Africa Kenya

 

 

     As I write this report, the two-week extension school in Nakuru, Kenya is in the fifth day of classes with 75 very enthusiastic students registered, and up to 10 more expected to arrive.  One of the students Peter Wanyoike, a sincere young Pentecostal who has been searching for the true church for many years.

     I met Peter when I spent 5 days with a Pentecostal group in Nairobi before the extension school began.  There I witnessed the most pitiful case I have ever encountered.  As we toured the “ghetto” with narrow paths between the mud-walled structures and raw sewage running down a trench in the middle of the path, we observed three small children whose toes were swollen and infested with “jiggers.”  A jigger is a parasite that lodges under the skin and continues to multiply.  Without treatment, the children could ultimately die.

     The children’s unmarried mother, whom I was told suffers from mental illness, also had a small baby.  Because of a recent hospital stay, she was unable to continue nursing the baby.  Her house, a dark, dirt-floored room, was almost void of material possessions.  They had no fresh water readily available, and when I looked into the pail in which she was washing clothes, I saw hundreds of small worms floating on the top.  It appeared she was washing clothes in sewer water.  The leader of the Pentecostal group left some bread and powdered milk with the mother, and I urged them to give ongoing help in this pathetic case.

     There are many orphaned children in Kenya who live on the streets.  They rarely bathe.  They gather their meager diet from a garbage pile.  Most of them sniff glue in an attempt to escape reality, which is similar to our society where alcohol is consumed.

     Some caring people have established small orphanages in an attempt to rescue these children from a life of crime, prostitution, and drug abuse.

     I wish you could see the poverty and degradation which I witnessed.

Frances Landberg

How we long for Jesus to come quickly!  Then no one will suffer anymore!