Kenya Kids Can!

One of the most fun things I do on campus is providing music for the K-6th grade Skate Night every term. Although it seems like they would be content for three hours of Taylor Swift, it is an enjoyable challenge to program music that they might enjoy, or at least endure. Last week, I had a special handicap; I had lost my voice.

Although I so perfectly embody the form of a holy missionary, it might shock you to know that several hundred times in my past life, when I discovered someone had lost their voice, I would loudly declare, “It’s PROOF that God answers PRAYER.” That was highly amusing.

When it was done to ME last week, it was amazing how UN-FUNNY and IMMATURE it was. I think the point is this:  it’s not the joke, it’s how you tell it.

Whenever you think you might have it rough, consider my poor Swahili teacher. Edward gave me a sentence to say, and he told me to say it five times. After I completed my sentences, he looked at me with astonishment and said, “You pronounced that sentence differently EVERY time. That is harder than saying it the RIGHT way every time.”

Why can’t I CHOOSE when to lose my voice?

We have a kitten named Moshi. Nancy, who has been pretty resilient against the pull of a pet, told me the other day, “She is just irresistible, isn’t she?” If you are looking for proof that we are in the end times, look no further.

It is always wonderful to announce when another ceiling has been broken. Koreans make up 15% of our student body. It’s harder for them to get into American colleges with good aid than any group I work with on campus. There are so many strong Asian students worldwide that it has made it doubly hard for my Korean students. In 106 years, RVA has never had a Korean student accepted to the Ivy League.

Until this week. All the seniors are on interim trips, so one of the siblings was checking her sister’s email. She wrote to me from Wellesley and asked, “Does this letter mean what I think it does?” I opened the letter, and I jumped up and down and yelled and cried. Ceilings have a way of staying broken, and I believe that this marks a new era for another subdivision of our student body. I don’t want to say where she is going yet, because I think there is more good news to come. But it was enormously exciting, and we are so grateful to Him.

We are moving ahead on the book, and we can finally announce a title:

A Dream So Big
Our Unlikely Journey to End the Tears of Hunger

There will be more book news coming, but one exciting part is that our contract did not call for pictures, and after approving the initial manuscript, the publisher authorized 16 pages of photographs. My suggestion to include 16 pictures of ME was rather abruptly rejected, for mysterious reasons I cannot fathom.

We were short on monies for food this term, and I knew it might be light the last few days. What we didn’t know was that Kenya decided to add several weeks to this term. The result is that most of the schools are out of food, and won’t have any more until the next term.

We made a short video:

Challenges

And we would appreciate if you could watch it and share it if you think it is worth sharing. We need fresh ideas and fresh blood, and the kids really need the food.

A little girl told me last week that she was used to being hungry. Of all the sad things I’ve heard in 13 years, that strikes me as the saddest one of them all.

Your pal,
Steve

PS: Lightning struck our email server recently, and it is still struggling, so it you have tried to contact us and haven’t gotten a response, that is likely the cause. Please try again, and sorry for the problems.

PSS: Not everything that we do here is uniquely African. Ben & Katie have wanted me to teach their Sunday School class for several years, so this year I agreed. They have a great class of 20 fifth graders. We have been working through an allegorical book called “Tales of the Kingdom,” which I just love. The junior high students here just performed a drama based on the book on Friday, which kind of spoils the ending, but being a junior high drama still leaves plenty of room to refine the ideas presented!

This week’s chapter was entitled “A Girl Named Dirty.” It was a busy week, and I didn’t have as much time and energy to prepare as I wanted so I really had to rely on the Holy Spirit (I know, I should always rely on the Spirit …) to help communicate the tricky theme (tricky especially for 5th graders) on how you sometimes feel dirty inside either because of things you know you have done that you shouldn’t have done or because of lies that somehow have been whispered into your mind and heart.

