Wilson - Kenya

For some reason God has laid it on my heart to tell you about Wilson. I hope you will pray about sponsoring him. If you do decide to sponsor him and have any questions (or just want to tell me!!!) please post them in the comment box. Your sponsorship will allow him to attend school and be taught the Word of God! What a blessing! Once you are a sponsor, you can write letters to your child and sometimes they'll write back! You can also have the opportunity to go on a trip to visit your child.

Child Details Name: Wilson Omutsani (KE4030290)

Birthday: May 22, 1990

Age: 18

Gender: Male

Region: Africa

Country: Kenya

Program: Ebusiralo Child Development Center

Personal and Family Information: Wilson lives with his father and his mother. His father is sometimes employed as a laborer and his mother is sometimes employed as a seller in the market. Wilson works at home gardening, caring for animals and helping in the kitchen. There are 6 children in the family.For fun, Wilson enjoys soccer. He attends church activities, youth group and choir regularly and is in high school where his performance is average.Because of your sponsorship, Wilson will have new opportunities to learn and grow physically, mentally, and spiritually. Thank you for your concern and prayers.

This child lives in an AIDS affected area. In Africa, the disease has impacted the entire continent, creating a generation of orphans and vulnerable children. God can use you to help ease the pain of a child in desperate need. View additional information about this child.

HE GOT SPONSORED!!! PRAISE GOD!

A Meaningful Christmas -- How You Can Get Involved

Here are some ways you can give this Christmas!

The Hydrate Project -- A group from Heritage is raising money to build a clean water well in Shashamene, Ethiopia. We are also in the process of raising money to go to Shashamene in June!

The Mocha Club -- For only $7 a month you can change lives. If you want to join click here and you'll also get a really amazing Dave Barnes comedy DVD (and so will I!).

Compassion International -- For $32 a month you can send a child to school, feed them, clothe them, help with the bills. My Compassion child's name is Lady Villa. She is from Quito, Ecuador and we write letters to each other all the time and I even got the opportunity to meet her on her birthday! You can also make a one-time donation for Christmas presents for the kids that are not sponsored yet.

Soles4souls -- Buy 2 pairs of shoes for $5. If you donate $10, you get a free keychain. Click here to read stories of the children that are receiving these shoes.

Feeding Jesus

I was recently listening to Francis Chan on his amazing podcast (which you can get on iTunes) and the Holy Spirit convicted me to begin planning for the things that I have wanted to do for the Lord in my life. I always think of these things as so far off, that I don’t have to start thinking about them yet. Life is a vapor. I better be on my toes.

The message was about Jesus telling the people that they saw him hungry and didn't feed him, saw him naked and didn’t clothe him. The people ask him when that happened. They had never seen him hungry or naked. But Jesus says that whenever they did not do those things for “the least of these” they did not do them for him.

I want to do all I can to clothe and feed Jesus. When I reach Heaven I want Him to gather me up in His arms and tell me that I did a good job. I want to die giving my all to please Him.

Kisses from Katie

I want to BE this girl. She is a missionary in Uganda working in an orphanage.

Missions on the Brain

Today instead of doing homework I have been obsessing over Africa, Haiti, and Compassion International. This is not a rare occurrence for me, but today I have been even more off task. You see, I was reading Jamie Ivey's blog about her adoption of two gorgeous Hatian kids. Then I went from blog to blog falling in love with the kids and the programs. Then I found a bunch of Compassion video blogs by this guy and watched a bunch of them.

I feel that God is definitely calling me to adopt later in life, which is very exciting. I also know that I am being called to missions, but how is my current degree helping that? I want to be a good photographer and be able to use that in my missions, but how is taking a drawing and 3-D design class really going to push me toward what I need to be doing? What should I be doing to push myself toward that?

Friday/Saturday

On Friday we went with Patty and Alexis to Aposento Alto, the other Compassion site where we went to church on Sunday. We got there and were taken to different classrooms where the kids gave us art and sang songs. We got to the 5th grade room and Patty told me which kid was Lady, my Compassion kid. Lady started jumping up and down and ran over and gave me a big hug. It was so sweet. Then they sang us a song and she was still sooo excited. The teacher let Lady walk around with us for awhile and we held hands and it was just so precious. We met her little sister, who was in the 2nd grade, I think.

