We can hardly believe we have just had our eighth Christmas in Africa! ten
years ago we would never have imagined the work God has led us too.
Looking over the past year our first surge of thanks must be for good health
and energy to continue the fairly hectic pace we live both here in Kenya and
in Canada.
The next source of joy is our grandchildren. We received the gift of a new
grandson in February. The other two (Maryn, 3, and Elijah, nearly two) are
equally precious and we miss them very much.
At the prompting of the Cathedral in Victoria (whose donations have
supported our work) we formed our own charitable organisation and received
our official status in Sept. This means we can give tax receipts for
donations. (TEMBO-KENYA stands for Teaching, Empowering, Mentoring and
Building Opportunity. Tembo means 'elephant' in Swahili) We received a flood
of donations for water and education as well as Virtues training.
-We are putting in 3 wells and protecting five springs. The joy of the
communities receiving the gift of clean water is moving.
-We interviewed for job training and will be sending a new list of young
adults to learn skills to help them 'put food on the table' Although we did
not intend to cover scholarships at secondary and post-secondary, we have
received dedicated donations for a few students. We will be interviewing
this week.
-Read for the Top has been a huge success and we start the heats and finals
in 10 classrooms later this month. We are reaching over 500 elementary
students.
-This next week we shall welcome four American teachers who will be
conducting seminars in three areas: Language Arts for Elem and Math for Sec.
We expect about 300 teachers to attend in all. It has been amazing how this
has come together. We see God's hand in this. Our slogan is 'help the
children by helping their teachers.' If this is a successful endeavour we
hope that other teachers might be willing to come in future years. We would
also like to see young (college age) people who would like to spend some
time helping in the 'real' Africa
-Virtues training has a long list of requests. We did a training and a
follow up for all Anglican clergy in the diocese and have also run sessions
for other pastors.. A couple of teacher seminars and a few community groups
bring us up to about 800 people since we returned in Oct. We are fortunate
to have the full support of the Prov. Dir. of Ed who insists that we are
really part of his staff and keeping his schools safe and peaceful. We plan
to train more facilitators in March, just before we leave and some businesses
are enquiring about training their staff.
Our Kenyan advisory Board is a joy and inspiration to us in all the
projects.
What do we wish for? How about more hours in the day? We desperately need
some office help as the projects expand. We have a young woman now part
time. Isabella is an orphan and we have supported her through school to a
Higher Diploma in Bus management. We have tried to get her a student visa to
finish her degree in Canada (she has a place offered) but the High
Commission is digging in their heels and refusing to accept her despite our
guarantees of sponsorship, basically because she has no resources of her
own. (duh!) We continue to pray that there will be someone there who will relent
and show understanding and compassion.
I try to blog a couple of times a week to keep our friends and prayer
partners up to date. I can usually post pictures but videos don't seem to
work too well, since our connection is so slow.
Similarly our web site must remain static until we get back to Canada and hi -
speed internet. When I am home I expect to put a couple more movies on you
tube.
The sun is blazing, the birds are singing their hearts out We are now into
the dry season and likely will not see rain again until Feb. My prayers for
you all and best wishes for the New Year
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