We read the story together and discussed that one of the reasons Jesus died on the cross was to cleanse us from that inside dirtiness. I wasn’t sure how much the kids really “got it,” but I ended the lesson by giving each child a sheet of paper and an envelope and asked them to write a letter to Jesus sharing something that maybe they had never shared with anyone else that made them feel dirty inside and asking Him to cleanse them, or to thank Jesus that He had died so they didn’t feel dirty inside. I told them they could put the letter into the envelope and seal it and then do what they wanted with it:  share it with a trusted adult or just tuck it into their Bible for now. I expected the usual litany of fifth grade questions and comments, like “I don’t know what to write” or “Do I have to do this?” Instead, the room fell silent as they all went to work on their letters. As one young boy worked intently on his letter tears fell silently to his desk. “Oh, my,” I thought. “Holy Spirit, you have surely shown up.”

So I am grilling chicken breasts, and the pan that was full of chicken breasts was not empty but full of juice and guts, so I think it will be smart for me to take that to the outside trash and dump it in there. I throw the juice in there, and a rather large monkey jumps straight up out of there, and gives me a look like, “Do you MIND?”

I’m pretty sure it was raining and that was the reason my pants were damp.

The second case of bronchitis in two months has me back down to the mission hospital. Although Dr. Taylor, my American doctor in Texas, is the greatest doctor in the world, the care at the hospital doesn’t suffer much by comparison. One of the most humbling things you can do is be in the presence of a missionary doctor; they have sacrificed so much to be on the mission field, and although they are caring and fun, I always leave in awe.

The issue at the hospital isn’t the care; it really is first rate. The issue comes when you go to pay your bill and get the drugs. The idea of an orderly line just hasn’t made it to Kenya yet, and there are times when it has taken two hours to settle my account. It is only thirty minutes this time, and I sit on a bench with dozens of others waiting for my drugs to be ready.

I am sitting next to a Kenyan woman who I guess is near my age. She shows evidence of the hard life that most Kenyans have; her shoes are in tatters, her dress is neat but very worn, and her back curves from a lifetime of carrying firewood and water. We begin to talk, and I try out a joke. She tells me “Your jokes are not so funny” with such a merry laugh that I can’t help but laugh along.

She tells me her story. Her son and his wife died of AIDS, and she is raising her three grandchildren alone. Her husband died years ago. It is sad that I’ve heard this story so many times; I can take you to villages where there is nobody alive from 20-40; AIDS wiped them all out.

I look at her:  she is a short woman who is as stout as she is tall, and she has the odor of someone who walked six miles in the African sun to come to the hospital. What strikes me is that when I look at her, my first thought is, “She is so beautiful.” She has endured what most of us couldn’t possibly imagine, and she still has joy. A few years ago, I would have seen that she was black, and not looked much beyond that. I walk home rejoicing in her beauty and think, “How He has changed me because of Africa.”

I go to one of the schools we work with, and I see a young boy bleeding from his cheek. A teacher has beaten him with a stick, and although Kenyan teachers are taught not to hit someone on top of the head because it will damage hearing, there are other places that are fair game. He is filthy, with a torn sweater, no shoes, and no evidence he has been near water in a long period.

I go to talk to him and discover that he is an orphan, and that he sleeps on the front porch of his cousin’s house. His crime has been that he has snuck into the classroom but he has not paid his school fees. For that, he has been beaten by two different teachers in two different classes. He stays on campus for the lunch and the computer class. I talk to the headmaster and he agrees that he will let him stay on, although he tells me there are dozens of students in his situation, and he cannot do it for all of them.

I look at Timothy, and I become aware of something:  a few years ago I could not looked beyond his hygiene; now I look at him with awe because he is so brave and he hasn’t given up. God has taken my judgmental critical heart and allowed me to go deeper; I walk away thinking I was not worthy to wash his feet.

I wasn’t at RVA last year, and there are several students who had their first year as juniors, and I don’t know them at all. The problem is that now that they are seniors, I need to write letters of recommendations for them, and I don’t have a clue. I ask Karol* to come in so I can interview her and compose a recommendation.

Karol looks like you might think a missionary kid would look. She is beautiful, with blonde hair and a sweet smile. I’ve listened to her lead worship, and as she plays the guitar and sings I think that this is the poster child of a missionary kid.

It takes Karol a while to warm up to me, and know whether she can trust me. She begins to tell her story; she has attended 7 schools in the past 9 years. Because of family health issues and unrest in the area her parents work, she has gone from one school to the next. She feels like she never fits in, and as she begins to make friends, she has had to leave again.

