July 2007 Update
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We’ve been in Kenya a little over a month now – living in a house at the Presbyterian College in Kikuyu, near Nairobi. We’ve enjoyed several meals at the Java House (owner is an ex-marine from New Jersey) and The Rusty Nail in Karen with Stu and Linda Ross from Texas. They’ve been coming here since 1997 to build churches, schools and orphanages.
We’ve seen our friend Evalyn and her husband Sam and three of their four children – and we celebrated their twins’ thirteenth birthday.
We visited the 159 children in Tumaini. Marilyn has spent two Saturdays with about 80 of them. She distributed letters and packages from prayer partners – and then the kids wrote letters and decorated them with stickers. Thank you so much prayer partners – the kids really love the stickers!
We also visited Nyumbani Children’s Home in Karen where there are 100 children - all of whom are abandoned orphans and HIV+. The day we visited a new child arrived – Anthony, who is 5 months old and looks like he is 5 days old. He is getting ARV drugs (thanks to USAID). Please pray that he grows and will be able to live a normal life.
We also traveled to Kitui to see the new Nyumbani Children’s Village (also supported by USAID) – and it was truly amazing to see everything that has been done there in just two years. There are 63 pre-school and primary children there with 7 teachers - and 25 grandparents who live with them in cottages. See www.Nyumbani.org.
And we also traveled to Kitale to visit St. John Bosco Center where over 200 children have been rescued from the streets, rehabilitated, enrolled in schools and reintegrated with their families. These children are from the Lake Turkana area where there has been a drought for the past seven years.
We’ve also visited with six young women from Tumaini – three are studying at Thika Institute of Technology and three are at Nairobi Aviation College. It’s great to see how happy they are and how much they have changed since we met them just 2 years ago.
And we’ve visited the three young women from Riamukurwe Parish who were Marilyn’s assistants the two past years – Charity is now studying Commerce at Edgerton University in Nakuru and Hellen is taking Early Childhood Development courses in Thika.
We’ve gotten quite good at taking the City Hoppa to downtown Nairobi where we’ve met University of Alberta alumni friends, Sabina and Caleb – and we’ve gone to see the home of three young friends who live in Buro Buro (they are siblings of the computer teacher in Tumaini). We’ve also attended mass at Holy Family Minor Basilica – one Sunday the Bishop was there and another Sunday, President Kibaki was.
John’s cousin, Rich, arrived on the 25th with Maggie, his 16 year old granddaughter. We enjoyed showing them Karen Blixen’s home and The Giraffe Center – then we took them to Nyeri to meet the kids in Tumaini.
A young woman, who has been accepted at Nairobi Aviation College to study journalism, has requested help with her fees. If you, or someone you know, would like to assist her, please contact Marilyn at– parkerma@juno.com.
GOD is so good – HE takes what little we give and makes it so great!
Evalyn, Patty, Philip and Sam
Hula Hooping at St. John Bosco Centre
Junior Youth at Basilica
Maggie and New Friends