Dear All,
The school year in Kenya has finished. The Riziki children have returned to their relatives or guardians for the required annual visit so the home is very quiet! Our new social worker has settled in. We now have three ladies at Riziki called Elizabeth which I shall find very confusing. We have Liz, our assistant director, Elizabeth the cook and Liz, the social worker!
Julius writes
All the children performed well in school both primary and secondary, their performance was very encouraging indeed. The three children who sat for K.C.P.E this year passed well. Emmanuel had 403 marks out of 500, Neema got 384 marks and Precious got 382 marks. Faith and Collins finished doing their K.C.S.E and we wait for their results to be out sometime in December. Lucy's conclusion of her course is delayed because of a college problem with the whole class.
Some of the children have been sick with various complaints but were taken to hospital and treated and now they are all doing well. Neema's hand problem recurred but now she is well again. Faith fell sick just before the exams, but she was treated and went back to school and managed to sit for the papers. Grace's ear problem has recurred, and she was put on medication.
Regarding the irrigation; we are still laying more pipes to let the water get to all the crops and we hope and trust that the results of the hard work will be good. Liz has planted a lot of native vegetables - e.g. cowpeas and others; some of the them are planted in the greenhouse and the others are out in the fields. She is using the dam water. Soon we will be harvesting the maize you left in the shamba.
On 20th October a family from Nakuru with a group of 25 primary school children visited Riziki. The children spent the day together playing games and doing Bible study and quizzes. They had great fun.
On 27th October we organised prayers for the three doing K.C.P.E. exams. We invited our church pastor for the occasion and a group of friends from Nairobi attended. It was wonderful.
On 17th November that young man in a wheelchair came with more friends and he had good time with the children playing indoor games. He seems to love the children.
Liz organised a children’s church on 24th November and over 200 children of upper primary and secondary school from the community attended. She had a big group of youths from Happy Church who had volunteered to help her to teach the children and it was wonderful. All the children enjoyed it so much that some of them did not want to go back to their homes! They stayed as late as 7.30pm, being persuaded to go home when Esther and I arrived at that time and found the situation. Esther played a big part to persuade them to go home.
On 25th November Emmanuel, Neema and Precious were invited by the director of St. Cecilia to attend a prize giving to those who performed well and got 400 marks and above.
The children went to their relatives on 8th December. On the evening of the 7th we held a Christmas party for them with Christmas carols, we also used the occasion for thanksgiving prayers because of the success of the 3 children.
We managed to take Peter, the builder, and Njoroge, the metal welder, to Miti Mingi Village to see the cowshed we like and later they both produced quotations for building ours. We plan to start the construction work in January 2019 after the cabbages which are in the area have been removed but the delivering of the materials is going to start in December 2018.
We have managed to buy shoes from Amie for all the children and we hope that they will be good shoes. Aime is from Miti Mingi Village, a large children’s centre, just outside Nakuru.
Later Julius wrote again.
Bwana Yesu Asifiwe, (Praise The Lord Jesus). We trust that you are all well. Thank you very much for the good work all of you are doing.
The three children have been chosen to join very good schools, Emmanuel will go to Lenana School in Nairobi, Neema will go to Buru Buru Girls School in Nairobi and Precious will go to Naivasha Girls Secondary School in Naivasha.
The children will come back on 29th December so as to prepare themselves to go to school on 3rd January 2019, God willing.
Due to the new Government traffic rules under NTSA we need to prepare the Minibus KAS 263F for police inspection towards the end of this month. It needs work costing over £1000 to meet the requirements!
God is great and with Him all things are possible. We thank Him for giving us rain - we have had rains in the last few days and the fields are green with plenty of vegetables. The dam was filled again on Monday after heavy rain.
Please pass our sincere greetings to all the family and friends. We wish you all A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR 2019
Julius & Esther
Liz (Kivindyo) has also written
It has been busy days down here trying to get the farm up and running so we can make proper use of the dam water. On the day the director wrote we only had one person working at the farm, Wycliffe, but we had to quickly hire another to help with the load of the work and so Eric joined Riziki on Tuesday this week and work seems to be progressing fine and there is plenty of it.
Liz (S.W.) is doing fine. She has quite a bit she needs to adjust to, but I am patient to see how she will fair, with a bit of training. She and the children worked on various Christmas decorations and the children really enjoyed doing them. They also looked great on the tables for the Christmas party.
I was not able to bake this Christmas because we had an accident with the oven door, the top glass shattered as it was being cleaned, and I was not too sure if it can be used that way, without the glass covering.
Liz and I are the ones left in the house this December as Elizabeth (cook) and Catherine took their leave days this month. Liz has been busy writing reports as we need to renew some the children's committals in January and February.
Next week we go to court to see if we can commit three boys and a girl. I will give you more details on them when they get committed. Sometimes it’s not a straight forward process. If they are placed with Riziki we will have 4 new faces in January. Exciting! The plan is to have 10 new faces. However, this is dependent on the government placing the children with us.
Tony has been using a lot of his free time this holiday, sketching. I believe with a bit of guidance and encouragement he might do something great with his interest in all things art. See below two of my favourite sketches. Liz
Thank you for reading this newsletter. We give thanks to all our supporters for gifts which enable Riziki to move forwards, Ian & Diana Hogley