Progress

We have been making great progress here in Kenya. Here is an excerpt from one of my Amani Tree blog entries...Enjoy!

"My weekend at Rehema was great as usual. We had a lot of fun with the girls! I have loved sharing my Rehema experiences with you over the past five weeks. We have created many wonderful memories with the girls, and I hope that you enjoyed reading about them. However, the objective of my trip to Kenya this summer was to purchase land for the HEAL orphanage, and I haven’t given much of an update related to our purchase. As you know, we had until June 30th to purchase the first 10 acres. If we failed to do this, then we would lose half our deposit and the property owner would be free to sell the land to another party. Well, we were not able to raise all of the money to purchase the first 10 acres of that land. About half-way through June, it became clear to me that the money we needed would not be donated by June 30th. We tried our best but in the end, we couldn’t meet our goal. It is OKAY though! I felt like a failure for a few days and I started praying for a miracle, but after I accepted that we may not meet our goal, I analyzed other options. I prayed and thought carefully about our steps forward. Soon, I started to see the path that we should take.

As an organization, we have decided to purchase land near the current Rehema Children’s Centre. We are going to further our partnership with Rehema by building a boy’s orphanage, nursery, school, health/dental clinic, and anything else that we can dream up! Essentially, we are still moving forward with our plan to build an orphanage and additional facilities. The only difference is the location of our work. Clearly, I love the girls, staff and founders of Rehema. I have not seen such as amazing home for children, since my first volunteer experience at the Newstart Children’s Home in Zimbabwe. There are so many wonderful similarities, that I know we making the right decision by advancing the current work of Rehema. Tomorrow, I will share more with you about my vision joining with the vision of Rehema. There is a lot of need in the area and I know that by starting our work here, we will have the opportunity to change lives.

However, our new direction requires a new land search. :) For the past four days I have been looking at different properties. Searching for land in Kenya is always difficult, because if the property owner finds out that I am from America, the price usually doubles. So Ben has been searching for me, negotiating the price ahead of time and when the price is confirmed, I show my face. I have looked at about 10 properties and I have narrowed it down to two different properties. Both are about 10 minutes from the current Rehema home, they are both very arable, have good access to water and electricity and are easily accessible from the main road. Essentially, they have the same qualities of the previous land. I am very hopeful that in the next two weeks, we will be on our way to purchasing the land that we choose. Land here is much cheaper as well. Hopefully, we will still end up with 8-10 acres, which is enough to get started. I am thrilled at the options in front of us. We are really making progress and I am excited for our new direction.

Today I received communications from the previous property owner. We are in the process of ending our agreement. He is actually willing to extend our deadline, but I really feel that we are making the right decision to buy land near Rehema. However, the GOOD news is, that he is willing to refund our entire deposit!!! It is such great news and a very rare gesture here. I am going to take it as a good sign, what do you think!?! Life is really humorous isn’t it? I thought that I had it all figured it out, but I guess there really is a greater purpose and direction to it all! All I can say is, thank god we didn’t raise all the money! I never thought that I would say that, but we have made the right decision. I never would have looked in this direction, if I hadn’t had to face our financial situation towards the end of June. Life is good though. We are making progress and that is all that matters.

Tomorrow I will share more about my plan. For now though, keep us in your prayers as we move forward towards our land purchase!"