I labor over my recommendation, and I fearfully send it to colleges. I’ve tried to be honest; there are educational gaps, and because she is relatively new, she hasn’t been involved with much. I tell them that college can be a time of healing for her; four years in one place will do wonders for her. I tell them that she is a treasure, and the wise college that will nourish her will reap a wonderful young woman.

The college contacts me, and I have a sense of dread when I open the email. Instead, I am blessed and humbled by the news:  the vice president has read my recommendation to the entire admissions staff, and they have cried and pledged to be a safe place for her. She is accepted to her first choice school.

She comes in to talk, and I tell her that college is going to be a place of rest and refreshment for her, and that if she will seek counseling while she is there, the wounds from her past can be healed. She begins to weep, and she tells me that she is so proud of her parents and the amazing work they do. She knows that it wasn’t their fault, and she sits and cries and cries.

I don’t know what to do for the longest time, and I pray and He gives me a word for her: “Karol, it isn’t disloyal to honestly deal with legitimate hurts.” She cries harder, but this time there is hope in her tears. In the next few weeks, I see a more confident person beginning to peek her head out. It strikes me that I have usually settled for the surface, but the real beauty of Karol is below the surface, and I’m so grateful that He has let me see deeper.

Jun* is another senior, a Korean, who comes in to talk. It is an awkward conversation; his English isn’t very good, and he is defers to me so much it is hard to have anything but a surface conversation. I pray and I probe, and it comes out that when he came to our American school, he didn’t know a word of English. Staffing is always problematic at RVA, and we rarely have a teacher who is trained in ESL (teaching English as a Second Language). He tells me that he was always outgoing until he came to RVA; now he retreats into himself.

I sit there and I am convicted. I tell him that I have been at RVA for 13 years, that Koreans make up 15% of our student body, and I haven’t bothered to learn how to even say hello in his language. I tell him I have disrespected his culture and I have dishonored him because I was oblivious to his struggles. He looks up and sees my shame and my tears.

I tell him how courageous he is, and that having endured something so hard has given him the tools to overcome many hard things. I tell him that he has inspired me; I know I could not have done what he has done. He is silent, and his eyes glisten. I tell him that if he gives himself to ESL in college, there will be no stopping him. He leaves grateful. I marvel that in all my weakness, God has somehow been strong.

I pray over my recommendation letter and try to show someone who, against all odds, has somehow managed to succeed. I get a call from a college; they tell me they would be honored if he came to their school. I put my head in my hands and weep; I have seen God overcome all my errors, and in the process provide a good college for a student and teach me about becoming more culturally sensitive.

I walk home and am so grateful for evidence of change. With no good reason except His love for me, He hasn’t given up on me yet.

Your pal,
Steve

*Names have been changed.

I know that many of you have been devastated by my inability to ditch this shallow missionary life and be pursuing my true calling of being a male model. After the interaction with Tyra Banks, it just seemed God ordained that I would be utilizing my true abilities and the phones would not stop ringing.

Shockingly, the calls never came. And so I trudged back to Africa with defeat in every step of the way.

But God had a bigger plan.

RVA does outreach to the community once a term. You might , as Nancy did, give manicures to women in prison, or pick up trash, or help a widow rebuild her home. I was assigned to drive a group of students to paint a mural at a nearby health clinic. Because my artistic abilities are so acute I can make my children cry if they get me as a Pictionary partner, I spent most of my time playing with nearby children.

Then the opportunity came. One of the students asked me to come because she was trying to paint an ear on one of her figures and she needed to look at a real ear.

For the first time in my life, I MODELED. And you would not BELIEVE how beautiful that ear turned out.

I think I have a future in male modeling. I am RIGHT NEXT to the phone.

It was hard to leave our adult children in America, but God has granted us real peace in returning. Our car has had a flat and the battery has died, so we haven ‘t been able to get out much as we try to replace the problem parts. We are in a smaller house on campus, which is nice and we have interesting neighbors in our backyard.