After that we painted A LOT and whenever kids would come around I would take some pictures with my film camera.

That night we ate our last dinner at the guest house and went to bed early.

The next morning we had to leave for the airport at 4:30 a.m. That was horrible. When we got there Mom cried (of course...hehe) and I teared up a little. We got our bags checked and went to sit at the gate.

Someone got on the speaker and said, "Clements, Victoria. Come to the gate." Kellye and I looked at each other and didn't know what to do. So, we went to the gate and they said that I had something suspicious in my bag that the national police wanted to search. We were a little freaked out. They asked me to come with them but wanted Kellye to stay. We didn't allow that and we decided that she would come too.

The security guard took us down some scary steps and out onto the concourse where they put the bags on the plane. The police looked through my bags and smelled my shampoo but didn't find anything. We assume it was the 10 rolls of film, but no one told us anything.

When we landed in Miami we went to Heaven (also known as Starbucks) and then to Chilis. We decided that we only wanted an appetizer but our waiter was a big jerk and told us to go sit at the bar (we tipped the bartender nicely so the waiter would be jealous).

When we got to Atlanta we saw Dusty (Kellye's boyfriend) waiting at the baggage claim. After we got our luggage we split up and she went home with Dusty and he proposed!

In the car I had a jam session and tried out for "Rent". Haha.

Sorry that this is so jumbled. I'm not in the mood for fine-tuning right now.

Thursday

Thursday we got up early and had another really yummy (Yep, you heard it. I said yummy!) breakfast. Patty and Alexis, the pastor’s at the church we went to the first day, picked us up and took us to Velazco, another one of their church/school plants. We hit a lot of traffic on the way and Alexis (who hardly speaks any English) told us that a group of students were fighting the president. What that really meant was that they were protesting a few different things.

We got there and all the kids at the school came up to the chapel and sang us some songs and gave us cards and artwork. Then we painted a big wall and watched the kids play. After we got through painting, one of the smallest kids, he was probably 3, came and played with me. He told me all about his little plastic horse and showed me how he could balance a car on a piece of pipe.

We came back to the house and went to get dessert at Crepes & Waffles. It was super good!

Some people invited us over for dinner and we had a really good time.

Sorry that today was not very detailed. I’m tired.

...And something I forgot to say

I think it would be really awesome if we could get the church or just a group of people (the College and 20 somethings class?) to support Casa Gabrielle or maybe gather some start-up capital for another house like it. Maybe one for girls? I don't know. Just throwing that out there. If anyone is interested at all, let me know!

What you can pray for: that Casa Gabrielle would continue being a Scripture based ministry, leading many young men to Christ and toward better lives; that we would have guidance if we are supposed to support a ministry like Casa Gabrielle.

Tuesday

I’m writing this a day late because I was so frustrated with the fact that I couldn’t post any pictures yesterday. I tried facebook, flickr, and blogspot, and they all messed up on me. Hopefully I can remember everything!

We got up and ate another awesome breakfast and headed out to do some shopping. We went to the malls which are very “Americanized” but we could not find anything worth our money (the stuff in the malls in Ecuador cost as much or more than the malls in the States). We walked through a park which I guess is like Quito’s Central Park. There was some cool graffiti and a few soccer games going on inside the park.

We had decided we were going to eat at T.G.I.Fridays (Adventurous, I know) but it started raining buckets. Instead we went to Tony Roma’s (his last name is Roma, that makes it slightly more adventurous) where our poor waiter could not understand us at all so he got the manager to wait on us. He was fluent in English and didn’t even have an accent. We ate well and prayed for the rain to stop.

It didn’t. We ran back home in the pouring rain. It was kind of like being at a water park where the big bucket fills up and then pours out on all the kids and they scream and laugh. The only problem was that it wasn’t 80 degrees and sunny; it was about 55 degrees. By the time we got home, we were completely soaked head to toe. We took some pictures on the porch which are pretty amazing.

For the next 3 hours or so, I tried to post pictures, but to no avail.

That night we were invited by Tommy Bowens, a missionary/substitute teacher, to visit Casa Gabrielle. Casa Gabrielle is a home for street kids where Tommy leads a devotional. That’s all we knew going into it.

