News

Lending a helping hand

Scott Wagar

11/06/2012

Members of the Lutheran Brethren Synod, in association with the Evangelical Lutheran Bible Fellowship, will be making a trip to Kenya to construct a children’s home with classrooms in the city of Kakamega for the Helping Hands Mission in the African community.

“Probably yesterday the materials we are sending overseas left the rail yards in Minot. It is going to get to Seattle early next week and will be put on one or two ships and either get to Kenya before New Year’s Day or a couple days after. So, it will be two months at sea,” said Rev. Craig Jennings, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church and project leader for the mission trip to Kenya. “We’ve sent just about 32 tons of material, which includes an entire building.”

In February, 16 men from around the area, along with men from the states of Alaska, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin will travel to Kakamega to construct the orphanage and school using pole barn-building technology. The structure will be 8,280 square feet and hold eight classrooms, four dormitories, two offices and a meeting room.
According to the Kenya government, the school will allow 800 children to attend the school, which include a number of orphans who will be able to stay right in the school. Jennings stated that most of the children will go to school and come home each day, while a smaller number of children who are orphans will live on site in the building.

The orphanage and its children will be maintained and paid for through the tuition that will be charged to the students.

“It will pay for the up keep and for the orphan children to go to school,” Jennings said. “It will also pay for the up keep of the school.”   

One unique advantage of this building is that it will hold on estimated number of 70 orphans with AIDS, which will include 20 who are HIV positive.

The group of men going to Africa has chosen Kenya because its poverty level and large number of AIDS cases, which have left many children without parents.

The statistics are alarming in the country and includes:

POVERTY:

  •  4.3 billion people, over 60 percent of the world population, live on $2 or less per day
  •  Half of all Kenyans live on less than $1 per day


HIV/AIDS:

  •  An estimated 1.5 million Kenyans are living with HIV
  •  There are 1.7 million total orphans
  •     1.1 million are orphans due to AIDS  


The Helping Hands Mission in Kenya currently operates a Christian school in Kakamega with around 230 students. With the new structure, they will be able to care for more orphans and educate a large number of children.

The men going on the trip will pay their own way over to Kenya and their accommodations while in the country and feel God wants them in Kenya to assist.

“In James 1:27, James says true Christianity shows itself in caring for orphans and widows. If it’s just all talk and theology James would ask is that real Christianity. To me, real Christianity is being involved in the needs of the people who are hurting and who have no opportunity, no future apart from somebody stepping in their circumstance,” Jennings said. “So, I look at it from a Christian perspective. In the Old Testament it says a lot about caring for them, that’s the Christian calling and the Old Testament makes it clear that it is.

“I look at it as a way for the people in our church that mission work isn’t just something you read about or maybe ever so often you write a check to go to a denomination project, because that kind of is detached and distant, you don’t really get the true sense of what happens,” Jennings added. “And, this is a way we can get guys from our church to go and come back to our congregation and it changes them forever. They are more eager to minister and serve.”     

The church is looking for donations to assist with this project, while at the same time prepare for another building project in 2014. Individuals, who wish to donate to this year project, or the project in 2014, can do so by going to the First National Bank and giving to the Kenya Orphanage Project.

The account is a 501C3 and the money donated will go to finance the project(s) and not the men going on the trip.