Merry Christmas from the Kimpur’s

Merry Christmas from the Kimpur’s,

Receive warm Christmas season’s greetings from Kenya. It is our hope that you are all doing good. For us on this end, we are doing terrific. Christmas just being around the corner, we thought it would be awesome to share with you how the year has been with the Kimpur family.

Yes, around this time of the year, everyone is home, and so ours is indeed a full-house. Roselyn Chelimo attends High School in Kampala, Uganda. Milcah Cherotich and Leah Chenangat are also in a boarding school a few miles from our home because we do not have school buses to bring them back and forth each day.

And when we write our annual family update, we normally call for a kind of Family Special General Assembly – where we agree on the talking points to be highlighted on the update. When we had such session yesterday, there were lots many things to be grateful and thank God for. Though we shall endeavor for brevity, we are so glad to inform you about the following:

Our eldest daughter, Roselyn Chelimo, sat for her end of grade 12 exams last November. We hope she will perform well when the results are out in February and we hope she qualifies for a two year Post-High School College Prep program. She is also having so much fun connecting with her American friends on Facebook having met so many people who have visited here. Likewise, Milcah Cherotich, sat for her grade 8 National exams too last November. She is excited about learning and is really making great friends at her school.

Our little boy, China, has been very strong this year and his health has been very good. He has been battling acute Malaria on and off for the last few years. Thank you very much for your prayers. Pembe our foster child has also never caught Malaria! He seems to have some sort of state-of-the-art defensesystem. He is also super smart and is really catching up to his classmates at a breakneck speed. As many of you know Pembe only has one foot, and this year he has adopted a chicken who also has one foot. They make quite a pair! The rest of the children are doing very well. I am talking of Njoki (12), Chepar (8), Peter (9), and Grace Kakuko (12). They are all busy studying during the day and their progress at school is great. And when they are not in class they are chasing around the four Daylight cows, playing with the school dogs, waiting in line for a turn on the new swings, or running back and forth on the soccer field until sunset.

Our family house which we have been working on since June 2010 is almost complete. There are still things like the doors and the like that need to be fitted before we can move in. It is, however, getting so close to completion.

This year, We have had a number of friends from Minnesota visit us, and we are so much blessed to play host to them. I know some of you will be visiting next year, so feel very much welcome – or like we say here in Kenya, Karibu sana!

Finally, as we celebrate Christmas, please join us in a shout of THANKSGIVING and PRAISE to Him. Amen.

Love,

Michael and Angelina Kimpur
Daylight, Pokot, Kenya

——————–
A generous partner has agreed to match up to $5,000 to help purchase 2 final acres of land for Daylight. For the month of December, every dollar you give will be doubled until we reach this goal of purchasing 2 final acres of land. So far, Daylight supporters have helped match $3,520 of the $5,000.

Consider making a year-end gift to help us receive this matching grant.

Share

Swing Set and Matching Grant

On our trip to Daylight, we were able to build a free-standing swing set for the kids with three swings. Initially, almost all 200 kids gathered around, highly excited as we finished building it. And within a few minutes of completion, with no adult input, they had formed a line behind each swing. The children would count as a student swung 10 times. Then, the next kid in line would get a chance to swing.

It’s common in the U.S. to see kids on a playground hog swings until an adult makes them share. You’ve probably seen this. But at Daylight, sharing is a core value, and the kids were so excited about a gift, they wanted to share it with their friends, freely and excitedly.

It was a great learning experience for us! And we pray you will follow the children’s lead: share a gift this year to help reach our matching grant this December.

We must raise $10,000 to purchase 2 final acres of land. We are pleased to announce that a generous partner has agreed to match up to $5,000 toward this project. For the month of December, every dollar you give will be doubled until we reach this goal of purchasing 2 final acres of land.

These two acres are adjacent to the ten acres of land Daylight already owns. We have identified this land acquisition as essential for growth, allowing us to have an excellent location for the water purification system. We would love to take advantage of this opportunity so please consider making a year-end gift to help us receive this matching grant.

Thank you!

Lenny Snellman
Daylight Board Member

——————–
Christmas Gift Idea
Consider giving a gift to Daylight in honor of your friends and family. Simply print our Honor Gift Card, or contact us to send the gift card(s) on your behalf.

Share

Prayer Request: Michael’s Friend has died in Recent Cattle Raid

It is a sad week in the Pokot community. The desert has not seen rain in a few weeks and water is scarce and cows are getting thin. And whenever people get hungry and thirsty fighting is sure to follow. Men have been raiding villages with guns and stealing cows. And Pokot and Turkana lives have been lost. Ombolion village, the home village of our Outreach coordinator Peter, was badly affected. And this fighting breaks my heart. Because I remember the night some 30 years ago when I was a small boy. The raiders attacked my home village in the dead of night. Those raiders killed so many of my cousins, aunts, and uncles.

And again this time someone so close to me died. He was a young man I was friends with from the village of Ombolion. He died trying to save his family’s cows from being stolen by raiders. After they killed him they threw his body in the bushes and his cows were stolen. I pray that this reminds you of the reason why we do this work. We are saving children from dying in the village fighting, or disease or hunger. We are building bunk beds and we suspect that there will be orphans from this village who may need to come to Daylight.

Now a day’s news moves so fast, even from the desert. And we got word of the attacks from Twitter, Facebook, and the Kenyan news.

The West Pokot Deputy Governor condemned the latest attack by the Turkana tribe: “It is just the other day that they killed two [Pokot] people and left their bodies decomposing in the bushes and stole 50 heads of cattle which are yet to be recovered. Has the Government left us to the mercy of the Turkanas?”

The Kenya army is currently being dispatched to bring food, return the stolen cows and arrest the raiders, but pray that no one else is hurt in the meantime.

I tell you the angels must be weeping. Let us pray like crazy.

Michael Kimpur
Kenyan Director

Share