When we got there, we were greeted by a ferocious (HA!) small dog who was super cute and inside where ten or twelve boys from 13-22 were eating dinner. They smiled and welcomed us and we went into the living room to wait while they finished eating. Tommy asked the eldest boy, Mike (my love, if only he didn’t have a fiancée in Amsterdam), to tell us a little about Casa Gabrielle.

Mike told us about the entire mission of Casa Gabrielle. They take boys in off the street to disciple (around 12 at the time, following the example of Jesus) who are interested in turning their lives around. They have three main rules: no pornography, no drugs, no alcohol. If they break one of these rules they are kicked out of the house. They then begin discipling the boys, teaching them the love that God has for them and how to be a servant. All of the boys are in school and they have a tutor that comes over to help and encourage them in both their academic and spiritual studies. Once the boys graduate high school they enter into an internship with the program where they begin discipling new generations. They have a program where they go to the park (the same one we went to earlier in the day) to talk to other street kids about how they turned their lives around and were saved by the grace of God.

After Mike told us all about the ministry, we were asked to give our testimonies. This was the first time that Kellye had ever given hers aloud. It was a really cool experience telling these boys a little about our lives and how, in Christ, we have so much in common.

As we left they thanked us for coming and one of the boys who was probably 15 or so came up and kissed us all on the cheek. He was so precious and he had chubby little cheeks!

We then came home, talked about our love for Disney movies, and went to bed.

If you have any questions about Casa Gabrielle, please ask me. I know I’ve left some things out.

The Dump

Monday

Sorry, still no pictures. I have to charge my camera battery before I can get them on here. Suspense is half the fun!

Today we woke up and ate breakfast that consisted of some weird fruit that none of us really liked (but we ate anyway because we don't eat a whole lot), a roll, and eggs (huevos!). We then were picked up by Alliance Academy's registrar, Stu (the one that picked us up at the airport), and went over to the school to meet some people, see the classroom, and wait for our ride to the mission project.

The project we were working with is called Extreme Response. They are a non-profit organization that sets up grassroots mission programs in different countries. Technically they are not a Christian organization, but they are all Christians. The reason they decided to not be a "Christian" organization is so people would be willing to give their money and let them work in their countries.

We got to the dump and were greeted by the Pastor that is over the ministry. He told us a lot about what they do and the five areas of life which they try to improve for the dump workers. I don't know if I can remember them exactly, but I'll try. First and foremost they are concerned with the spiritual health of the people, but of course they have to build relationships with them. So the pastor and the Extreme Response guy, Mike, visit the homes of the workers and try to get to know them. Once they are interested in becoming Christians, they give them Bible studies and other things that will help them grow in their faith. As of two years ago, none of the people who worked in the dump were Christians, but as of now around 20% of them are! Praise the Lord!

Next they make sure the people are healthy. They have an on-site clinic which the people have to pay $.50 to see the doctor (in order to add some value to the experience) and get free medication if needed.

The organization builds one house a year for the family that is most in need of housing. These houses only cost $13,000. Friends, we can raise money for this and build a house for some people in need! As of right now, many of these people live in lean-tos with cardboard or plastic roofs. But with the new house they can have cinderblock walls and real roofs.

Lastly, they have a program for the children of the dump workers (which is where we worked today). The kids range from about 6 months old to 6 years old. They have a school-like program for the older kids and the younger kids just get to play. It's soooo cool. At mealtime, all the kids (some of these are 2-year-olds!!!) will sit and feed themselves quietly until they are done and at naptime they put 3 or 4 babies in a crib and they all go right to sleep. There are some sad things about the children's program. The workers are overly strict with the kids and have not-so-good ways of punishing them, but they do love them. And those kids are so so so cute.

After that we came back to the guest house and mom went to her class while Kellye and I read and studied (ok, ok, and I napped). Then we ate dinner and I had some awesome Cinnamon and Clove tea. Yum!

Tomorrow we will be touring the city a little and finding ice cream somewhere! Oh, I forgot to mention, this morning we met a man at the school whose parents were missionaries here (and now he is too) who wants to take us sight-seeing (and he carries a gun and pepper spray so we can be safe!)! So hopefully we will get a chance to see some more of the sights. We're hoping and praying that it will not be so cloudy for the rest of the week so Kellye can see the volcanos!

I'm off to bed? Or off to read more of The Great Gatsby which is super-good so far!

Good night all. I love you and God bless.