Wednesday, July 28, 2021

IMAGE OF THE NEW SCHOOL PLANS FOR THE LOG CHURCH ORPHANAGE

You saw in the post of a couple of weeks ago that the construction of the new school at the orphanage is underway. On the post of July 2, I included a picture of the architect’s drawing of how the completed school will look. You would not have seen it if you did not hit the “Read More” button at the end of the post.

But that picture was blurry. You could not see clearly the layout of the school. So I asked Pastor Joel to send me a clearer picture, which he did by asking the building engineer to send the pdf file of the plan. I tried to convert this pdf into an image that this blog site would accept (it will not let me upload a pdf), but I'm afraid it does not help for the purpose of this post.

Either I do not have the tools on my laptop to make a proper conversion, or I simply do not know how to do it (the most likely scenario).

But if you are interested, just email me and I can send you the pdf of this, plus another one that shows the structural components of the first floor. I think that anyone who is interested already has either my email or phone.


I had also asked Joel for the cost involved with the next phase of the building. The next phase would include the structural beams of the first storey of the building, massive enough to support two more storeys. As I mentioned previously, we do not have much room at the orphanage so the government is requiring us to build a three-storey structure.

This phase will also include the walls of the first floor and the poured concrete ceiling, which will also become the floor for the second storey.

The estimate for this phase is $15,000.

Did your jaw just drop open? Get used to it. Since beginning this orphanage four years ago, my jaw muscles have become slack many times, both with seeing the costs of what we are involved with, and with how God has met those needs.

I have constantly told God that I am not the person for this job, but so far he has not removed this responsibility from me.

But the rewards are great. When I hear from the children how they are so thankful for the life given to them, I have to think that my small part of this work is worth every inconvenience and difficulty.

I hope those of you who have also contributed much to this work feel the same. Your gifts are not being wasted. As we go along with this project, I will write more of how we believe this school building will serve not only the needs of the orphans, but of other children of the area whose parents do not have the money to send them to school.

But I will also ask you to pray. This is the most important.

Kindly pray that God will be in control at every step of every phase of this project, and that every motive of all of us will only be for what He is doing for the lives of these children.

Also, I am strongly feeling the need to return to see the people there. This entire covid scare has made this impossible up until now. Actually, Kenya is once again on lock-down. The Log Churches there and all the churches are unable to meet. At least this is true in the Kisii area.

This shut-down complicates everything of course, from the transportation and costs of food, to getting the materials for building.

If there was ever a time to look to the Lord, it is now.

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If you would like to help the children of the Log Church Orphanage of Kisii, Kenya, you may make your check out to “The Log Church” and write “Orphans” on the memo line.

Send it to:

The Log Church

PO  Box 68

Tripoli Wisconsin 54564

We now need to pay a wire transfer fee with every payment, which amounts to $50 each time, but other than that, your donated money will be used only for purchasing food, clothing, schooling, and other necessities of living. We wait until we have $4000-$5000 before we make the bank transfer to make each transfer more economical. Nothing is held back or diverted for any other purpose. Thanks!

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Friday, July 16, 2021

THE LOG CHURCH ORPHANAGE/SCHOOL - KENYA

The school situation is changing for the orphanage.

First of all, we want to express how thankful that we are that the Lord has provided the orphanage the ability to pay the fees so that the children could go to school for these past years (mostly through your gifts).

When I first visited the church in 2017, this was not the case. The church people in Kenya were not able to do this. They were doing the best that they could within the church to teach the few orphans that they had at
that time to read and to write.

But on the other side of the perspective, the education that they are receiving at the various schools still is not the best. The schools are very overcrowded because of the many children in the area. Also, according to what Pastor Joel tells me, our kids are belittled in the school because they are orphans.

Below in Joel’s letter, you can see the cost breakdown for the current term of school. In
the parenthesis I have put the conversion into dollars, plus the calculations of the cost per student. 

