together

One late afternoon we had gone with three of the children from the Home to visit an elderly grandmother, and the sky darkened just as we arrived at her house (the usual mud walls and floor and tin roof variety). We managed to have a brief conversation with her before the skies opened and the rain came pouring down. She quickly organised her four- and six-year-old orphaned granddaughters who live with her to run out with all their basins and containers to catch the rainwater from the roof. They returned and we all sat, unable to verbally communicate because of the noise on the tin roof. We could only smile and wait for half an hour for the rain to stop. We seemed to share together in a way that speech would have spoiled. Even the chickens that followed the girls in seemed to sense the moment and sat down on the floor between us until one got hungry and began to peck the ants off the floor!

The crops had been watered again and no one would complain about the mud that followed. A neighbour rushed to assist me as I was leaving and got a firm hold of my arm and did not let go until we had reached the end of the muddy path!

The chickens joining us there were preferable to the swarm of bees that decided to join me in our house while Ian was out in the community. They had been living in the supposedly blocked off chimney! However three of the guys who work here came to my aid with Doom (an appropriate name for an effective insect eradicator) and they were soon exterminated!

Last Monday we went with Terry and some of the staff to a seminar in Kisumu, held by the charity Teach a Man to Fish. This organisation aims to help rural schools like ours which are dependent on outside funding become more self-sufficient, and in the process teach children skills in agriculture and business which will enable them to support themselves when they leave school. It was an interesting and useful day, especially hearing how other people are tackling this.

We continue to work with the church leaders and have set up another “away day” with them next Wednesday. We have been able to set up part-time paid roles for two of them – Kennedy will be working particularly in preparing and leading programmes of preaching and teaching, while Dorine will have more responsibility in pastoral care. We are looking forward to working more closely with both of them over the coming months. Kennedy has already started a preaching series which will introduce the biblical themes that underpin Farming God’s Way.

The schoolchildren, led by Duncan who is enjoying his additional role as “farm manager”, have already got the first crop of maize and beans growing well on the Farming God’s Way demonstration plots. There has been a lot of rain recently and this has really helped. We hope to see the concept being taught to church members as well and help them put it into practice in the next growing season starting in January. We believe it has the potential to change people’s attitudes and greatly improve what they can achieve on their very small farms.

We hope you enjoy our blog but you can read much more about what’s happening here by following Terry’s blog at http://terryathopeandkindness.blogspot.com/

rain

Hi. We are well. We are now into the short rainy season, although we had a lot of rain since August so the contrast hasn’t been too marked yet. On Thursday we had a particularly heavy thunderstorm – with huge hailstones – in late afternoon. People here have planted their second crops for this year and the maize is growing up strongly.

Last week we had a trip to Kisumu and Nairobi. In Kisumu we renewed our visas and applied for registration as “aliens” – visions of little green men? In Nairobi we met up with Terry and two of the leaders of Elim Kenya who helped us in the process of applying for work permits. Hopefully these will get approved soon, which will allow us to stay in Kenya and work as “missionaries” for 2 years before they need renewed. We enjoyed our trip, doing some shopping, staying in guest houses and getting some meat in our diet again! Nairobi is getting increasingly busy, and the traffic jams get worse!

Back here we are continuing our work with the church leaders. We are planning an “Encounter” weekend for them, based on those done in Paisley Elim. We think the first one will need to be just for a few English speakers, some of whom could then help us with the next Encounter. Running the event over a weekend may not be suitable so it will probably be run over two days in two successive weeks. This weekend Ian is speaking in church on Sunday. Today we were at a special church meeting held at the home of a man who got into some trouble, was in jail for 2 months (it could have been 10 years if he had been found guilty of assault) and has subsequently come back to God and to church and turned his life around.

Some things are frustrating here, like inefficiencies, erratic internet connection, and the length of time it can take to achieve some things. And Hilda’s very slow progress in learning Dholuo! But on the other hand there are lots of encouragements, so we have lots of hope for the future. Health is such a major issue for people here. Recently we visited a young man who is HIV+ and who had been very ill the last time we saw him – his father had lost hope for him. But this week he was so much better we didn’t even recognise him!

We’ve established that people can get onto the national health insurance scheme if they make contributions of KSh160 a month (just over £1). This will basically pay for any hospital costs, but not surgery or out-patient costs. Even this amount will be beyond the means of many people, so we are looking to see if we can set up sponsorship of people to get this insurance provided.

We’ve just finished reading “When Helping Hurts” for the second time together. It’s by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert and we would recommend it to anybody interested in working with the poor either in the developing world or at home. We’re now reading “The Purpose-Driven Church” by Rick Warren and finding it really useful for our situation here.