THE ETHIOPIAN

In the eighth chapter of the book of Acts we read about one of the most unlikely occurrences of a baptism that one could imagine. It took place in the first century A.D. in the desert region south of Jerusalem.

Although this baptism took place very early in the newly emerging church, it was not the very first baptism. In fact, in the second chapter of Acts, we are told of one instance in which about three thousand appear to have been baptized. Nevertheless, this baptism of the eighth chapter is the first one that we are told about that speaks specifically of the individual who was baptized. This alone makes this particular baptism significant, and an indication that the author Luke wanted us to draw some lessons from it.

The act of being baptized is one of the most underappreciated of church traditions today. It is more than a church tradition of course, for we are told several times in the New Testament by Jesus and by the apostles that believers ought to be baptized (For example Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38).

But why? What are the reasons? 

KISII REPORT #16

The footings are in and the concrete floor is in place. We are happy and grateful to see this building for the children begin to take place.

We have to stop here for now, however. This is as far as our funds have allowed us to progress. There are more important matters to tend to until we have more resources to work with.

The critical matter at the moment is food.

It was one week ago that Pastor Joel wrote to me asking prayer for food for the children. They only had enough left for one meal. At our own meal time in our home, when Vivian and I give our thanks to God for the food on our own table, we always also pray that he would supply for the orphans of Kisii.

In that entire week, no gift came in for the children, and my own funds were also almost depleted. My prayer as I went to bed each night and one of my first thoughts in the morning was wondering if they had obtained food from some source. Today I sent a text to Joel to ask him.

No food for a week. Only a little maize in water to make a thin porridge. This has been the food for an entire seven days. I finally could take it no longer. Vivian found out for me that the service desk at the Walmart was open late, so tonight I drove into town to send them the money that I had on hand.

I am not sure why this food did not come from another source, but my children were starving, so I had to do something. I have asked God about this.

So for now, the building is put on hold. My prayer still is that we can have this place for the children before next rain season.

School is also a thing of the past for these children, but we trust that we will again be able to see them go to school. They have no real future without it.

But hey! The beginning of the building looks good, doesn’t it?

Also, I still have enough air miles from my pastoral training days in other parts of the world to make a trip to Kenya sometime this winter. I am beginning to make a plan for that.

By the way, for locals, I will have a table set up at the Christmas Tree Festival in Ogema on this Saturday (29^th) to sell my books. Please stop in and ask me anything about Kisii or anything that I have written in my blogs, and while you are there, buy a book or two! Thanks!

KISII REPORT #15

 It is good to see that we are able to actually begin to see our home for the children take shape. Seeing these photos reminds me of my old days with the Peace Corps and especially with Teen Missions.

In many ways, I would like to be there, but in some other ways, I am glad that I am not (It looks like a lot of hard and hot, sweaty work).

Please also remember to pray for all of the other needs of the orphans as well, especially for food but also for clothing, schooling and other needs of life. These never cease.
We also have a L-O-N-G ways to go before we have enough money to complete the building. We are trusting the Lord -- that is all we can say and what we do.
 

KISII REPORT #14

This ground is being prepared in faith.

As I have mentioned several times, from the beginning this work of the orphanage has been a step-by-step process. Even before I became involved, the church in Kisii had taken these orphans in without any outside support whatsoever. They did it out of love, and they did it by faith.

Even when the people of the church themselves had next to nothing, by faith they brought the needs of these children to the Lord. It was also by faith the call came to me to give them assistance.

It is with gratitude that we have seen these children saved from the world. First of all, they are alive. If nothing had been done, I am sure that some or even several of them would not be alive today. Secondly, not only are they alive, but they are now part a loving family who will teach and display to them the love of Christ.

It is true that every step in this process has not been forward. After seeing all of our children being able to attend classes for two terms of school, this last term the school costs suddenly rose dramatically. Because of this, we have had to pull all but the eight secondary students out. At this present time, we are waiting on the Lord to show us the next step in this, for it is our belief that these children should be able to have the opportunities of an education.

