Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests"- Luke 2;14

November

We thank you all for your prayers and support.We also give God glory for his protection, provision and good health. Even though we still have long way to go concerning the water project and school we do appreciate God for what he is doing. A journey of thousands miles begins with one step and not to despise  small beginning.
This month we received 2 visitors from Poland (Ania and Ela enjoyed the beach and coconut drink). They were here for one week and  we also went to visit the kids in the village. We designed some Christmas cards with some of the children, shared bread,sweets, clothes and balloons. We wished to spend more time there but time was  moving so fast and by the time we realized the week was over. The kids were on their Christmas holiday, but when they heard we were coming they came to spend time with us. Schools will begin in  January 2015.
Christmas is around the corner and some of you guys decided to send some small Christmas gifts for kids. We are looking forward to that event. In African culture  no such thing like Christmas gifts as it is in the western  In Africa, parents  who are able they buy new clothes for  kids and prepare rice with meat for Christmas day. Those who can afford buy also drinks like fanta,coca cola, mirinda,sprite etc.
If you are able to contribute to buy food, drinks, clothes for Christmas celebration will be highly appreciated.
We love you all.
"Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you, will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" Php. 1;6

Henry's testimony for Neka

Hello Neka,

I salute you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, how are you, family and ministry? Hope all is well. I, family and ministry and doing good so far and much happy to hear from you.

 

We are in my village not in Timbwani. Its like 55-60km north - west from Mombasa island. Joseph is based in the south coast of Mombasa, he has his own curio shop outside in-front of a beach hotel. We communicate mostly on Facebook and he seems to busy guy traveling to Nairobi most often, as I write he is in Nairobi. 

 

It was back before year 2000 when Neka and his Tongan team came to (Timbwani) Mombasa south, it was great to have them because they could come on the beach where I use to work as a beach boy and share the goodness of Christ in their lives. At first I was wondering what type of team it was because they use to come with rugby ball, guitar and they share about Christ. By then I had not heard of YWAM and how its missionaries work. So day after day they kept on sharing the love of Christ, I could not miss their teachings, though I was a Ganja smoker, cigaret, tried a bit of heroin, drinking alcohol having sex with holiday makers etc. They were planting a seed in my life of salvation and deliverance and introduced to me about YWAM not knowing that by year 2001 I would join them in YWAM for my DTS in Eldoret Kenya. I happened to meet one of the Tongan brothers who was still staffing. It was really a miracle for me because I never expected God to be so good to me and deliver me from all addictions.

The Tongan team commitment to Christ and the brotherly love really inspired me, the way they could come and present a song by playing the guitar or sometime they come and we play rugby with them on the beach. It was fun and made me to like being part of such a life style. Telling us their testimonies how they use to be before they met Christ ( one said back in Tonga they could go and steal pork and slaughter it and eat the meet and burn the bones, they would smoke and drink alcohol etc. ) and now they are change. It was really touching and amazing.

After my DTS I went back to Timbwani and I pastor-ed a church for 3 years and I went to Uganda and did my School of Biblical Studies. I staffed few SBS schools in Uganda and I did also Titus Project in Arusha Tanzania and staffed Titus Project in YWAM Muizenberg South Africa. My aim is to have a degree from YWAM in Biblical Studies. I met my wife when I was staffing SBS in Uganda, she is from Poland and we a blessed with 1 beautiful daughter. After marrying we moved to south west part of Uganda for 2 years and we were volunteer missionaries overseeing few local ministries and doing bible teaching. I am glad that my wife heard my bible teachings and developed the interest of doing bible school and now she has applied to do it in YWAM Uganda.

At the moment we have just come to my village and we are still visiting churches, schools, health centers and seeing where people get water for drinking. We have noticed the need of clean water, school and bible translation and printing it to local language. Please find attachment of photos of what is happening in the village at the moment.

May God bless you as you my brother Phil.4:19

Henry and Mirka.

Shalom

We give glory for our dear friends from Swiecie who constantly support us and the kids in the village. Each time we share the gifts, clothes and other things been sent  the children are very happy.  Last time we had many balloons. It was hard to manage and blow them all because the kids surrounded the box like they really wanted them now now.  You can see the joy on they faces.
We bless you and also are sending greetings from children.

Prayer request

Dear Friends

We greet you in the name of Jesus Christ. We do believe all is well with you and your families.

Some time ago, we shared with you about things which we hoped to do in the village Kwademu. We really need your prayers and also your financial support.

