Hope for Children Center – Oyugis, Kenya
By Dee Stringfellow
The summer has flown by for me. I had a wonderful vacation
with my family and friends. When we are all together it seems that
God has showered me with blessing beyond measure. However,
when reality sets in and I come home to find there are so many
tragic things happening still with our dear children in Africa, my
heart hurts. There are no vacations
from poverty, tragedy and death.
Brian and Logan documented
over 2,000 homeless chil-
dren in their first two
weeks at Hope Center.
To these suffering or-
phans, a life at Hope
Center would be like
heaven on earth.
We can be so
thankful that all of us
have had a part in saving
so many of these little
ones. The story of the
tiny baby starving was a
real eye-opener for me,
but I want you to know
that he is doing well now.* We are waiting to hear from Pastor
Maurice if he and his siblings will be permanent residents of
Hope Center, at which point we would put them up for “adop-
tion.” We must continue to pray for the children and the work-
ers who are laboring so tirelessly to save as many as possible.
As they are so diligent in their labor there, so mustwe persevere
in our support. I’m so thankful for all of you that support
these children and never forget their needs. This truly
gives them hope.
Studdert Kennedy once said, “Prayer is not an easy
way of getting what we want, but the only way of becom-
ing what God wants us to be.” So, keep praying for this
work. God is in charge! It has been said, “It is better to
stumble toward a better life than not to take any steps at
all.” Things happen and we may stumble at times, but
with God’s help we won’t fall.
Pastor Maurice recently wrote: “I truly accept that at
times we can do mistakes. Mistakes are to human beings
and we truly learn from our mistakes. Since we began
this project, we have done some few mistakes but then,
God has been leading. The idea of beginning secondary educa-
tion was not bad. Had we known, we could have just put it on a
different land. But even the classrooms we built are not a waste.
The children are using them. You will read more about this in
my report, which I am sending by Monday.**
“It is good to be people of ideas and when ideas don’t work
for one reason or the other, then we should not be considered
forever failures. At least we had a very bright idea and I am sure
it will still work. Truly, what has been done from this orphan-
age we began just a few years ago is great. So many children
and people have been blessed and will continue to be blessed.
The secondary school will continue even if it is not now. It is
God who has been providing and he will truly lead us.
“On this note, I just want to thank you very, very much for
the books that you sent by M-bag. These books are just so much
helpful to our children and just very, very useful. They cover a
lot that a child needs to know and our children are greatly
blessed. Last week, they did a joint examination with nine other
schools and our children were topping all the eight classes.
What a blessing! They were followed by a Seventh-day Ad-
ventist sponsored school. Even the education officer was
surprised. When he was giving the report he said, “The
Sabbath people are leading in this examination.”
“Our school had a total of fifty-four high school stu-
dents. Some of them were just orphans who came from
the community and we allowed them just to learn and go
back to their homes. Some were girls who had done their
class eight and had no hope of joining high school. Their
only option was to wait for marriage at their young age. Al-
ready when we closed, four have been married. It saddens
me. One is married to a man whose first wife died seem-
ingly of AIDS. We have done a lot for this community.
“The vocation program is on. I hope you know that
our children are learning tailoring. They are doing so
well. They are also learning good farming skills. We have
a farm and Brian just loved our pineapple farm.” Brian also re-
ported that he ate so much pineapple in Kenya that the inside of
his mouth was sore! It is good that the gardens are beginning to
produce after two back-to-back famines.
It seems that Julia offered the use of her car while Brian
was there. Some of the children were taught to drive while the
vehicle was on loan, but
Pastor Maurice says that
they still have a lot of
practicing to do. In con-
sidering the condition of
the roads, we wonder if
part of the education is
how to retrieve your ve-
hicle from a sinkhole!
It gives me great
pride in this work that
we have a man in charge
that sees poverty all
around him and still is
able to see hope at the end of the tunnel. He is a praying godly
man and he is persevering! Can we do any less?
We would like to report that at Hope Center, as at Glory
Center, donations have come in to cover half of the school fees
for each of the secondary students, so all will be returning to
classes in September. This is truly a blessing, for without this
last quarter, the entire year would have been lost. Now the stu-
dents will progress to the next grade level. In the meantime, we
must formulate a plan of action for January 2007. Will we
(Continued on Page 9)
-4-
The fifteen-year old girl who brought her
starving siblings to Hope Center, including
the baby Logan tried so hard to save.
Photo at right
was taken by
Glenn Coopman
of Australia dur-
ing his visit to
Kenya last year.
Photo at left
is from the
experience of
Brian Hester and
Logan Harvey.
