Today we had a special day. We started off the morning with a visit to the home of our dear friends Terry and Oliver. Last time we visited their home is was nothing but an unfinished mug hut. Now it is a lovely little cottage in a lovely setting. They have been without electricity for the past two and a half years so Valerie decided to write to a few friends and see if anyone wanted to contribute to the $400 to have the power brought to their house. With their help Oliver went down to the power company and paid the bill to have power installed. It was such a joy to sit in they’re living room and discuss what it will be like to finally have electricity.
After that we paid a surprise visit to two of our Olive Tree micro-finance businesses. Our first visit was to the shop of a young widow named Jehidah who is running a tiny little general store out on the main highway through town. Times have been hard for her because business has been slow. The new governor of the region has just taken office and he is tripling the taxes on all the little businesses in Kakamega. Jehidah will have to pay 10,000 Kenya Shilling for her new business license or she will have to go out of business. We prayed for God’s provision for her and then we had fun buying a lot of stuff from her shop. Following Jehidah we visited an older woman who was selling vegetables on a street corner. This woman is doing quite well in her business but has defaulted on her loan. Since Olive Tree set her up in business, she has not paid anything back to the revolving fund. Valerie accepted the challenge of having a talk with her about this. We showed up and prayed for her, then we bought some of her stock and Val spoke very wise words of encouragement to her about being part of the team. We’ll see how she does from here on. Once we prayed for this lady the 4 women behind us who were selling vegetables begged us to come and pray with them. We joined hands with them and had a great time of prayer. This is the way it goes in Kenya and it’s just plain fun!
The next step was to have lunch with Dr George Matimbai (Our Worldcomp Kenya President) and to debrief about the adventures of the last two weeks. George shared some of our Guiding Principles with Del Irwin and Corbett Stubbert and then we had an amazing conversation about our many projects and the future of Worldcomp.
Finally we went to the home of our dear friends Simon and Grace Baraza. Simon and Grace are such a lovely couple. Full of the spirit of wisdom, love and joy. Simon is a very valuable asset to our Worldcomp team. He is an administrative genius and wisdom just pours out of his life. It was a great way to end our time in Kakamega. Tomorrow I preach at the Kakamega Church and then we rush off to catch the 6:30pm flight back to Nairobi.
A perfectly wonderful day.
Blessings to all of you back home
We love you
Richard