Feeding Stations and Rock Breakers

Four things are required for us to start an orphanage in Kenya. First, a WBS follow-up worker. These are men who are payed by GCR to follow up on World Bible School correspondence course students. Second, a church that cares for orphans. These churches are started by the students of the WBS worker, with his help, in the community where thy live. To qualify, they must already be trying to help the orphans in their area. Third, land. This is usually donated by the church members or sometimes by the WBS worker. Fourth, money. It takes about $40,000 to build an orphanage for 60 kids and 4 widows. Before the money comes, we can help the church who is trying to take care of orphans in their area by helping them build a feeding station.

A feeding station usually consists of the church itself, a dining hall (usually open sided), a kitchen, a latrine, and a small dorm for two widows ho cook for the kids. Today we visited three, started by churches under the care of Tomas Alywa.

First at Muhuroni, we saw a great site with plenty of space, and a great new widows dorm and dining hall. The Muhuroni church turned out en masse to great us and thank us for all our help. This is a church who really cares about kids. There are 68 church members helping to care for 32 orphans. We prayed with them and blessed them and moved on to Border.

At Border we saw another great site and again the church was there to meet us. It was lunch time, so the kids were there to eat. I took pictures of every one of them. They were amazing. Happy and shy and polite, those are some of the best pictures I have taken yet. Check them out at the link on the right. A great meal, more prayers of blessing and we moved on to Sondu.

Sondu is a good size town, and this feeding station is actually behind the house of our worker Thomas Alwala. This was the first feeding station we started, and it was done as a first step toward the eventual orphanage that was built at Dirubi, a short distance from Sondu. They feed 91 orphans here, two meals every day.

So a great, but fast moving day. Along the way we saw lots of sugar cane, a processing plant for cane, and rock breakers. These are men, and sometimes children, who sit atop a pile of small rocks that they have made by breaking larger rocks with a hammer. It's hard to imagine, so I managed to get a picture. (No small feat at 50 KPH) The small rocks are used as ballast, or fill rock, in concrete construction. We can't imagine this because our whole economy is built around efficiency of labor. There is no shortage of labor in Africa, so why buy a machine when 100 men can do it for less. Opposite world!

Tomorrow we see Dirubi, and Lee McGraw.