Photo: Children from our schools are excited to attend end-of-the-school-year activities including a youth camp with various games, singing, and parties.
We are happy to report that our 300 primary school students at our rural campus in Mairinya took their end-of-semester exams in November. Their study preparation included learning and receiving after-school tutoring in English, math, science, and 2 levels of literacy from our 15 faithful teachers. Our students’ hard work paid off as they all received excellent scores on their exams — we are very proud of them.
308 of our boys and girls who are enrolled at our high school on our main campus also took their end-of-semester exams in November. They prepared for their exams by attending tutoring sessions, taking pre-tests, and putting in extra hours of study of math, English, geography, history, commerce, physics, chemistry, biology, fine art, economics, agriculture, computer studies, and their native language of Swahili. We are also very proud of our high school students who all received good scores on their exams.
However, they had difficulties with the computer skills portion of their exams since our few computers are out of date. Thus, we are seeking to raise $12,000 for a set of 50 refurbished laptops to create an up-to-date computer lab for the students — this is one of our greatest needs at the moment so that our high school students can further excel in their education. Our other 62 high school students took their national exams in October, and we eagerly await the good news about their scores.
To celebrate the success of their exams and the end of the school year, all of our children attended a youth camp this week at the local church. The theme of the camp was “Learning to Be of Value While Still Energetic.” Throughout the week the children enjoyed singing worship songs and learning how to have vision, how to have good relationships, how to have good a good work ethic, about their different gifts and talents, and how to live a righteous life.
Our native team is excited about throwing a Christmas party for all of the children at the end of this month. The children will participate in Bible quiz games, dancing competitions, hula-hooping, sack races, and other fun activities. They will also enjoy a delicious feast of rice, beans, beef, pork, posho (white corn bread), cabbage, eggplant, and collard greens. Our team wants to give the children new clothes as Christmas gifts, thus we are seeking to raise $1,500 for the clothes and to cover expenses from the youth camp.
In other good news, the severe drought that began in June is now over as the rainy season started again this month. We are very thankful for the rain because we were able to plant corn and we look forward to a good harvest in February. We were concerned about our banana grove because during the drought, many of our banana trees dried up partially or completely, scorched from the sun. But thankfully, most of the banana trees are now revived from the rain and will be able to produce fruit again soon.
Our inability to farm when there is a drought highlights our ongoing, urgent need to raise $5,000 to purchase a piped irrigation system large enough for our farmland which will be a powerful, efficient irrigation method. We give thanks to God for your support which enables our high school students and our primary school students to flourish and succeed.
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