Hello Friends!
We hope this finds you all doing well. You have not heard from us for awhile, but rest assured that we have been well and quite busy. You will be happy to know that we survived the August school break! We had lots and lots of children and we are grateful to God that there were no serious injuries during the various activities at the center. During the third week of August, we held a full week of discipleship and we were honoured to host three missionary ladies from Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) Kenya who assisted in the outreach program. The three ladies came daily for five days and over one hundred children were reached. It brought back memories for Kimberly of when she was on staff with CEF fourteen years ago! Over twenty children who indicated a desire to know the Lord, were counselled.
On August 23rd, we were delighted at the opportunity to take a group of 17 youth from the slum who frequent the center for a day trip to Karura forrest. This is a park located in the outskirts of Nairobi and endowed with a clean, serene and beautiful surrounding. None of the youth had ever visited the park, which is a twenty minute drive away (without traffic!).
The purpose of the trip was to build relationships in an informal yet fun filled environment which we hope will enable us to relate and engage well and hopefully earn the right to speak to their lives. This became necessary after we noticed that a number of teen youth had been coming to the center on a regular basis but we lacked a focused outreach to their particular age group. The history of Hope Anew ministry has mainly focused on children ages 4- 12 but it’s becoming clear that a gap exists from ages 13 -17, so in obedience to the Lord’s direction, we have begun to make a concerted effort to reach out to them. We are calling this youth group “Luke 2:52 Youth”. This is in keeping with the goal of Hope Club, which is to teach children how to grow in wisdom, in favor with God, in favor with men, and in stature (preventative health measures). Naturally, teenagers need to continue to grow in these areas also.
We thought that you might like to take a look at what we have been up to over the past several weeks, so we prepared a video for you to enjoy.