But even more important than an education is a safe and healthy place to sleep. It is our current step of faith to begin construction on the dormitory for the children. We presently have enough resources to begin to build. We by no means have enough money for the entire building, but we trust God to provide as we take this next step of faith. At the present, it will be a big encouragement to see brick being mortared onto brick to begin to see walls erected instead of in a big random pile.

Kindly pray for this building to give some security to these children who have been rescued from the world. It is an important step, but the most important of all is that they are learning that true security can only be found in faith in Christ.

 

KISII REPORT #13

Count 'em (5,500)

It has been step-by-step. The first step was buying the bricks. Joel found a deal on 5,500 bricks that would be needed to build a safe and healthy place for the orphans to sleep.

Well… that was not actually the first step. The first step was deciding what type of building we would make. Making an adobe-type building would be very cheap, but in that wet climate, these buildings need constant upkeep, and in the end, they do not last long. I learned this in the last wet season.

But a building with a concrete floor, brick walls, and tin roof is very expensive—almost ten times as much as a mud building. Nevertheless, next to food and clothing, a good place for the children to sleep in the most important need. The conditions that they have at this present time create a lot of illness, especially during the rainy season. Because of all these considerations, a concrete and brick building this is the type that we have begun to undertake.

I have decided to include the materials list below, which also includes some labor costs. Much of the labor will be done by the church people, but there is some that they do not have the skills needed to do.

Ballast for the concrete

As you look at the materials below, you will notice that they have terms that we do not use here. The “ballast concrete” for example, is not concrete. It is the course material for the gravel/sand mix. “Rintals” are what we call rebar.

I have also had some well-meaning people in the US give me advice in cost reduction, for instance, using cement block instead of bricks. There are two things that I will say in response to this:

1: These people who have given me advice may be wonderful builders here in the US, but none of them that have talked to me have any experience at all in building in an overseas third-world country. They do not understand that you cannot simply transpose what is best here with what is best in these countries. I am not a builder by trade, but I have built or been involved with construction in several foreign countries, including India, Mexico, Venezuela and Guatemala. I have seen enough that I understand that one needs to listen to the locals.

2. Also, I still maintain a high level of trust with Pastor Joel and the leadership of the Log Church of Kisii. I saw how they deliberated over the smallest of purchasing decisions where the price difference was only two or three dollars. Joel is saving all of the receipts for the materials and everything that he has purchased, and I am planning another trip there sometime this winter. Perhaps there are some things that we could do to save costs, and sometimes a person from the outside is able to see these things, at least this has been my experience.

The list is below. “KSHS” stands for Kenya Shillings, the currency of the country. Since one Shilling is worth about a penny US, you can make a quick currency conversion by simply moving the decimal point two places to the left. Example: KSHS 80,000 = about $800. It is actually a little less than that but it is close. If you are a stickler for detail, you can find currency converters online. 

1.      Ballast concrete 5 Lorries@Kshs. 16,000 per lorry                              KSHS   80,000

2.      Sandys 8 lorries@Kshs 18,000                                                             KSHS   324,000

3.      380 Bags of cement@950 per bag                                                        KSHS   361,000

4.      5,500 bricks@Kshs. 15                                                                         KSHS   82,500

5.      Wall pass 1, roll@Kshs. 4,000                                                             KSHS   4,000

6.      16, Y 12 RINTALS@850                                                                    KSHS   13,600

7.      12, y 8 rintals@ Kshs. 500                                                                   KSHS   6,000

8.      Binding wire 1 roll@Kshs.3,500                                                          KSHS   3,500

9.      Ordinary nails 1 sack                                                                           KSHS   6,000

10.  Roofing nails@ Kshs. 6,000                                                                KSHS   6,000

11.  200, 14 ft pieces of timber 4 by 2@ kshs. 24 per ft                            KSHS    67,200

