Touch a Family

Through the generous support of our sponsors and donors, we have been able to reach out to families of our sponsored children and people living in Kibera. God has worked tremendously through this program and brought hope to homes that were in despair. The smiles that we see in faces of these families once we reach out with our food parcels are usually amazing. The kids are the once who express it even better by laughing and holding these food parcels. It always touches our hearts to know that we are creating an impact in someone’s life and bringing joy to a particular family.

We not only give out the food parcels but this always creates a platform for us to also share the love of God to these families in which Christ died for their sins. We get families giving their lives to Jesus through our visits too. There is a family that we recently visited who knew nothing about Jesus but through our generous support they got interested to know who is this we serve that gives us the joy of sharing. We got a chance to share His word and they gave their lives to Jesus.

One of the most touching stories from this program that we have had in the course of this year is from a family that saw the food parcel and broke down in tears. They had gone for some days without food and said that we were heaven sent. The gratitude that we received from them was beyond our imagination. The most recent family we visited was of a young girl who had just given birth and had nothing to eat. The fact that she was breastfeeding made things even harder for her. On visiting, she was very happy and really thanked us because she finally got something that would take her for at least two weeks or so.

These are some of the stories that keep us going as an organization. The fact that we are creating an impact in the society gives us the zeal to keep working. We thank all the donors for making such programs successful. You may not be here physically to witness the impact but we can truly testify that you are a blessing. May you be richly blessed for your continued support.

TOUGH LIFE IN KIBERA

The children that are sponsored in our program come from Kibera slums. It is the largest slums in Kenya and the second largest slums in the world. It has occupants of up to a million people living in an area of about 2.5km².They stay in single roomed mud houses. The roofs are made of rusty iron sheets that have been often been on for more than 30 years. There are few roads, mostly just small paths leading to the different houses with sewage running through the shacks as there is no good sewage system.

Kibera slums

During the rainy season living in the slums becomes a nightmare. The roofs leak, water comes in through the doors and sometimes houses constructed near the rivers are carried away by the floods. Mudslides are sometimes experienced by people whose houses were constructed where there is a lot of soil. People lose their lives during this season especially small children who often get lost when it is raining.

open sewage

God has been good to our Riziki children as none of them has been badly affected by the floods. It is a cold season too and we pray for good health for our children. They are doing well in school as it is a month since they went back to school for second term. One of our children in boarding school came home after the reports of his mother being admitted at the Kenyatta national hospital reached him. He refused to go back to school until the mother gets well as he says he will not be able to concentrate on his studies.

He is from a single parent family and the mother is the one who has raised him together with two other siblings. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis but we later learnt that it was not the first time to get the diagnosis and she had stopped taking the first lot of drugs. She is an alcoholic but doesn’t get enough food to supplement the drugs which made her very weak.  Even if she gets well she cannot tell where money will come from for her to be discharged. Her daughter gave birth while she is still at the hospital. The new mum has no one to take care of her with her baby. Two days before giving birth she had stayed on an empty stomach for lack of something to eat.

flooded river

Soon after giving birth she was discharged and allowed to go home. She was shocked on arriving at their place to find part of the wall had fallen down due to the heavy downpour the previous night. Her mattress was also wet because the roof leaks and there was no one at home to put containers as they usually do when it rains. Stranded and very weak and not knowing where to start, she took all her clothes and spread them on the bed and laid her daughter to keep warm.  She sat down and cried for the most part of the night. The following day a neighbor pitied her and fixed the wall of their house.

This new mum is using old clothes as diapers as she cannot afford to purchase any. She cannot ask anyone for assistance as she is not sure who fathered her child but the one she thinks of is a drunkard and uses bhang(marijuana). He came to see her a week after delivery and gave her a dollar to buy something. Life for a girl child in Kibera is not easy. Girls sell their bodies in exchange for a small sum of money just to be able to take care of their needs, especially purchasing sanitary towels. Peer pressure among teenage girls is also high as everyone wants to do what the other person is doing. Teenage pregnancy has become the order of the day in Kibera slums and if you reach a certain age without a child people will always think that maybe you have been aborting.

The society has accepted this behavior. The morals that people use to highly uphold are no longer there in this current society. Girls as young as 13 years are getting married and by the time they reach 20 years most of them have up to three or four children. The rate of school dropout has also gone up as parents have become unable to control their children. Some pretend to be going to school but go to places where they are influenced into a life of crime.

Thank you to everyone who supports Afri-lift because it is through touch a family and child sponsorship that we are able to impact the lives of people living in Kibera. We see a better Kibera in days to come through education that is being given to the younger generation.

                

JOY OF SALVATION

I took a day to be at the farm and interacted with some of the former street boys.They are getting rehabilitated from their former way of life where they lived on the streets in one of the slums and engaged in vices to survive.

It is so amazing how some of them have changed positively and have a zeal for serving God. They are optimistic for a bright future after completing the two years program which includes being equipped with social skills, modern agricultural methods, basic education as well as business skills.

Boys in class

One of the stories that touched my heart was from a young man called Davies who is currently waiting to be baptized after receiving salvation on the night of the eve of the New Year.

He is from a family of four children. His mother and father separated when he was two years old. He was taken care of by an aunt in their rural home while the father relocated to the city to search for greener pastures. He was later diagnosed with a rare skin condition where his whole body could bleed. This got the aunt worried and thought he had been bewitched.

The husband to the aunt and other family members saw him as a cursed child and asked the aunt to take the boy to his father. They traveled to the city with the aunt and Davies was left with the father who later sent him to school when the skin disease disappeared on its own.

As he was growing up life became really hard as the father was a drunkard and would barely provide food or proper clothing for him. He stopped paying for his fees in standard seven because he could use most of his money on alcohol. He was not getting along with his father who would beat him up regularly at a slight mistake. This made him to run away from home. He could stay in the house at daytime when the father was out for casual jobs and slept in a church at night.

No one in church knew he was sleeping there as he would sneak at night and sleep at a corner and leave very early in the morning. His life became miserable until one of his friends informed him about our program.

He joined the Osiligi farm in 2013 and has never regretted. At the beginning he was one of the stubborn boys who made life for others hard because of his past but later changed after realizing that life was much better there. He loves the life at the rehabilitation center because the activities carried around and the fact that he does not go to bed on an empty stomach. He also takes the other boys as his brothers and this has given him a sense of belonging.

Davies during the interview

The night he received Christ was after watching a testimony of a woman who had a vision about hell and how a big fire was readily prepared for the people who would not have accepted Jesus when He comes back. She said it was a fiery furnace with scary creatures burning. Then she saw heaven being a beautiful place filled with glory. The angels were singing and worshiping God. It was a place filled with gold. He desired to  go to heaven and his love for Christ grew. This convicted him to receive Christ as He is the only one who could save humanity. He has never looked back and is determined to serve God even after completing the two years program.

He is among five other boys who are preparing to be baptized as for him baptism is dying and resurrecting in Gods glory. He is a good role model as the boys who use to mock him as “holy boy” desire to get salvation too.

He really inspired me with his positive attitude for a bright future and the joy that salvation brings. Soon it was time for me to leave the center but wished I could stay longer. I left the center with more desire to serve in the Afri-Lift Missionary Society.