| (Copyright 09-19-2025) by Rebecca Wise (East Bend, North Carolina) |
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| Please forward this message to your friends, submit it to your announcement bulletin, or post it on social media, whichever is applicable. This is lengthy, but it contains twenty years of history and background down to the current crisis. September 2025 – This is an especially difficult time for our African brothers and sisters in Christ. Kenya Hands of Hope just paid most of the Term 3 fees for our orphans in school, but our widow Margret was unlawfully arrested and jailed because she can’t pay fees for her two orphan grandsons. She can’t even afford food. Last year her husband and daughter died from starvation. The boys’ previous sponsor also died this year. Recently Margret hid for about a week (three days without food) but the police found her anyway. She is being held hostage until KHOFH pays, but as usual our funds are depleted. Her son Benard manages two fields of maize and sweet potatoes for the widows and orphans at Sengera, but the harvest won’t be ready until after the Feast of Tabernacles. Dauglas manages a field of sweet potatoes for the widows and orphans at Getionko. Sengera and Getionko are the two Feast sites in Kisii County. Dauglas also cannot afford school fees for his two sons. Almost always they need help to provide food for the widows and orphans in our congregations. John is one of our elders at Sengera. He and his wife have three children and support five orphans. Earlier this year he was beaten badly in jail because he couldn’t afford school fees. He still can’t walk upright and must use a cane. Whenever school fees are due, he hides to avoid arrest while waiting for us to pay them. (Schools in Kenya run from January to December. Term One begins in early January, Term Three in early May, and Term Three in early September.) Last year Dorcah, widow of Haron (former caretaker of Sengera House who died in an accident last year) was arrested for not being able to pay school fees for their older son in primary school. Dorcah is the matron, cook and housekeeper at Sengera House, and all the orphans do many chores. Haron had been jailed and even tortured several times for not being able to pay school fees. He was attacked by thieves at least twice. The first time he had no money, and the second time they stole his backpack but didn’t get the paper bag with funds for the orphans. Nehemiah, our oldest orphan, is the new caretaker of Sengera House. His life is very stressful, because he is under constant threat of arrest. Last year he was attacked by three men with a car who tried to kidnap him. They only got his phone, which they intended to use to extort ransom from his USA contacts. He has also been arrested at least once. Another time he and his motorbike taxi driver were in an accident, and his wallet fell into the river and went over a waterfall. By a miracle it floated downstream, where it was found by Kelvin, a young man who was praying for help for his five siblings, all orphans. They were all starving, but he didn’t take anything from it. He called Nehemiah to return his wallet, and KHOFH repaired their house and found them employment to provide for themselves. Almost half of Kenya’s population is under age 18, and about a fifth of those children are orphans. Many adults have died from disease because they couldn’t afford medical care. Many orphans are taken in by an elderly grandparent, or by a kind-hearted family. In other families, the oldest child becomes head of household. In 2013, the Kenyan government made it mandatory for all children to attend school. It promised to provide free public school, but those are few, underfunded, understaffed, overcrowded, and too far away for half-starved children to walk. The free meal program only lasted a few months. Parents are also required to pay for uniforms, shoes, supplies, and additional levies. The only option for most parents is private boarding schools, which provide transportation and meals. In Kenya, anyone who provides food for an orphan (even once) is held responsible for all his years of government-mandated schooling. Meanwhile, Matara and Steven are being held hostage in the hospital without a bed or blanket until we pay their bills, which continue to increase because we don’t have the funds to pay them. Recently Dauglas was in the same situation. Shortly before that, his family was robbed of everything while hiding from arrest because they couldn’t afford school fees for their son and two adopted orphans. Also, Benard’s and Nehemiah’s houses collapsed because of the recent heavy rains. Most people in Kenya are poor rural farmers who live in simple mud huts with corrugated roofs, and walls patched with any scrap items they can find. Our older brethren have been faithful for decades since the old Radio COG years, then WCG, then the COGs. When we found these fellowships, the brethren were starving, and few had a Bible. They needed mosquito nets, shoes, clothing, soap, mattresses and blankets. We found many orphans whose parents had attended various COGs, but we never asked which one; we always helped them all. All the big COGs acknowledged that KHOFH is legitimate and doing good work, and some promised to help, but none ever did, nor will any of their members ever hear or read about our destitute brethren. Some church leaders said that Africa isn’t a good investment for them, so they pulled out. We began approaching independent COGs instead, but so far our appeals have not resulted in any tangible benefit for our suffering brethren. Most of our few but faithful donors are from Jewish Messianic groups, which are familiar with Jesus’ instructions to help the poor. Kenya Hands of Hope’s mission is to help our widows and orphans to become self-sufficient, but lack of funds, school fees three times a year, and constant emergencies throughout the year has prevented this. In the last few years, we have lost ten of our widows and orphans to starvation. Currently we have 19 widows and 50 orphans. Please pray for our brethren, and ask your friends to do the same, and send any donations you can. No amount is too small. PayPal allows you to send as little as a dollar. That’s little more than a postage stamp, currently 78 cents. If everyone in your congregation sent just $1 a month, it would make a tremendous difference for our faithful but destitute brethren. Our few donors, many poor themselves, struggle to send enough to keep our brethren out of jail, our children in school, and our widows and orphans from starving. None of the few KHOH volunteers has ever received a dime, either for salary or expenses. It’s an honor to donate our time, effort, thoughts, prayers and personal funds to this life-changing ministry on behalf of God’s called-out brethren and beloved children. Thank you in advance for your prayers, sharing the word, and donations if you can. Kenya Hands of Hope, a 501(c)(3) charity founded in 2006 by William P. Goff Website: KHOFH – Kenya Hands of Hope Send Donations to: Kenya Hands of Hope, 334 East Main Street Bldg B Unit A3 Tuckerton, NJ 08087-2841 PayPal Donations: (fee is optional) https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=GYQKRX264EMNW (please consider recurring monthly donations) Or set up donations directly at paypal.com (no fee mentioned) For More Information: Phone: (843) 447-0140 Email: [email protected] Current fundraiser – Bedding for Getionko Orphans (GoFundMe) (you set percentage of fee on a sliding scale) https://gofund.me/0f7ce04f Editor’s Note: We do not listen to video links or read print material that is linked to items we print, so we may or may not agree with those links. We only look at print material that is sent to us for print. Laura Lee |
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Rebecca Wise, thank you for this honest and factual update on the struggles the Kenyan brethren, the orphans and widows are going through, day after day of having to live in a society where even many of the police are their enemy.
All the more reason we need to continue to pray earnestly to our Father to send His Son back to change this evil world, and in the meantime help where and how we can. They are establishing their children into one family where someday soon we will all meet the rest of our Family and rejoice Together!