Tuesday, October 30, 2007

A Place of Refuge


Overcomers Caring Ministries started about seven years ago in the Kibera slums in Kenya as a feeding centre. Then it developed into an orphanage for children from the slums. We fed them and shared the Gospel with them. We taught them the importance of being clean and drinking clean water and how to make the river water into clean drinking water.
I had the opportunity to go to this orphanage again this year with a group to do some upgrading on the building. The kitchen was too small, and the cook was cooking on a woodstove that smoked a lot. We built a new, larger kitchen and got a new stove—one that won’t smoke!
The children were sleeping on the floor with cardboard under the mattresses. When it rained, both got wet. We got some bunk beds and made new mattresses, sheets and blankets, so now the children have comfortable, dry beds to sleep in.
We had taken some LifeLight New Testaments with us and gave them to the children who could read and promised to read them. They were very grateful!
More than sixty children play in a yard that is not very big. One day as I was finishing my lunch I realized that I was the only adult around. Even with no supervision, the children were playing happily, with no fighting. They are like a big happy family, trying to forget a troubled past. It was so good to see the happy faces of the orphans. For them this orphanage is truly a place of refuge—an oasis in a world of poverty and pain.
Helena Peters

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Greetings Helena
I recently came across a "Power for Living" pamphlet that I was given at church in 2003. It was one of the few I kept all these years. It so touched me when I read it back then and again now. How God can use us if we are available, and age don't matter. I am currently 53 and just began taking some courses thru a correspondence bible school. In the second year we will be going on a mission trip, a dream I know God put in my heart years ago when I read about you in Power for Living. Today as I read it again, I just decided to look you up on-line and found this blog. I am a canadian, originally from Quebec but now reside in Kentucky with my husband. I would love to have news about you and the Overcomers Caring Ministry. My e-mail is countrylite@hotmail.com ... Thank you and God bless you Helena
Shirley