• We still need 600$ for Geologist who will give us report saying how far the water is located. After getting that we shall be able to know the whole cost of drilling.
• School project, we need at least 10 000$ to start the building. As time goes we will fully know how much we are still missing to finish the building
• we also kindly ask you to stand with us as a family, our monthly expenditure are around 700$. And we are very far away from that.
• We need also your prayers for protection and safety for 2 voluntaries who are preparing to come in the beginning of November.
• Protection from sickness, strength to face any challenges
  and God's wisdom to make any decisions

For any financial contribution, more details please contact us by email henrymirkakalume@yahoo.com.

God bless you

“Happy are those who are merciful to others,

God will be merciful to them” Mat.5;7

September

How are you our beloved friend?  We do hope all is well with you.
Thanks for your prayers ,we are fine apart from Mirka's rashes. As you pray, please  remember her in your prayers. It is very annoying, we are not sure what caused  the rashes. She has been like that for about 2 weeks but we trust God that he will take control of it.

As we were writing  before, we were expecting polish missionary in September. Wiola arrived safety and all in all we had a great time together. We managed to visit  preschool in the village.  It was a nice sup rice  for children to see another muzungu (white person) around/ We shared the story of Jesus being a great Shepard who cares about his sheep. Later on we drew the picture. It was fun to see some of the pictures. I am telling you some of these kids are talented :)

Generally kids in the village do not have much opportunity of drawing or painting. It is not because they do not like to do it, simply they do not have colors, papers, pencils  etc. They lack the basic things, so when we receive such materials  in the parcels we are all happy.

We wish to keep Wiola with us  for more than a week but  everything has his beginning and the end. We are hoping that she will be back in Mombasa soon. For now we pray for  God to protect her as she is ministering in Mozambique.



Also we would like to give special thanks to Agnieszka from Krakow and her friends who supported us with many clothes.
The kids were very delight to receive gifts from you guys.  We bless you and we pray that God will be the One who will pay reward to you.
We love you all.

Mombasa

We hope you are all doing well. We are sorry for being quiet for such long. The last 2 months have been busy for us. We were moving up and down Uganda Kenya, Kenya Uganda etc. Finally we are all back in Kenya. We were hoping that Mirka would start School in YWAM this year but seems like not yet God's timing for that. It is always better to go with what God planed than go with our own plans. The time in Uganda was not wasted though, because we managed to visit our friends and had some time together. We are blessed with that.

Thank you for your prayers. God provided for us and we were able to rent small apartment in Mombasa, Kenya as you know the place we stayed before was a temporary. The house is clean and looks to be secured. Now we are settling in and will start to work on our projects (school project and water project). Also in few days we are hosting polish missionary from Mozambique and she will be with us for a week.

If you feel God is calling you to stand with us and contribute to any of this project you are very welcome. We will appreciate so much.

Bless you

Mirka and Henry

June

Greeting all the way from Mombasa Kenya. We trust that our Lord Jesus Christ watched over you and you are doing well.We would like to thank you for your continued prayers and all support you gave us. May God bless you abundantly.

In brief God has been doing great in our mildest. It was a busy month visiting schools and churches, as we told you in the last update. We thank God for the gifts we received from some of you. As we were visiting these schools and churches we were also sharing those gifts. People were very happy and smiling because they received many things. Each person who got something had reason to be thankful to God for His care and love. For example a mum of 3 children was grateful for the blankets the kids brought home because they had none to use. It is rainy season now and the nights are cold so the kids will be warm.

Last time we shared with you that there is a need of clean water for people and school. We have taken a step of faith to do a research on how to drill water and open a school. All these projects need process, for water to be drilled from the ground, one need a geologist report and then you can go a head and drill. Geologist is asking for 600US$ to give the report, this fee includes; Transport, Hydro geological survey, Groundwater assessment, Water-depth and rock morphology and Final official hydro geological report. When that stage is done then drilling technicians will let us know how much will be the drilling.

For the school we need to come up with the site plan and building plans. We dont know the cost for all this because we are suppose to bring the architect to the site. A part from that buildings there will be a registration of the school. So its becoming more expenses and busy moving from one office to the other. Hope next update we will give the costs.

As family we have been having some good time and some hard. Hannah has just started walking, its joyful to see her progress day by day. She chases goats in the bushes and running after chicken:). Mirka had a bit of tough times this last month, she had some etchings which we could not tell what was the actually cause and at the moment she has a wound on her right  foot which according to the physician he say its skin allergy. She also has some pain on eyelid, we cant tell what exactly is the problem. For Henry had some tooth problem. It was sore for some days. Thank to God the pain stop.

