mission trips

Josephs’ House Students Share Creativity and Leadership with our Summer Visitors

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This past summer we had several visitors meeting our students and taking a tour of the communities where we work.  Our Joseph’s House students took the opportunity to give back to Light Up Hope by both learning from our visitors and teaching them as well.  Mike and Liz Ruggles were the “Win a Trip to Kenya” winners from our 2018 Light Up Hope Gala.  They spent 10 days with us in Kenya and since Mike is a professional photographer, he choose to share his knowledge of photography and entrepreneurship with our students.  He taught them about photo composition, lighting and business techniques for starting a photography business.  He was such an inspiration, several of our students have started their own small businesses doing portraits for their fellow university students! When the Discovery Church mission team arrived, it was time for our students to take the lead.  They brought the team on a tour of downtown Nairobi including Uhuru Park where they taught the mission trip members the joy of dance and singing and the Masai Market where they taught the mission team the skill of price negotiation! We have 4 students expected to graduate in the next twelve months and we […]

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Being Pushed Beyond… Discovery Church Mission Trip July 2019

kellyUncategorized

The 2019 Mission Trip with Discovery Christian Church was a success!. Relationships were formed, fun was had, dancing was a given and a must.   The team was able to experience and see a small sample in the day in a life of a Kenyan women living in Kibingoti.  They carried water on their backs from the river below to the village and did some farming.  They also participated in a feeding program at one of the schools in Umoja that some of our LIFT kids attend.  And lastly, while everyone else was watching the Lion King the mission team experienced the live version by going on a safari with some of our Joseph’s House students.    Our mission trips to Kenya make an impact on those who go.  I was reminded of this after one of the days visiting Kwa Njenga, a slum of Nairobi.  I took the team to Gifted Prince School where they were able to meet the kids we serve, meet with the teachers and staff and some of the LIFT families.  I could see on the team’s faces that getting to the school was difficult for them.  They had to walk through open sewage, duck their […]

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Life is wonderful. These kids know it, they really do.

KellyUncategorized

Jill was with us in March of 2012 when we first stepped onto the land in Kitale that would become Hope Children’s Home.  Jill met the children when they were still living in Nairobi and suffering from the hardships of life there.  She is now nearing the end of her month long mission in Kenya.  She shares with us her reflections on the life the children are living now that they are all settled in Kitale. I have no idea where to start when reflecting back on this week. What I can say is that when God moves, he amazes. Especially if you are looking and watching and waiting for an answer to prayer. I cannot count how many prayers have been answered since the beginning of this trip. God hears. God listens. God answers. Kitale began with Kiswahili lessons. Dannie and I were riding with Fred and Alice when we began the list of words and phrases in Swahili that would grow extensively over the next week. Learning even just pieces and parts of their language has been and experience in itself. We quickly learned not to trust Alice as she was giving us incorrect translations as a joke. […]

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20 Things I learned in Kenya

KellyUncategorized

(Heidi pictured second blonde from the left) In October we sent a team of 10 to visit, serve and play alongside the children of Hope Children’s Home in Kitale, Kenya.  One of the team members, Heidi, shared her reflections with us and we in turn share them with you… 1.      Squatty potties and airplane toilets take talent. Pure talent. 2.      A “ball” can be a plastic bag that’s filled with dirt and then tied. A hammer can be a stone. Food leftovers can provide a meal for pigs. Just don’t get too attached to the tiny bunnies and don’t ask them what they want to be when they grow up because the profession of “lunch” might depress them. The circle of life can sometimes put baby in a corner. (one of the empowerment projects in place at Hope Children’s Home Farm is raising rabbits for food) 3.      Red dirt + moving bricks + pouring rain + orphans’ smiles= Therapy you can’t buy. (the team helped build another one of our empowerment projects – aquaponics vegetable gardening and fish farming) 4.      Eating the meat off fish and chicken heads is known as zero waste. 5.      Kenyan churches put the “mega” in […]

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