A New Year...New Challenges

As we journey through the holiday season here in Kenya, we have found that the New Year is celebrated in a larger way than Christmas.  We just spent our New Year's Eve with our neighbors here in Makutano.  It was a combination New Year's Eve and a birthday celebration for Michael, our director, Florah's, son.  The people here are happy to close out 2022.  They are thankful that they survived the year as many in the local area are no longer with them.  They are praying fervently for 2023 to bring better times for them.  They pray for the prices of their essentials for life to decrease to a normal level.  They pray for their children not to become so desperate that they choose suicide over life as is happening more and more.

For the leaders of Promise Springs Rescue center, both in Kenya and in America, we pray for wisdom and clarity.  We have five applicants waiting for acceptance to the center.  We have six beds left.  We struggle to know how to choose.  

This is the story of one of the applicants.  She is not a mom but a vulnerable girl.  She is 15 years old and lives in a village called Sirima in another area of Ngobit ward where Promise Springs Rescue Center is located.  We arrived with our social worker at a house to find a blind woman sitting out in front. This was the girl's mother.  There are three children in this family and a single mom.  They live in a one-room house with a dirt floor.  There was one bed with wooden slats and a woolen blanket for a mattress.  The chief of the village called us because they had to remove the 15 year old girl from her home at night.  Knowing the mother is blind, with no means of protecting the girl, the boys would go to the home at night, knocking on the door of the house and trying to get the girl to come out.  The girl had to be taken somewhere else to stay at night for her safety.  The family income is from the sale of aloe vera.  Aloe is a very hard thing to harvest and it yields only a little of the gel that is sold.  They earn 80 shillings per liter.  That is 80 cents per day and that is only if they can collect a whole liter in a day.  Amazingly, living in such conditions and with no electricity to study by, this girl manages to be an above average student.  This is only one of the many stories like this we hear and witness.  We need your prayers as it breaks our hearts to turn even one away.  Pray for God to guide us.  Pray for funding for more girls.  It costs $3,000.00 per year to fully sponsor a girl.  Every dollar helps, so a monthly donation of only $25 would meet so many of a girl's needs.  AND pray that we can fund a third dorm to allow us to offer help to more girls.  The needs are many.  The year is just beginning.  Keep us in your prayers and consider joining us in making a future of education and self-sustainability a reality for as many girls in danger and with no hope as we can.  

Happy New Year to you all!