Please keep us on your prayers for journey mercies, favor, protection, good health and financial breakthrough. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all Amen.

“Whoever has two shirts must give to the man who has none and whoever has food must share it” Luke 3;11

Visiting schools

The conditions of the nearest school we visited couple times is very poor.  Because there is no school building the kids are meeting and learn from church. Church building itself is in a bad condition, any time may follow apart. Also we found out that the kids are lacking scholastic materials. Most of them do not know English either swahili. The language which they use is a local one called Giriama. Good enough one of the teachers knows English so she can translate for kids if there is a need.

The other school near by is a government school. The school has hundreds of kids but not enough teachers to teach. One class can hold even 100 students. The kids who are slow learners are left behind/ There is none to take care of them.

We believe one day God will make it possible for these little ones and they will be able to get proper education.

We also would like to acknowledge and give special thanks to friends from church Shalom who has sent gifts for children here. May God continue with His blessing for you.

Kenya

Dear friends

We greet you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We would like to thank you for your prayers, support and encouragement during the last few weeks. As we wrote to you  we were leaving Uganda for Kenya. We made it, we reached Kenya well. However the journey was long but God protected us all. Glory be to Him.

We have been in Kenya for one month so far. We all stay in one of the villages, outside Mombasa town. The place is rough, and quite far from civilization. Most of the houses in this area are mad houses without power or running water. But we thank God, for the house we stay in has power and water. The house itself do not have inside bathroom but there is one outside. It  is a bit scary at night because there is no fence around.  But still we are thankful "for we have learn to be satisfied with what we have" Phl. 4;11.

When we reached it was to hot and very humid that made Hannah to have lot's of rashes.With God's help we managed the rashes by bathing her in the water mixed with baking soda. Good enough the weather has changed recently. Now we are in the beginning of rainy season. Because of lack of a power in most places many insects are attracted by our lights and that brings lot of different insects around eg the white aunts, grass hoppers,crickets and others including safari aunts.

Hannah is doing well, she made some friends from neighbors. And they are enjoying to play together. Hannah also is curious about the chickens . Once she even flipped over on her walker as she was running after one.

In the village there is a government water project where people buy water from. This water is not pumped into their houses, it is sold from trading center but there is not good management of it. Still people have to fetch water from swamps or trap it when it rains. Because now we are in rainy season people do not walk long distance for the water. But when it is dry season people are force to walk even 10 km to get water for cooking, bathing etc.

The roads are rough roads and they are very bad, specially during rainy season. Tarmark road is about 10 to 13 km from where we are. There is one bus which comes to the village but still people struggle to pay and because of this they have to walk.. Mostly people earn less than a dollar a day, they depend on farming, eat what they plant in their small gardens. If is dry season they struggle with the food.

Also communication here is a challenge, there is no good network. To send an email it takes few days, because of network which is on and off.. To get a proper router is a bit costly for us(over 120$ per month)

So far we have seen in this place the need of drilling water from the ground so as people can get clean water instead of using dirty water from the swamp. We do not know all the costs for this but we know it is expensive thing to do. However with God all things are possible. 

Also those who are Christians have been asking  for Swahili Bibles. The y know we are Christians so they keep coming to our place thinking we have a storage of Bibles. So there is also a need of buying Bibles for people.

Now the holidays are finished and schools are open. Next week we are going to  visit schools, churches. There is one government school around and small preschool but more about it we will write to you next time.

We thought coming to Kenya would give us time to rest but it seems like God brought us here for a reason, without our understanding.

We are still trusting God for YWAM where we can get more training.

Thank you for your prayers and support. We appreciate it. May God bless you abundantly.

"And with all his abundant wealth through Christ Jesus my God supply all your needs" Phl.4;19

Change

Our beloved friends 

We greet you in the name of our Lord Savior, Jesus Christ  We do pray and believe you, family and ministry are doing well at the same time  physically like spiritually.

The reason we are writing to you is to ask you to stand with us in prayer. Now we are stepping in a new chapter. Mirka's visa for Uganda is going to be finished next month, and we are going back to Kenya for some time. During this time we are planing to work on her documents (she needs new passport) and also our aim is to seek God. If possible to get a bit of break from the work we have been doing in Uganda. It has been busy time for us, we did lot's of different things but mainly helping orphans, widows, sharing the good news around and keeping all the administration work in order. Hannah also has been demanding much of our time so some times we could find ourselves very exhausted.  

