CHILDREN'S HOMES ARE BAD !

HERE IS TESTIMONY FAITH HOMES, established forty five years ago in Maseno, Kenya, in 1969, and moved to Eldoret, in Kenya, in 1972.    We occupy some eleven acres of residential land within the precincts of the Town of Eldoret, which has a current population of more than one million.       We have FOUR residential Homes for boys and girls aged 0 -18 and over.    Each Home has up to 40 children each, and is run by a married couple who live in, and operate as a single 'family' (their own children - if they have any - being treated on a par with everyone else  - ONE family living together unitedly).    
We own TWO adjoining plots separated by a 50ft tarmac road.    On the one is ONE Children's Home and a Comprehensive School - Nursery to Secondary).
On the other plot are THREE Children's Homes. There is plenty of recreational land around the Homes, and within the School precincts.      The School opened in 1981 and now has a population of some 650 from the Town coming in daily, and our own 140.      Outsiders PAY a fee to send their child to the School, and this allows us to be given FREE places for our orphans.     Otherwise the School does not offset the cost of running the four Homes, and in fact is run and registered as a 'non-profit making' entity within TFH.       There is a very happy and comfortable atmosphere both in the Homes and the School, and the local population think highly of what we do.    However, we are not financially well supported from the locality, 60% of whom are unemployed without any State assistance.   The State does not assist us either.       Since we opened 348 children have passed through our hands, and we currently care for 138 resident in the four Homes.   A child will stay for approximately 20 years.

BUT TODAY I have read an article which states, generally speaking, that CHILDREN'S HOMES ARE BAD and, by implication, should be done away with.      The Article, by Professor Eric Hartman, Editor of globalsl.org, among other negative comments, states -

'There is ample child health and psychological evidence indicating that 

residential care centres (orphanages) are simply BAD for children.

THAT IS, even in orphanages with full time staff in the best ratios seen around the world,

children do not develop at the same rate as children in foster care or other community centred

alternatives for children lacking  biological parents.'  

'Even in the best circumstances, the institutional structures

of orphanages are, at best  BAD FOR CHILDREN.

Nothing really NEW in this - even Charles Dickens presented a BAD picture of such institutions AND even schools.     No doubt it will have been true - to some degree - about every kind of boarding institution down through the ages.  MAN has not changed!     The BIBLE says he is prone to sin - leans towards, and is attracted to it.    SODOMY for example has been around a long time, and until recently has been disapproved of.  Likewise thieves, murderers, adulterers, slanderers, and yes, even paedophiles have been with us down through the ages.    Are they more commonly found in this Age?    No.      They are just being noticed more.      We are all a Race of Lawbreakers - indeed the Bible agrees with this when it states that we have ALL sinned and followed our own way(opinion).      Should we then ACCEPT it, and just let wrong BE approved?    Surely not.     This is obviously acknowledge by all, in that every Nation on earth has a Police Force to protect us from one another;  Man IS his own worst enemy!   - BUT it is also true of humanity that it often shifts its position to suit itself, as is happening already in respect of Sodomy.   In the 18th and 19th Century Witches were hunted down and burned.    Today you will find them practising their beliefs in shopping malls and advertising in fashionable magazines.        Currently we have decided to concentrate on sexual perversions against children.   On the other hand Adultery is on the increase, even encouraged in our world society,  as also are all kinds of violent crime such as murder and even more perverted atrocity. It is good to recognise it but it would seem these days that we hear of nothing else than Child Abuse.       The result now is a society that has become more and more hamstrung in its human outlook on itself, so that humanity is almost becoming a dirty word. Certainly we are not encouraged to 'believe' in each other until found guilty.      Fathers and Mothers, grandparents, and other family members are all suspect of being possible perverts and are barred from even sticking a plaster on a child's leg, alone.     It is harder and harder to truly LOVE each other today since we are more and more taught to doubt and suspect each other.       SO now Children's Homes must GO.     Such places are nests of iniquity.       On the other hand Prisons, Boarding Schools and even Hospitals can stay - but one wonders for how long.        Family homes are also on the way out, don't you think...?     Marriage is on the way out, faithfulness, honour, and even filial love are all becoming things of the past.........NOWHERE for a child to learn the better things of life - what of the next and future generations.      We are headed for chaos.      BUT,   NASA has noticed a bright LIGHT in the distant cosmos, brighter than the suns of all the Galaxies put together they say - and they do not know what it is!!   Maybe it IS true that Jesus the KING will soon be seen coming in the clouds.    Well, finally I must confess that Professor Hartman does have some fair comment on what can and does happen in SOME institutions.    It is true some make money from children.    It is true that some only want to exploit them.     As part of the Article a very useful Video is included which I believe gives fair warning and observation on the worst scenarios.     However, he makes a GENERAL statement that lumps all Orphanages (Children's Homes) together with little or no suggestion that there are exceptions.     Such Statements can and do change public opinion, and may well in the end affect public charitable support for children in need within the area of residential care.

TESTIMONY FAITH HOMES, seeks to pattern its Children's Homes on God's idea of home and family.     It accepts that such Institutions are not a perfect answer, but neither is Fostering.   Both CAN be exploited and imperfect.      We BELIEVE nonetheless that both can be and ARE still useful in providing care for children in distress.     We do not believe in any sweeping statement that either one are BAD.    This would be in our opinion an ignorant and purely academic viewpoint.   BUT both do need to be supervised and monitored - not an easy task.

