April 9, 2007

children’s villages
the tea plantation miracle
a happily ever-after tale

A local tea company with an international demand approached New Life Homes after scouring the country, searching for the glass slipper, the perfect fit – the right children’s home to propose to. We are, as it turns out, their Cinderella.

The tea company owners are a husband and wife team. The wife felt pressed to do something about the Kenyan orphans, so this is what they have proposed:

The donation of 4 acres of land (to start) on their tea, flower, and tree plantation to create children’s villages where our children who are not adopted can grow up in families of 8 to 10 children with house parents.

The plantation is a self-contained community in which 16,000 people live and work. There’s a hospital on the plantation where our children will receive free medical treatment. The New Life children who excel in school will have full rides to university. The other children will have the choice of trade colleges or working on the plantation. Every child will have a secure future. As the children become adults, we will build houses on the plantation for them! All of this is no cost to New Life. We are simply to oversee the running, operation, maintenance, etc. of this grand God plan!

In 2008, we will hopefully begin by building 4 houses for 10 children each. Then we will grow from there.

Isn't this great news? We're all really excited and in awe of this news. I feel as if I've witnessed a modern-day miracle.

All of the orphans within our care, will be taken care of.

God has their backs.

death notices
One of my friends came into our office last week, put her head down on her desk and sobbed. Her brother had been in Kenyatta Hospital for the last month struggling with various “undiagnosed” health problems, or so she told us. So we’d been praying for his recovery, not knowing that he was in the last stages of AIDS.

Even in the work that we do, she kept his HIV status hidden. There’s such a stigma and shame attached to this disease.

My friend at the embassy says there are “death notices” practically every week. Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins, passing away from AIDS. Every someone here knows someone who’s sick and dying. And now I do, too. Numbers have names. They’re my friends and I see their grief, and as best I can, share in it with them.

Our office has been in mourning.

Tomorrow, we’ll go to his funeral two hours upcountry.

language learning
Nduro.
Nyayo.

How would you say those words?

I try to pronounce these words. The office erupts in laughter. They want me to say it again, so they can laugh harder. Guess I pronounce the "n" too hard. What's it there for, I think, if you're not going to pronounce it?

The humble task of language learning. It's a sport for 2-5 year olds, not "grown ups" like me. It's good to be laughed at though, keeps the ego down.

pleading
I will spend next week on Lamu Islands where the rate of incest and sexual exploitation of children is high. Remember, this is the location where we have a “Crisis Room” within our facility – a place where children who have suffered abuse can find temporary care and respite from the trauma.

We’ll be talking to teachers and caregivers about how such trauma impacts the normal development of children.

“There must be a pleading on the part of God’s people all over the world that the (abandonment), raping and killing of these children be stopped. If our hearts do not cry out for mercy upon them, and if our hearts are not burdened by the reality of their lives, then we are a people whose hearts have grown stony and cold. It is time to bend the knee and humbly ask the Lord to take out the old stony heart and create in us a new heart of love.”

- David High, Children in Crisis

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you;
I will remove from you your heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh."

- Ezekiel 36:26

“Mark 10:13 says, ‘People were bringing little children to Jesus to have Him touch them…’ May it be said of our generation at the end of the age, that they brought the little children to Jesus.