We do believe deep in our hearts that God is giving us this time for some reason. However much as we trust Him we do not know  yet where we will stay in Kenya. Time is running fast, soon we are leaving Uganda. But we are trying to keep focus and put our  eyes on our Lord Jesus Christ and do not look at the circumstances.

One morning I, Mirka woke up and God spoke to me giving me a vision or dream (not sure what was that). He showed me a picture of Peter walking on the water. He said to me this is the time to move a bit father where my feet can't reach the ground. If I do not doubt I will not sink. I thought how is that possible I don't know how to swim and now I have to go in a deep. But later on I understood. God is trying to stretch out my faith. I always have been worrying how I can take care of myself and  now our little Princess,  Hannah.  First  thought was to run away to Europe and look for a job which will allow me to take proper care of our daughter. But again He spoke "I know how much you love your daughter but what do you think who loves her more?" Of course I knew from the beginning I heard this that God who gave her life He is the one who loves her more and He will take proper care of her. On our side we have to trust Him that He will. Also He said to me "an large your tent and do not be afraid" Iz 54 1-2 and after that  "I love you so don't let anything worry you or frighten you" .Dan 10;18.

I, Mirka, would like to come to Europe and spend some time with friends, get taste of a nice food and at the same time to visit my family in Poland. Last time I saw them 2 years back. It has been a while since I was home. My sister gave birth to baby boy, my brother has little daughter and us we do have too. It would be good reunion for our family but it seems like there is not yet time for that. I am very ok with this. I rather chose what God had planed for us and follow His will. The Bible says:
"Let the Spirit direct your lives, and you will not satisfy the desires of the human nature." Gal. 5;16
"Those who obey their human nature can not please God(...) We have an obligation, but it is not to live as our human nature wants us to. For if we live according to our human nature we are going to die, but if by the Spirit we will live" Rom 8;8;12-13
We both also believe that  it comes from God to join Ywam Uganda where we can get more training  there. YWAM is an International Organization where me and Henry met 3 years ago. I was doing there my Disciples training and Henry was teaching at School of Bible studies. Now we feel like God is calling us back there. On my side I feel to do school of Biblical  study, Henry to be involved in projects on the base like outreaches, teachings etc. But in this area we also need your prayers. We need financial break through, to pay fees there. We require to pay school fee and staff fee which I am not sure yet how much it might be. However God knows all that already.
So our friend please we ask you to join with us in prayer as we are taking a step of faith and trusting God for His provisions and guidance. Feel free  to do  anything God will lead you into.
During our time in Kenya we also planing to get involved in helping orphans. Many kids you can find on the street. So, also if you feel to help in this area  let us know  so we will provide the address for you. We would highly appreciate any kind of stuff you think is not needed in your or your friends house.
May God bless you. We pray for you that God gives you strength and wisdom  in everything you do. Let Him be your guider . We do believe He choose  you for the great things.
"Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires'' Matt 5;6

Henry and Mirka

Vivian's operation

Praise God for the surgery which was made few days ago. Vivian is doing well and now she is back home. Thank you so much for all your prayers and thoughts. Sending greetings from her to you.

Vivian's story

We thank God for taking care of  Vivian and her brothers. They will start the school in February. And they look to be very happy. We still praying for Vivian's health. The local Doctor said to wait till end of January when the American team is coming. They are planing to be around for some time  treating sick and if necessary also operate.Our hope is that after seeing Vivian they wold be able to help and do what is necessary. Please keep praying, more updated should come soon.

Vivian

Few days back ,we got across very difficult situation. We met a little girl who is 4 years old, she was rape almost 2 months ago. There are no parents to look after her. She stays with 2 older brothers. The oldest one is 15 old,  he dropped off from school few years back to work and help the family. He has been trying his level best to provide for home, buying food, paying for rent etc. The mother died last year, the father pass long time ago. Because lacking the money they were not able to help little sister and look for a good medical care. The rapist run away, nowhere to be found. We ask you my dear followers to pray for this small family. We are trying to look for the best solution for all of them, specially for this little angel. We don't want to separate the children, we want them to be together and go to school. If you can stand with this family and pray for them, also please pray for the good medical care for Vivian, so it will not bring much damage to her life. We bless you and wish you a good weekend.

Christmas in January

with the gifts

Another Christmas party was in other school. Though the Christmas season already pass, God still remember these children, Every kid was so excited to see their gift, by the time we left the place all the children had changed their clothes. You can see their smiles on their faces.


 They didn't know this year there will be gifts for Christmas celebration. For many people here  there is nothing for such occasion. But because of you my dear donors the children of Misandika could receive their presents. We bless you in Jesus Name.

with the new clothes