We bloom where we are
Mercy Home Update!
And we've grown some since this picture :-)
The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
Proverbs 16:9 ESV
As many of you know we've been asking for prayers and seeking the Lord on where he would have us. Would He have us stay in Kaya or move to the 7 acre property? Today, best we can tell, that has been answered for us. We were notified recently that the Kenyan ministry who has been raising money for the 7 acre property for the last year has made a cash offer that has been accepted. Since I knew towards the end of last week that this property wouldn't likely be ours I have been able to process most of my feelings and today I have peace with some sadness of course. However I still want to share where my heart is and has been.
I will admit that I haven't taken this news well at all. Now that I have waded through my anger (which is actually feelings of failure) and heartbreak it comes down to one thing for me. The school. The Victorious property has a school that we don't have. We already have a big living space for children, we have clean water and we can and will plant flowers and trees here in Kaya. But we don't currently have a school or the land for a school. 💔
As you can see our home is mostly surrounded with dirt and the outside hasn't been plastered yet. The handmade bricks are beautiful, but the rain is damaging to them overtime so we must plaster over them. Once the outside is plastered it will also help seal up our home, meaning less bugs, dirt and mosquitos.
Currently we send our children to a public Catholic school, but it is completely different than any school you would see in America. Public school here looks like 3 children sitting in 1 small desk, 60+ children to a class, a school of 800+ students to 10 (TEN) teachers, not enough text books for every child, teachers walking around hitting children with sticks for any reason at all, lunch isn't served (children walk home for lunch) because it just isn't in the school budget, there is no running water, no pencil sharpener, no power the majority of the time and we must pay school fees.
Often times I feel like the school undoes what we are trying to teach at home. One of the many things we try and teach our children is that they can trust us (and the entire MCH staff). They can trust us to love them, to feed them, to protect them and to do what is best for them. How can you trust an adult who calls you stupid? How can you trust an adult who has just hit you in front of 50+ other students and you aren't even sure why? How can you trust an adult who hits you for asking why they are about to hit you? How can we as parents protect our children when we are told "This is the Kenyan way."? It is the Kenyan way, but it isn't the only way.
Our goal is to have a great school with small class sizes, with teachers who love children, without beating sticks, with proper supplies, that is able to serve breakfast and lunch year round, that is 100% free for the children in our area who aren't currently able to afford to attend school. Our goal is to have a real Christian school, not just a school that teaches a Christian class (required by the Kenyan government).
When this from is finished it will be the boys room. Currently we have the girls in a smaller room, but we are out of room in that room for beds. Finishing this room would be a huge blessing to our children.
So what now? We bloom where we are and basically keep doing what we've been doing. We keep fundraising to finish our home, purchase land and grow our ministry including building a school for our children and our village which could easily cost us more than the $150,000 we have been trying to raise. We keep caring for those God sends us.
Anyone want to guess how many children we have here at Mercy Home? 😮I am not going to lie to you, waiting is hard for me. I'm very all or nothing if you will, but God is working on that. For the last year and a half I feel like we've basically been camping 😂. So many parts of our home aren't finished, we don't have an actual kitchen or dinning hall, we are just now getting some paint on the walls and we are still living out of our suitcases that we moved here with.
So will you pray for us? Pray for resources, we need a lot of money to finish our unfinished home, for land and to build a school. Pray for us to have patience, me especially. Pray that our eyes will remain on Him and what He wants for us. Pray for us to have a school in January (when the Kenyan school year starts) as we feel this is very important, not only for our children, but the children of our village as well. And thank God for answers even when it doesn't end up looking like we think it will. 💜 In some ways this is a relief because now we can focus only on this home and property, in other ways it is a bigger burden because we now know we need to build a school from the ground up and purchase additional land.
Thank you for your prayers, love and support. Living this life isn't always easy, but it is a huge blessing. We are constantly growing and constantly trying to better the lives of our children. Making their lives better only happens by your prayers, your support, your sharing and you will never know how much that means to us as the parents of these children. Thank you so very much!
#mercychildrenshome #aboutfacemissions #kenya #james127 #orphans#theleastofthese #streetboycrisis
I'm not sure if you can see past Robai's smile or not, but we don't have ceilings in our home. While it isn't super important for the whole house it would be nice to have in our bedrooms and office.