Huge thanks to the YFC team in Eldoret

Last night I returned to Nairobi after 5 days in Eldoret. It was a 6 hour bus ride each way, but so worthwhile.

I had such a great time with the team there, headed up by Helen.

We studied the Bible together.

I enjoyed lunch with Helen 

and Eric on a couple of the days I was there.

We gathered avocados together

and I was introduced to some of the people YFC partners with in Eldoret. This is the team from New Beginnings, a ministry to young mums in crisis pregnancy, started by Anne, a past coordinator of YFC in Eldoret. They have a wonderful project going.

I also met Bosire, the previous YFC coordinator. Quality guy.

Helen and I walked to the YFC office each day from where I was staying and we had some wonderful talks as we walked, as we sat in the sun, in the office or having lunch together.

Helen is such a great young woman and leader of YFC in Eldoret. I was so impressed. I asked her why its a good place to be and why she would stay with YFC.

She told me that she had been struggling in her spiritual walk some years ago, but since she has been at YFC she has grown spiritually, emotionally, mentally and socially.

"I have a heart for the teenagers and tend to get along easily with them. In a way they find me an easy person to talk with and be open with no matter how ugly their stories might be. I believe God has put me here for a reason, and I’m ready to be used by Him.

I thank God for this opportunity and that’s why I would continue serving here if it’s his will. To share with the young people what the Lord has done for me and give them an opportunity to experience the same."

Quality woman, and, to me, she seems so well suited to this task of coordinating the team in Eldoret.

Thank you so much for taking such good care of me and sharing your life with me, Helen.

We also went shopping together for fabric. Kitenge - beautiful brightly coloured and patterned East African fabric.

I'm going to a wedding on my last Saturday in Kenya and I want to wear something African. Loving the fabric. Thanks for your help in choosing which one, Helen. Now I need to see a tailor who can make it up for me. My friend Irene and I are planning a visit to the tailor this week. Thanks friend.

It's avocado season. Yay!

It's avocado season and I'm pretty happy about that.

  Out the back of the YFC office in Eldoret, there's a VERY large avocado tree 

laden with avocados ready to be picked/shaken from the tree.

I'm not sure if you can see Sam, in the blue shirt, up there ready to shake.

This is some of what he shook down.

Then it was time to gather and bag,

 

 share among the YFC family and head for home. I've never been part of an avocado harvest before. I must say I enjoyed it very much. And I just ate one for my dinner - pepper and salt, a teaspoon and an avocado cut open. Delicious!

New Dawn Educational Centre - A Good Story

In 2007, as Mal and I returned from Rwanda, a cancelled flight meant that we had to spend several extra nights in Nairobi before we could travel home. 

 

God provided the Tongoi family. There’s much more to the story, we have become very good friends, enjoying each other’s company in both Kenya and in Australia, but today I want to write about the wonderful project that has captured Irene’s heart and hands for the last 20+ years. Irene has helped in putting this short history together for my blog.

More reading than usual in this blog post but, in my opinion, it's a REALLY good story.

In 1996, the Tongoi family was involved in founding Karura Community Chapel, a daughter church of the Nairobi Chapel. Mandated to reach the affluent neighbourhoods of Runda, Muthaiga, Evergreen and its environs, the elders of the new congregation were soon confronted at Sunday service attendance by some extremely materially poor people from the neighbouring informal settlement of Huruma.

The following year the church leadership had to begin addressing the needs and peculiar challenges presented by the growing number of the poor. Irene had a major struggle based on the assumption that these people were coming to church only because they hoped their material needs would be met.  She considered their interest in joining the church as a distraction. In 2001, Irene attended a Vision Conference focusing on two themes; Biblical Worldview and Holistic Discipleship. The conference enlightened Irene on four profound truths that turned on a light in her life and dramatically changed her perception of the poor. 

*      Lies/deception is at the root of poverty

*     All human beings are created in the image of God but sin’s effects disfigure them

*   The local church is God’s agent of transformation for all the nations of the world and

*      By its disciplines of love, using local resources, church members can show the light of Christ by being the salt they were called to be.

Along with other women from the Karura Community Chapel Women’s Ministry, Irene paid a visit to Huruma Village in 2003. This visit opened her eyes to a myriad of the residents’ challenges. The level of poverty was astonishing as it had rendered the community helpless and vulnerable and the sense of hopelessness amidst them was palpable. She felt burdened to do something but felt inadequate.

God provided an opportunity to run a Vision Conference for 100 youth from the Huruma and nearby Githogoro informal settlements. Following the conference there was a huge cry for a return to school by 80 of these young people. New Dawn High School became a reality in 2005 with the majority of students being young men and women who had long dropped out of school but had their dwindled hopes fanned back to life through the Vision Conference. The initial class comprised gardeners, house helps, security guards, farm hands and sons/daughters of parents from a similar background.  Others were destitute orphans who had lost hope of ever making good of their lives. Huruma community members surrendered small plots of land to New Dawn and initially temporary wrought iron structures were put up in the village.

In 2009 the centre’s first formal classroom structures were constructed using fabricated steel shipping containers. Today, New Dawn Educational Centre comprises four classrooms with a capacity of 40 students each, two science laboratories, a computer laboratory, a library, staff offices, a staff room, school kitchen, appliances storage and a multipurpose hall - all in shipping containers!

Lucy and I visited the school with Irene, here with the cook who feeds the students lunch every school day.

The day we visited there was a group of young people from a local church visiting the older students and sharing the life-saving message of Jesus with them.

We met the staff in the staff room. One member of staff is an ex-student who is now a qualified secondary teacher - good story.

 

The shipping containers that make up the school

are looking wonderful 

in amongst the trees and garden

don't you think?

Driving through the village of Huruma, where New dawn is situated, with Irene, was a moving experience. Irene is a very well loved woman. Not surprising.