This is a story that was printed in 2006 in the Spotlight on Orphans Newsletter.  It is included here so that you can learn some of the history of Hearth to Hearth Ministries.

On December 28, 2005, we received the following letter from Pastor Maurice: "Dear Vicki and other board members, please remove the names of the following children from the waiting list because they are all dead. They have died of starvation.

"1) Loyce Auma - No. 202 in the waiting list

2) Onesmus Okoth - No. 199 in the waiting list.

3) Wycliffe Otieno - No. 190 in the waiting list.

4) Austine Oduor - No. 203 in the waiting list.

[The next day we received word from Edith that two more had also died. Editor]

"Right now I am in Kisii waiting for Pastor Nyamora to help me conduct burial services.  He will bury one child and I will bury two tomorrow.  I hope you are still reading the newspapers. Already the death toll is twenty-seven in northeastern Kenya.

"The food distribution by the government is too political. Some areas are ignored and people are dying. It is so painful.  Some of our children have decided to forfeit their lunch meal and for the last two days we have been inviting about eightyseven children to come for lunch. It is terrible this time. Only God knows how many more will die from starvation.

"I do not know if at all there is anybody who can help save some. I just don't know.

"God bless you abundantly.

"Maurice"

What a horrible thing for Pastor to again be in a position of watching children die right before him, especially after visiting America and seeing the amounts of food just going to waste here. We studied the photos of the children, feeling in our hearts they could have been saved...

As an immediate measure, our treasurers scraped together $1,000 and wired it on Thursday morning, December 30. We did not want the children to have to wait for food until after the holiday weekend. The money was received and both Pastors Moses and Maurice immediately began feeding orphans at their locations. A letter from Julia revealed that they had fed 358 orphans and 74 adults the previous day, and the effort will continue daily as long as we have the funds.

Likewise, Pastor Moses is both praying with and feeding the little ones who are making their way to his gate.  A further problem at Glory Center is the dried-up water sources in the area.  Pastor Moses is leaving at 4:00 a.m. daily to find water for the children. We are looking into getting a holding tank for Glory Center and buying water by the lorry rather than having him queue for a supply each day.

It was immediately obvious to us that our sponsors and donors would want to help in saving these children, so we sent an email out to several dozen in an order to start sending relief as soon as possible, rather than waiting until this issue hit the mailboxes. Our letter read in part:

"Last year we were faced with skyrocketing food prices in the spring, the result of a failure of crops to survive Hearth to Hearth Ministries' drought. At that time we appealed to our sponsors with a request for funds to purchase a store of grain for two reasons:  One, to avoid the daily rising costs which were severely effecting our ability to operate and two, to assure that our children would not face starvation. Further, we asked for help in funding the feeding program instituted at the orphanage as our staff picked up by van and fed over nine hundred children two times a week, and additional orphans who came on Sabbath, saving them from sure death.

"Am informing you that the situation is getting worse. No Maize at all. People are dying everywhere because the famine that is here in Kenya and not only Kenya this is almost everywhere. Please, if God will open a way, please, we need money to purchase Maize and Beans. This is God's children. He loves them and He will never let them suffer any more...We have food for only two days. Anyway, we are crying to our almighty father to meet our needs at the right time. .Please, pray for God to meet our needs. Thank you so much for your concern in all. May the dear Lord bless you."   Pastor Moses.

This is part of an email that Hearth to Hearth Ministries recieved last month from one of their orphanage administrators.  The price of corn is going up in Kenya and it is getting harder to find.  Read more of the urgent plea for more maize for the African orphans.

Below is a picture of some of the orphans that come to the gate of the orphanage for food.  My son took this picture when he was helping at Hope for Children Center Orphanage the summer of 2006.  The orphanage did not have enough money to feed them so he took his own money to buy them some bread.  This is still on his mind because he wrote a paper about it this year for his English class called "Can Death Bring Life"  (Click the link to read what he still thinks about it.  I added some pictures to his paper when I posted it on the web.)