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Continuing a Review of Testimony Faith Homes which I began last week with a look at our 2nd Children's Home - Jacaranda Cottage, we shall this week take a look at Testimony House, our FIRST Home, started way back in 1969.     This house was in fact built about a hundred years ago in the Colonial Era, of mud and wattle.    It is quite an historical house, built by a family of Boers from the Cape Province of South Africa who trekked up from the Cape around 1908. They were a family of husband and wife and seven daughters.   They were farmers.   The house contains seven bedrooms, one of which is that of the Houseparents Hesketh and Alice Muli.      The others accommodate up to 40 children (boys and girls) at any time.       Since the Home began in August 1969,  more than 170 children have come and gone, and currently further 37 are resident in that Home.
Dad and Mum Muli have been houseparents for some 9 years now, and they have done well, together with their own three children, to become one with the rest of the family of children they found here.
Daryl, our son, and his wife Carol were also houseparents before them for 8 years, and Esther and I preceded them both for 28 years from the time we began.     It has been a happy house and family, and this is proved, as also with the other three Homes, by the many old boys and girls that come to visit and remember their days here.   They come often with their own wife or husband and children to prove where they grew up and so on.     Many good times to look back on - even when money was short.     We were always a family.
Testimony House was the ONLY house from 1969 until 1974 when we began to rent a house of similar age just across the road from us (Jacaranda).        From the time we began we had made sure with the Kenya Children's Department that we would only accept children who had lost both parents.
In 1969 there were quite enough of them.     But later as more and more people flocked to town life from the country a greater incidence of Single-parenthood began, until at last we began also to take in children with just one parent as well.         BUT if that parent was able to support herself  enough to provide shelter and food, we did not bring her child IN as a resident, but perhaps helped her to send the child to school if the NEED presented itself.        We have the majority of children still having lost both parents either from illness and death, accident, or plain desertion.        WE would not give a home to a child who already had viable home and family of its own.      The Kenya Government supports us in this.      During the 45 years gone by only two of our girls in Testimony House became pregnant (and not from 'in house'), and only three of our boys returned to the Streets!       Two of those who ran away have recently returned to visit us and to tell us of the hardships they faced on leaving us - and to THANK us for trying to help them !

All those who have so far left Testimony House have initially found employment.     Some did subsequently lose that first job, but most have been able to recover and continue employment.   Not all had academic ability and so we have quite a variety of employments engaged in by past children.
Some are now respected Teachers, Accountants, Medical Officers, Business Managers, and others are shop assistants, labourers, drivers, clerks, chefs, and so on.   The majority married and have their own families.  And most are still in touch with us all.    In this photo, taken at Esther's 70th Birthday Party in August this year, to which more than 100 old boys and girls attended, we can see a group ALL of whom, (with the exception of Lucky who is seen standing centre in white shirt - he grew up in Drakeley Cottage),  grew up in Testimony House between 1972 until circa 1996. In the Back row from the left is Rev. Anthony Kiprotich, now married with two kids, pastor of one of the largest Churches in Nairobi,   Richard Ochieng, married with three children, a Business man in Eldoret, (then Lucky) then Pastor Christopher Kipkosgei, married with two kids. a pastor in Eldoret Town, and lastly Michael Green, married with one son, working as a Computer Program Manager in South of England.
On the front row is Francis Lahol, married with two children, currently Houseparent of Drakeley Cottage and also a trained Chef.   Then Daryl Green, married with three kids, currently Director of TFH, then David Koech, married with three kids, an Accountant working in the U.S.A. and also in Nairobi, Kenya. and finally Steven Green, married with two kids and working in Computer, self employed, in the North of England.       All still friends and family to us and to each other.   That is a Testimony in itself - but is in fact only part of a GREATER one involving the Children and Staff of all four of our Children's Homes.
WE DO NOT SAY we have lived always perfectly together, or not made any errors, but we DO SAY that we do not see that what has been experienced, and remembered has been BAD.     No there can be no doubt each may have been discontented at some time, but no more than members of any ordinary family living in their own home with their own family members.      We have confidence in ourselves that with God's help and guidance, we have in the main succeeded in what we set out to be - the provision of what was most needed by children who have lost their own home and family - that is A HOME AND FAMILY they can call their own.         We are not ashamed of being poor, multi racial,  at one time lost and despised orphans - NO God kept and will always keep His Word to US, and be a Father to us, and provide mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters in abundance, as well as food and shelter.    HE IS MORE FAITHFUL,,,,,,,LOVING AND KIND than any.     HE provides the only real foundation of Security that any one actually needs.       We will give HIM all the honour and glory for what has been, and is being, done here.    

NEXT WEEK I will cross the road with you all to visit Drakeley and Tyndale Cottage Homes which were built in 2007/8 and make up our 3rd and 4th Homes.     Then perhaps, later on, we will take a look at the School that we began in 1983 fourteen years after TFH began.        We want to make sure we do not hide our light under any bushel - so for a while expect to hear ONLY about Testimony Faith Homes
a Children's Home that is GOOD!

Much Love to you all in Jesus name, and thanks to all those who hosted and assisted Miriam and Joshua as they were visiting England recently.     They and their ministry are very close to our hearts, Miriam having joined TFH as a little girl of 7,   and gone on with Jesus to have her own dear family, and to be involved together with her husband in helping to care residentially for unwanted children.

Sincerely

John,Esther, and Daryl Green