term. To redeem in any way possible the troubling events inflicted on the orphans.

“I think,” she said “this is just a calling for me.”

Seven months would arguably be enough for any teenager in a foreign country, but Spence was not ready to come home.

“It was really hard, she did not want to be back,” Kelli Spence said of her daughter’s return to Edmond.

The transition from a place where everyone is grateful for everything they receive to privileged Americans sometimes unaware of their blessings was not easy.

Now taking classes at the University of Central Oklahoma, Spence is still unsure about her path. Her interest is in the medical field, to be of greater service to those in need, domestic and abroad.

“It’s always going to be about helping the kids,” Kelli Spence said.

Spence, hardly one to worry about herself, recognized the lessons she took away from her journey.

“I think it made me grow a lot as a person and just having those experiences, it taught me to trust more in God and not just on my friends, family and myself,” she said.

While she may be unsure about a major, one thing is for certain. She will go back to Kenya to see her babies. “I think everything she will do from now on will be with them in mind,” Kelli Spence said.