Child Bride

The summer months have been full of joy as we’ve hosted more than 100 visitors at The Well!  We’ve loved the curiosity, creativity, and energy these enthusiastic folks have carried in through the front gate.

We’ve also had the blessing of having some fantastic college students intern at Oasis, one of them being our own daughter, Rachel!  Here's what she has gotten her fingers into.

Meet, Jackie.  She’s around 12 or 13 and is sweet and shy mixed with determined and smart. She’s comes from a community where only half of the girls attend school and where most of them are married off at an early age as one of multiple wives.  She’s among those who have not had the opportunity to attend school. But she walked to the local school one day, on her own, approached a teacher and begged for help. She was slated to be married, as another wife, to a much older man and she wanted out.  Thankfully, this teacher had the resolve to step in and completely alter the course of Jackie’s life. 

Jackie arrived at The Well last month and joined the preschool class.  She had never heard English spoken and knew only a few words in Kiswahili. When Rachel arrived, we paired them together and the two began a life-altering journey together. Within a week, Jackie had learned some simple commands, the first half of the alphabet, and her numbers though 15. By week two, she knew her shapes and colors, could do simple addition and subtraction, and could answer a few questions in English. Last week I cried as she read a few three letter words and understood they had meaning! 

Both Rachel and Jackie are resolved to learn and it’s been fun to see their friendship flourish and their joy in spending time together! She's also been helping in the science and social studies classes. We're so thankful to have her around this summer!

She Bit Me!!!

Jesus is talking to a crowd of Jewish people. They’re perched on stones on the hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee. He throws out this pearl, you know, divinely summing up the entire sacred writ as they know it. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A collective sigh of understanding sweeps the global audience, including myself, from this moment forward, as this profound ‘Aha moment’ sinks in. Our actions carry weight. Our behaviors and attitudes come full circle.

 

I was asked to join a ‘cluster’ in town a few months ago. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s a highly active group of super citizens who become aware of local issues and work to bring change. In the last few months, the 160-member group found a wheel chair for a crippled boy who was scooting around on his knees, helped four children from one family start school by donating uniforms and school fees, helped a lost child find his mother, helped a special needs child connect to the special needs group in town, helped an abused child get to the hospital and receive counseling, helped a crippled mother with her child’s hospital bills, and advocated on behalf of children being caned in school, oh... and warned everyone of buffalo on the loose!  It’s been an absolute joy to join them! This is the kind of ‘Do unto others…’ I have in mind when I hear the phrase.

But generosity, kindness and love become surreptitiously flipped on their heads when a hurting child does as has been done to them. A precious girl walked into our lives a few weeks ago. She’s seven, but is the size of a five-year-old, and has only attended school intermittently. She’s a survivor.  She’s determined and bold. And she’s scared and lonely. Abandoned at birth she was taken in by somebody who ended up being her nemesis.
 
This. Child. Has. Struggled.
 
 “Auntie Ann, Bee bit everyone in the class and is abusing us (hitting and calling names).”
 
I wanted to say, “Yes. Of course she bit you. That's all she knows. The in-human who was housing her, treated her like garbage. She is deeply scarred in every way from regularly being bitten, beaten with a pipe, and verbally abused.”
Instead, I whispered, “She doesn’t know it’s safe here yet.  Do you remember how scared you felt when you came?  Will you help teach her it’s safe here by being kind, even if she’s not.” They nodded, knowingly.

They have been kind and it's making a difference.
 
Bee is finding her true self living among the adored and is soaking it in. She has good days and bad days but the good days are starting to outnumber the bad. Yesterday, was a good day. I found her helping one of the smaller children clean their lunch plate.  She's trying new attitudes and behaviors and we're so proud of her! 

Where they come from...

January has taken us by storm - though, not in polar vortex form.  We have officially stepped into overseeing all of the activities at The Well!  Before After We're enjoying the varied personalities of the children at The Well and are having fun remodelling spaces into family style homes.  We opened the Well school for grades five and under.  The first few weeks, we met in the freshly painted 'big' room while the classrooms were being updated. Last week, we moved to the completed classrooms! We also started with seven students in the school and doubled in size this week!  Before After