The pandemic has caused a disruption in the regular school schedule, so the terms this year are not the same dates as they have been in the past. Normally, there is a month of holiday in between two terms, but this year the previous term ended on the 14th of July, and the new term will begin on the 27th.

You will see that as the children get older and enter into the secondary school, the costs are much higher. Because of the severely shortened term this time, the costs have decreased from the previous school term this time, but generally speaking, we can expect that they will only increase in the long run. In the past, we have figured total school costs for all the children to be between $20 - $25,000 per year.

However, the most important matter in my mind is the future for these children. In these years we have been feeding them, housing them, and sending them to school, but I keep thinking about what comes later. 

In some way, we have to be thinking about a future for these kids. They of course will not remain children in the orphanage forever, and not even for very many years. They have no family land as is the case with most kids in the Kisii tribe, no family, no predictable future after they graduate from secondary school. What then?

Only God knows, but it is a concern of mine that we do what we can now to give them not only a diploma from some school, but a good education that can prepare them to excel in their lives.

Taking everything into consideration we believe that we should begin to pursue the building of our own school. This is a huge undertaking, but we will do so little by little as we see the provision of the Lord. In the pictures you can see the foundation that is presently being prepared. We have begun. 

Here is Joel’s letter:

Dear beloved Dad, Mum, Church and Friends,

Greetings from Kenya family. We are humbled to thank God for hearing and remembering you in prayer. We are each day praying for you and all who have joined the hand to build the school buildings for the glory of God. This project does not only need money but also need prayer because in this way God will move in the hearts of people to help.

Our prayers are with you all, the church and leadership of the Log orphanage Kenya we are humbled for the
work you are doing. Thank you!

We have the children in schools as follows

Matagaro Secondary School 15.

Rianyakwara Primary 26

Kimai Primary 20

The total we have 46 pupils primary and 15 students in Secondary, the children go the next class on the end year now next that is first term we will have 8 more pupils to the secondary.

For this term we will only pay below fees it's reduced.

Rianyakwara Primary fees  =KSh. 145,200 fees ($55.80/student)

KIMAI DEB primary  Fees  Ksh. 114,100 ($57.05/student)

Matagaro Secondary fees  Ksh. 252,200  ($168.13/student)

(Total of about $5,115 for the present shortened term)

Our prayers are with you all. Thanks for the help and prayers for the Log Church Orphanage.

We pray that when Pastor Donald comes to visit you all join him in prayer, and also come with him to witness the work that is taking place here which and which you have supported. We want to extend our heart of gratitude to all who have supported the school building which is in progress. We are praying that God will supply for it to be completed.

The reason for it to be built our own school is to meet the overwhelming needs of children from the community who have not joined any school because of the poverty level of families which surround us. Also the cost of sending our orphan children is high, so having our own school will help.

The school will be the platform where we can use the school by reaching more for Christ. The school we are building can help the children to have spiritual stability because we will be teaching the word of God and how to fear God will help to promote the word of God.

We Are praying that God will provide for school building surely need prayer because this is the project which need more resources kindly pray. Welcome Kenya we are humbled to receive you. God bless you all. Thanks. God bless you all.

Yours Son Joel and Church Leadership

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If you would like to help the children of the Log Church Orphanage of Kisii, Kenya, you may make your check out to “The Log Church” and write “Orphans” on the memo line.

Send it to:

The Log Church

PO  Box 68

Tripoli Wisconsin 54564

We now need to pay a wire transfer fee with every payment, which amounts to $50 each time, but other than that, your donated money will be used only for purchasing food, clothing, schooling, and other necessities of living. We wait until we have $4000-$5000 before we make the bank transfer to make each transfer more economical. Nothing is held back or diverted for any other purpose. Thanks!