We have had to register with the government in order to continue our computer program. When we first started, we talked to the government and they advised us NOT to register. Now we have to, which means jumping through lots of interesting hoops and paying taxes on the salaries of our computer teachers. This meant that we had to apply and they rejected the name Kenya Kids Can. If you are a big fan of big government, perhaps the name they gave us might give you pause:

Organization for Children in Computer Technology

What has been remarkable is how God has protected us from my stupidity and arrogance. When we first came, I was all about being Big Whitey to the rescue. After years of stumbling, we realized that having strong Kenyans in principal positions made all the difference. Somehow, He led Margaret for the school lunch program and Lucy for the computer centers; all the work continued while we were gone. Current thought in development is to have nationals do the bulk of the work, and somehow we stumbled onto the right people who are trustworthy and have a true vision for excellence and honoring the Lord.

With our computer centers, we have felt like the word we have from Him is to maintain and improve what we have. We really don’t have the monies to build any more centers; we are not receiving enough each month to cover our payroll, which is about $2800 a month. Our goal is to get better with what we have, and wait until we see that it is possible to grow again.

We were prepared to cut back on the school lunch program, and somehow the monies came in. We thought that we would be late, and then there was a teachers strike and I was told, “DO NOT COME. IT WILL BE VERY MUCH DANGEROUS.” As the strike ended, we were able to begin getting the food to the schools.

The costs have increased; this term it cost us $2.05 to feed a child for a month. That is a small amount, but when you multiply that amount by 20,000 students for a three month term, it is a tremendous amount of money. We are trusting Him to help us and guide us and provide. We spent a year in the states feeling very healthy, but we have all been sick since we have been back. When you have been here 12 years, you understand that it is all part of what you get when you are here, but we are hoping for better health soon.

A Kenyan friend saw me and told me, “You have eaten very well in America.”

It was hard to argue.

Your pal, Steve

We left Kenya in July to bring Matthew back to start at the University of Richmond. He has had a wonderful first term, and a great start to his college career. JT is one term away from graduating and marrying the lovely Janelle. The twins are enjoying school and some of the joys of American life.

Somehow with your help, we managed to feed 20,000 students a day for the year, even with donations way down. We have completed 20 computer centers in some of the most rural areas in Kenya. For some reason, I still win awards. We have a book coming out with Zondervan in the fall.

It all sounds so nice.

But this has been a year with beginning to deal with the hard issues that adoption can bring. One of our little ones will have a fun day and then in the evening begin to cry and when we ask why, they can only answer that they are sad.

When your children are hurting and you can’t fix it, it will break you like nothing else will. We are seeing a counselor who deals with the special issues that adopted children face.

We are broken, but we have the hope that came to all of us 2000 years ago.

We are broken but we hope.

Your friends,
Steve and Nancy Peifer

It is hard to sum up the last five years, but a couple of thoughts come to mind.

