Our Mission
“We provide a safe, healthy, and loving home where children can thrive spiritually, mentally, and physically. Our family is focused on equipping our children to be productive Kenyan citizens as disciples of Jesus Christ so that they may believe the Gospel and live their lives for eternity, in response to what Christ has done and is doing.”
Mercy Children’s Home Story
AFM launched Mercy Children's Home in 2017 outside Bungoma Town, in the small village of Kaya. Jeff and Stephanie Bys and family were commissioned to direct and manage this work for AFM Ministry because of the passion that God put into them for orphans and the needy and the desire to give their lives to the Lord’s work in this way. As of January 2022, we have 103 orphans or at-risk children, and 9 Bys family members living in the home full-time. We operate the home “family style” and have nightly Bible study and movie night on Saturday. Our goal is to make them all feel like Jeff and Stephanie are not just care-takers, but fulfilling the role of parental love and care. The Bys’s goal is to raise all of these children as though they are their own. The oldest Bys bio children that are living with them, Caitie and Karson are now working alongside them in this mission helping make this ministry so successful. Even the younger American kids understand their family calling and take part in helping in many ways. While some may see taking a large family with you on mission a greater challenge, the Lord has seen fit to make the Bys family the better fit for such a time as this, much more able to manage the workload than just a couple could do alone.
We employ a staff of many local workers (over 50 paid staff on campus with the home and schools) who help us take great care of the kids that God has given us along with God’s wonderful gift to us of Dottie. Dottie is our next in charge of the home and school! Mercy Ministries-AFM Africa is now the largest employer of locals in our (small) area of Bungoma County! We invite you to watch our 12 minute or full 55 minute documentary from 2018 to learn more about our beginnings. Come to Kenya and spend a couple of weeks with us to get a taste of our world! We’d love to host you and the children would love to meet you too.
Photos of our home, the early years.
Before the playground and 2021 upgrades and improvements
“Mercy Children’s Home is an outreach of AFM Ministry’s broader discipleship and church-planting ministry to teach the world gospel-centered knowledge of God (theology) and provide a Christ-centered model of loving God and loving others.
With that being said, we take very seriously what we believe about God and his Word as it affects everything we do in some form or another. Our beliefs affect how we go about reaching, teaching and multiplying for the Lord Jesus.”