Dear All,
Latest news from Riziki. On July 21st, Liz wrote:
Dear Ian and Diana,
Greetings from a cold Nakuru, this morning. It's been a few busy weeks, and I am taking a few minutes to write before I start the day.
We are just coming off a week break from school, where we had all the children at home. It was a nice quiet break, everyone happy to be home. I was particularly impressed to see the interaction between them after being away from each other for so long. Many times, I walked into the house and found them helping each other with their studies (they come with assignments despite the break, and also some are in the final years of high school) seeing them studying together like that gave me so much joy. One afternoon I saw Dominic, with so much patience, helping Alex, who is on a lower grade, and I couldn't be happier.
The high schoolers got along well with the young ones also, helping with mealtime, snacks and even bath time. It was precious to see this interaction.
On the farm, rain has been scarce. we had two days of rain, last Friday and Saturday, none so far this week. The dam is helping. We are grateful though as we were able to top up all our three storages (Dam and two water tanks) sufficiently as well as the maize in the farm getting water at this important stage. We are hopeful that we will get a good maize harvest.
As you will see from the pictures I have sent, beans will be needing harvesting soon and we thank God they have done so well. We are currently propagating seed for millet and wheat, possibly to plant next season. It will be the first time we plant wheat at Riziki on a large scale, but if all goes well, with the grinder already available, we can have our own flour, and other possibilities from that are endless.
All staff are doing well. Evans, who had a leg injury, has come back to work, but is taking a lighter load of work. Slowly by slowly his leg is getting stronger. The ladies in the house have been very good with the new additions, always very attentive and accommodating of them, which has really helped them settle down.
We managed to change beddings for the boys after about 6 years - could be more. The boys enjoyed that surprise when they came home back from school. We also changed net curtains in the dining/lounge area that had started having holes in them. I am glad we are able to do this every few years, the environment where children grow up is also very important. (This is part of our plan for maintenance to keep our facilities in excellent condition. Children’s Services do inspect from time to time)
Internet is also up at Riziki now. We are finally connected to the world! 😄
Thank you to all supporters of Riziki for their prayers, love and contribution. All these would not be possible without your sacrifice. Asante.
Baraka, Liz
We give thanks to our many supporters who came to our ‘open day‘ on July 9th. We were blessed with a beautiful sunny day with plenty of guests. It was a very happy occasion.
Prayer concerns
We continue to pray for Julius who has undergone medical tests last week and is waiting for one more. We pray that he will soon be restored to full health and strength.
We continue to pray for peace throughout Kenya during the coming elections – August 9th;
Current needs and plans
We hope to build a new chicken house. The original one was built from assorted waste materials and has survived for over ten years but has now been demolished. The new one will be bigger and provide the opportunity to have more hens and therefore more eggs for the children to eat and for sale.
We would also like to increase our water storage facilities by digging a second dam. Weather patterns have changed drastically since Riziki started. We originally thought our initial underground water tank would store all the rain water we would need but our greatly increased storage is still not large enough to cope with the much longer periods of dry weather.
Many blessings,
Ian & Diana.