12.  180, 14 ft pieces of timber 3 by 2@ kshs. 2 per ft                              KSHS   55,440

13.  9 WINDOW STEEL@Kshs. 5,500 per steel                                        KSHS   49,500

14.  3 door@Kshs 12,000                                                                           KSHS. 36,000

15.  Iron sheet 180@1250                                                                          KSHS. 17,100

16.  Labour work cost                                                                                 KSHS. 175,000

17.  Transport cost                                                                                     KSHS. 152,000

     TOTAL KSHS.1, 438,840 

I will plan on writing more about this in the weeks to come as we think that we now have enough that we can actually begin to build. Because of some very nice gifts by people from some unexpected places, we have enough materials to begin. We do not have everything, in fact we still lack about $10,000. But we have the “ballast,” we have the “sandys” we have the bricks, and now we think we will have enough for the cement.

Oh, there is one more thing. Even in Kenya they have building codes, especially when building for children. When a government inspector visited the site where we are to put the building, he determined that it was not suitable to put the concrete directly on the ground. He told Joel that he needed first to apply a base of “marrum” (Neither did I know what this was and neither did Mr. Google, unless it is a village in the Netherlands).



Marrum (not the town)

But Joel sent me a picture, and I immediately recognized the type of material that he was talking about. I have seen it on building sites all over the world. It provides a hard and impermeable base on which to put the concrete so that the floor does not crack.

 

We have not forgotten that most of the kids cannot now attend school because of the high cost, but we consider this an even more important need.

That’s enough for now. More next week.

 

"Praise the Lord!"

"Amen"

"Praise the Living Lord!"

"Amen"

KISII REPORT #12

Last week I gave a report about the school situation for the orphans in Kisii. It was as I understood it at the time. However, since that time, I have learned that things are not the same as they were the term before. It is not good news.

Somewhere during the interim between the previous school term and this term, the National Government of Kenya closed down the school that was in the vicinity of the church because they determined that the school was not providing the “standard education.” I am assuming that they made this determination because in their judgment it did not reach the levels of educational standards that they have set for their schools.

This has forced the children to attend another school where the fees are much higher. I am not speaking of just a small increase. Averaged over the entire school year, the cost per secondary school has risen from $38 for each of the three terms, compared to $366 for the cost per term in the new school. It has been a long time since I have been in mathematics class, but by my calculations, that is a 900 percent increase!

It is not quite that dramatic for the lower grades, but nevertheless, any time you multiply the costs by 42 (the number of children that we have in the school), the final product is a very high number.

And it is not only the school fees. There have been recent price increases in almost every sector of life in Kenya. One example is the cost of paper. Last year Kenya introduced a ban on plastic store bags to help combat litter and pollution in general. It was a noble move in many regards, but not one without negative consequences. Because the stores now need to provide mostly paper bags, it has caused a general paper shortage.

This shortage has put an additional strain on sending the children to school. Each student in secondary school needs to have 11 notebooks, at a cost of about $2 each (these are notebooks which I saw at the store here for 19¢). We have 8 children in secondary school, so providing notebooks for them costs an additional $176 per term. Keep in mind also that this is in an area where the average daily wage for a laborer is about $1 per day.

The reality of the situation at this time is that the cost of schooling has become so great that the school fees alone exceed the levels of funds that have been available to us. That means that even if we stopped buying food for the children and abandon plans to build a place for them to sleep, we still would not have enough money to send them all to school.

Because of this, we have decided to pull all of the children out of school except for the 8 secondary students. It is the final term of their school year, and since they are nearing the end of their education, we want to try and give them the most help that we can.

We have a saying in the US—“Education is fundamental.” It is an easy thing to say when the general standard of living is high. But education is not really “fundamental.” The primary things in life are food and housing. These things are fundamental for life itself.

Because of the present situation, we have decided to concentrate on these things until we see the Lord bring about a new way. We lay all of these difficulties at the feet of Jesus and wait to see what he will do.