Mercy Home Update During Lockdown
Though we are living in a time of uncertainty, at least from the perspective of mere men, we at Mercy Home are resting in the truth that God is sovereign over all things, including viruses. All things that come to pass are established in God’s eternal decree, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
As I am sure is the same for you, life has really changed at Mercy Home over the last several weeks. All schools in Kenya had to close in the middle of the first term, so all 105 children are home all day every day. Recently we had to put our staff on lockdown, meaning nearly all 25 of them cannot leave the Mercy Ministries campus. This was done under the advisement of our government Children’s Officer. The fact is, the virus has been increasing in confirmed cases throughout Kenya daily since it was first confirmed here March 12. As of April 7, we now have 172 confirmed cases. The country of Kenya has about 300 ICU beds for a country of 45 million people, 180 of which are currently being used. In our county of Bungoma, which has a population of 1.7 million, best we can confirm is that there are 5 ventilators available. What could further complicate things here is the fact that we are in flu and malaria season. The last thing we want to do is panic, or add to the panic, however we also want to be wise and not put our children at unnecessary risk. We have 11 kids who are HIV positive, 4 with Sickle Cell Anemia, 1 with microcephaly and cerebral palsy, and 1 with asthma.
As I mentioned above, all schools closed in the middle of the term, which of course included Mercy Christian Academy. Mercy Christian Academy has an enrollment of 151, about half of which are children living at Mercy Home, and the other half are children living in our village. The children we accept from the village are those that are found to be living below the poverty line, which means they either were not in school before or were often removed from school for lack of paying fees. It also means they were malnourished. At MCA, we purposely had a very nourishing menu, feeding the students 2 full meals and a snack every school day. We also had a weekend feeding program every Saturday and Sunday feeding up to 350 children from our village lunch each of those days. All that has had to come to a stop.
As a result of government directives, we have also had to stop all church gatherings. This of course means our weekly gathering for worship on the Lord’s Day, but has also ceased our mid-week fellowship, leadership meetings, Bible training classes, and weekly evangelism. Many of our church members do not have phones, so it is a challenge to make sure we are in the know of how the sheep are all doing. Only one out of 65 members (not including those who live at Mercy Home) have access to the internet, so doing any sort of livestream is not helpful in our situation. We have instead been distributing every Sunday a bulletin which includes a Bible-based message, Scripture, hymns, prayer, and catechism questions and answers, all in Swahili. However, many of our members cannot read., which presents another challenge that we are addressing. Our hope is that our church members will use these to lead family worship at their homes. We have also assigned church leaders to contact every member once per week and then report back to pastor Leonard and myself so that we can stay advised of how our folks are doing, and be aware of emergencies or hardships as they arise. We will also implement a new plan for evangelism this week which involves printing extras of the bulletins and leave them in nearby markets along with copies of a book translated to Swahili on the Gospel for those who are interested to take.
We thank you all for your prayers and support, and ask that you would be in prayer specifically for the issues outlined above, as well as wisdom for us as we try to make plans to help our community as food prices increase and job opportunities decrease. Also, we ask that you join us in praying for everyone affected by this world-wide pandemic, that God would use it to:
“Make it my chiefest joy to study thee, meditate on thee, gaze on thee, sit like Mary at thy feet, lean like John on thy breast, appeal like Peter to thy love, count like Paul all things dung.” – The Valley of Vision