1. If you are like me, once you went digital, you hadn’t printed out many pictures lately. I recently went through three years of pictures, and printed out the highlights. When we looked through the pictures, the kids that you are helping to feed LOOKED better. Years of good nutrition began to have an effect; they look younger and more alive. Being hungry ages you prematurely; eating regular nutritious meals helps a kid look like a kid should look.
2. Of the 34 schools we work with, EVERY school is ranked academically first or second in their zone. When we started, every school was ranked last, except for one school which was second to last. Good nutrition is essential to academic achievement.
3. There are dozens of students who have received good jobs because of their computer skills, but more than anything, they have given the students an excitement about learning and the hope that they might have a chance to escape from the poverty that surrounds them.
4. All that being said, when you have been somewhere for 11 years, you get used to things. A fellow college counselor and friend of mine, Ryan Riggs, was here for a visit and he wrote something that was a good reminder for me:
   “My thrill and humor from the matatu quickly disappeared when I visited one of the elementary schools, the Kiriko Primary School. While the children were happy and appeared to love being at school, the condition of their school was simply horrendous. It had no electricity or running water. It had a few window panes in the windows, but those were few and far between. I had a difficult time getting my mind around how such an impoverished school could exist in such a glorious setting.  The juxtaposition between the run-down school and the beautiful scenery in the background was unsettling. I visited 10 different elementary schools in the region that week, and it was the same every time: Happy kids, but terrible learning conditions. And these were the schools that had both the feeding program and the computer labs up and running.  We have all seen the TV ads beseeching us to send money to starving African children. The image is always the same: a sad faced child holding an empty bowl with flies buzzing around his or her face. Let me tell you that the reality is much worse than that. The vast majority of the students I saw had only one set of clothes, their school uniform. About half had shoes, obvious hand me downs or American thrift store rejects. Many of the classrooms had dirt floors, and the “blackboard” was simply an area on the wall where the cinderblock had been sanded down and painted black. The textbooks, if there were any, were at least 20 years old. Remember that I visited some of the best elementary schools in the region.
   “The feeding program is remarkable – both simple and effective. Each student gets a full bowl of steaming hot githeri every day. Githeri is one of the staple dishes in Kenya, and provides both protein and carbohydrates. Steve ensures that each of the 34 schools receives a steady supply of dried beans and corn. Collecting firewood, water, and cooking supplies is up to the individual schools. Each morning, several adults in the local community cook lunch for the students in that school. After several hours of classroom learning, recess, and more learning, the students line up for lunch outside of the school’s kitchen. I say “kitchen,” but once again, what passes for a kitchen at many of these schools is but a pale resemblance for what we think of as a school kitchen. In fact, most of the elementary schools in Kenya are so poor that they cannot afford to build a chimney for the kitchen. The cooks have an open fire pit in the middle of the floor, and use the bottom third of cleaned out, cutoff oil drums for large pots.”
5. We are grateful for the progress but want to be realistic about how tough it really is.
6. So much has happened, but we never forget that I came to Africa a broken man. When you bury one of your children, a part of you dies. I would not have invested in someone like me, but you all supported us and allowed us to be a part of something that has been life changing. We are so grateful for all you have done for us, and although we don’t say it enough, we think it all the time.
7. Our hope is to raise additional support for more computer centers and more children getting good food. If you would be open to your church, your Sunday school, your small group, your place of work or just having some friends oven for coffee who might be interested, we would be so grateful.
8. We are all about Jesus. He is our beginning, our middle and our end.
9. Both Ben and Katie asked Jesus into their hearts in the last month. We are so grateful to Him.

Matthew graduated on July 17 from RVA, a school he has attended since second grade. He has had a great experience there, and a really great senior year. One of our traditions is that we played racquetball every Sunday. We started when he was in second grade, and the long term goal was that he would beat me in the final month of his senior year. He started beating me when he was a sophomore so he was a little ahead of schedule, but it has been a good way of connecting with my seriously over-scheduled son.

When we went down to play our final game, at the end of the game, I am sure I embarrassed him when I burst into tears and said, “I never wanted it to end.”

But games end and children grow and move on, and that is part of life that is hard, especially when you are on the mission field and you see your children once a year if you are lucky. I can’t quite make peace with this part of our life, but we are excited for Matthew as he starts at University of Richmond, and we are grateful we will be back in the states for his first year. We will also get to see our oldest graduate and get married, so it will be an exciting year.

On our anniversary, Nancy and I went to town for the night to celebrate. On our way back to RVA, we stopped to shop and eat lunch. I walked past an Indian family, and they asked me if I was Stephen. Since I had just been to the ATM, I was a little unsettled, but I said the only person who had ever called me Stephen was my mother, and that was when she was angry at me. They had seen me on CNN, and wondered if I might join them for lunch. I went and helped Nancy finish shopping, and then we joined them. They are a part of a influential family in Kenya, and had already made a contribution. After lunch, Sachit said that they would like to give 100,000 shillings (about $1300 in US dollars) a month to our work.  At the time, I didn’t know how we would manage to pay our teachers and complete our last three centers. His contribution is about half of our teachers’ salaries per month.

Jesus made a way. He has always made a way. Every screw-up in this work is from me; every good thing is from Him.

Your pal,
Steve

P.S. Thank you for what you have done. Our mailing address in the US is PO Box 210743, Bedford, TX 76095.

P.S.S. I’m having eye surgery on July 31. Please say a prayer if you can.