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Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Videos of Experimental Gardening for Our Orphanage in Kisii, Kenya

The garden at the orphanage is growing well, although still in its early stage of maturity. Nevertheless, it is even now providing some food for the children. Joel writes:

“Thanks for all who provided for the garden. Now we are getting some vegetables from the garden, but most it is yet on seedling. We are humbled to God for having vegetable that can sustain two to three days in a week. Thank you. God bless you all.”

As you recall, a couple of months ago or so, we were able to install the irrigation system for the orphanage garden in Kenya.


Also this week I wanted to show you some of my own experiments, specifically the experiment I am doing with hydroponics in my garden in Wisconsin. I believe that if we can learn how to grow vegetables with this method, it can be of great benefit to the kids both at this time, and even after they leave the orphanage.

I perhaps could be a little more attentive to how it is operating. I have a few other things going on in my life and cannot just be out in the garden. Nevertheless, all in all I am pretty happy with how the hydroponic method functions.

It is a learning experiment and I am sure that it can be greatly improved, but I think that it might be a good method of growing food at the orphanage, since space is limited.

Below I have three videos of my garden in Wisconsin. The first is of the hydroponics, which is the primary part of the trial. The other two are just scenes from the other parts of the garden.

In this first video, I am growing kale. I cannot say that I am a great lover of kale, but I am growing it since that is the main leafy food that they grow at the orphanage. I have to also say however, that I did think that the way that the kale was prepared at the orphanage was quite tasty when I was there.

I am happy with some aspects of this experiment, but with others I can see room for improvement.


The second video is about other parts of the garden. This is mostly just traditional gardening, although I am making use of maple leaves as a mulch, which has been a great help both in soil moisture retention and in inhibiting weed growth. Also, with the leaf mulch that I applied last fall, the leaves kept the soil loose all winter so that I did not even have to work up the soil this spring. I could apply the seeds directly into the soil.

Concerning my comment in the video about using eucalyptus leaves as a mulch, since making the video I asked my son about this. He did a lot of work with eucalyptus in Ethiopia, and he told me that my initial thoughts about the leaves of that tree having a toxin were correct. The word he used for this toxic quality of the leaves was "allopathic."
The eucalyptus is the tree most common in Kisii


Here is another bit of my garden, drip irrigation and grapes:


The accounting for the last bank transfer is below:

Sunday, July 4, 2021

THE MOST TERRIFYING WORDS IN THE BIBLE - THE LOG CHURCH SERMON, JULY 4

Here are some of the most terrifying words of the Bible:

But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without love of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (1 Timothy 2:1-3).

Is “terrifying” the best word to use to describe these verses? Perhaps “upsetting” would be a better, or “worrying.” But whatever adjective you wish to put in, these verses from the Apostle Paul do not give us a warm, fuzzy feeling.

These verses are especially concerning to us because as we look at each one of these descriptions of the last days, we can see that they describe exactly the days in which we are living today. It leads to the question that almost everyone in the Christian church today is asking, “Are these days in which we are living the last days?”

Of course, this is not the first time in history that people have asked this question. Nor is our own time in history unique in its similarity to what Paul describes in these verses. There have been great apostasies in the past, but there have also been great reformations. At the same time however, there are certain aspects to our present day that are unique, or at least that are indicative to an immanent intervention and punishment from God.

Will this intervention by God soon be coming to our nation, or perhaps even to the entire world?

Friday, July 2, 2021

SCHOOL AT THE ORPHANAGE - THE WORK HAS BEGUN

The work has begun.

Since the beginning, we knew that providing our own school for the orphans would be the best solution to meeting their education. And it is not only the orphans that live at the orphanage, but others in the area who need the opportunity to be able to go to school, along with children from extremely poor families who cannot pay the school fees.

But it is a big task. We do not know how God will meet not only the needs of building, but also the ongoing needs.

But we have begun. As it was when we built the dormitory for the children, all is in the hands of God. We build as He enables. We do not know how long it will take, but God will enable.

It is amazing to think that four years ago these kids were sleeping on a muddy dirt floor. God has been so good.

Pastor Joel’s letter below:

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