This is the story of four of the children who joined Oasis this week. "This year, on my birthday, I (Ann) spent a good part of the day walking through the slums of a town near The Well with Gift, the Well counselor, and two visiting friends. We were looking for a specific group of needy children and their guardian to tell them they qualified to receive a scholarship to attend the Oasis school at The Well.  We walked because they don’t have a phone. Their closet-sized house was open and empty. Used dishes were scattered across the table and flies hung over the family’s single mattress and thin blanket on the floor. A man in a makeshift plastic tent sat outside the house cooking over a fire.  His shifting story indicated he had something to do with them NOT being there and he skirted our questions leaving us with little to go on. We walked in further, asking neighbors and shopkeepers if they’d seen the children, but to no avail. Giving up, we began the trek back to the main road. But, news travels fast, and as we neared the family house again, two ladies called to us from behind and indicated they had information. We turned around and followed them deeper into the slums to a patchwork home of used tin sheets and plastic. Garbage was strewn around and the smell was overwhelming. There they were. Standing amid the mess in torn, misfit clothing. Dirty. Hungry. Confused. Full of potential. Though we may not relate physically, haven't we all experienced this in some way in our own lives? We sat on planks supported by tree trunks around pieces of a broken door doubling as a table. We sat to listen.  I'm constantly astounded at the brave women who fight to keep children alive.  The guardian of this family daily brought the children from her unsafe home to a relative so she could walk to the quarry to chip stones. Earning less than two dollars a day, in the sun, with her baby on her back, she had enough to feed everyone most days, but not enough for them to attend school. The oldest two haven't been to school in two years. The younger two never started.  Now among the 'seen' these lives were about to change. At the mention of an invitation to school, the oldest boy’s eyes lit up and his jaw dropped.  He failed to hide his joy.  The younger three stared, having no concept of what lie ahead.

“You forget where the Oasis children come from,” she said as we walked back to the vehicle. We all nodded in agreement. Our walk was a reminder to all of us of the challenges the Oasis children face at home and the gift of education."

It was a good birthday!  These four and three others, whose pictures are below, started school at The Well this week!

We're excited to GROW!  We want to add more children to the home and school at The Well!  We have beds, classroom space, and staff waiting and praying to see who will join us.  

The Well!

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We are EXCITED to share this story with you!

Last December, as we were preparing to return to Kenya, the Oasis board asked Rick to do two things - to find land for the next Oasis project and, if possible, to find an existing children’s home, with a school, near a city to step into. God provided both!

We returned to Kenya in January and began a journey seeking where to grow Oasis and where to land personally.  We thought we’d be moving west, so we put Julia and Caleb in boarding school and started our search. 

The first several months were exploratory, taking us to areas primarily in southwest Kenya. Property listings are not a ‘thing’ here, so we relied on word of mouth. We drove over 6300 km on paved and unpaved paths, met with government officials, made new friends, waited in land offices, routed around riots and earthquakes, and became buddies with Google Earth.  

We gained clarity on what Oasis needed and honed in on the ‘Big Five’ – road access, water, electricity, buildable surface, and community need. It has been exciting to find space for Oasis expansion! Oasis in the process of taking steps forward on a beautiful piece of land in a needy area of the Trans Mara.

Through all our searching, nothing materialized as a personal landing place and every day our hearts ached to be with our kids.  The weight of boarding school sat heavily on us after only a few days. We prayed for peace and comfort, but as the weeks wore on, instead of easing, it became increasingly difficult for all of us. On our worst night, Ann was sobbing and we both lay down on our faces with our palms outstretched and asked God, “Do You have a solution for us?"

THE. NEXT. MORNING. Rick received a phone call from some friends and fellow orphan advocates.  This couple has been assisting with a Kenyan owned and run children’s home over the last 12 years. They are leaving Kenya to work in another country. The Kenyan director of the home wants to retire and move into other work and is looking to sell the entire project. Our friends woke up that morning feeling overwhelmed by God to call us. They asked outright if Oasis might consider buying the children’s home and taking on the care of the children there.  God brought this unexpected situation into our path the next day. We were intrigued.

We visited the following day and realized the children’s home is a 35-minute drive from Julia and Caleb’s school. This would allow us to remain together as a family AND for us to increase our reach, caring for more orphaned children.  The site itself is also exactly what the Oasis board had prayed for and requested Rick to find, an existing children’s home, with a school, near a city.  Isn’t God amazing?!

Oasis is calling the site, The Well.  We love the name for multiple reasons but the story in John 4 of Jesus reaching into the life of the Samaritan woman and offering living water for her needy soul amid her brokenness sits in our minds. May The Well be such an Oasis for needy children.