Tree Planting Celebration - 7 April 2009

YASHA Learning Centre,
Lulukwet - TERET

When the new Satellite School in the forest closed for the 1st term, we decided to thank the Lord God for His mercies in a practical manner ... We decided to plant 2 trees as to celebrate the 2 classes that was birthed this year.

Because the current statistics in the forest show that only 10% of the children will ever proceed to Secondary Level, we felt the Lord pressed on our hearts to start a 2-year program where the kids can learn to speak, read and write English as that is the major obsticle. ACE has proven itself as a worthy tool in the Hand of God, so we've decided to use the ACE Pre-School as well as the ABC-program (Gr 1) and then send the kids back to the local primary school ... giving them such a fantastic head-start and love towards education.

At the beginning of the year these kids could not even speak Kiswahili, as their mother tonge is Kalenjin. Now - a mere 4 months along the line - the kids can understand the Bible and animal stories though they might still answer in Kalenjin, they can say all the pledges in English, they know the letter songs, they can recite Psalms 100 as well as a few other scripture verses. They also know all their colors in English as well as all the shapes ... What a privilege to witness such growth.

We normally take some YASHA Mission Academy Staff members with so that they can also feel part of this great project. This time we also decided to take our prefects with - they couldn't believe how these kids are just flourishing. All glory to our God!!

The kids had a small program ready to "show-off" their great progress.
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A few of the projects that the children have been doing this term.
They normally work in groups of 5.
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Here the kids are saying the pledge to the Christian Flag.
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On the left we have Veronica (the overseer) and Miss Emily (our secretary from YASHA Mission Academy) and on the right we have Teacher Esther (Supervisor of the Snr Learning Centre) and myself together with all our prefects.
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Here Br Wilson is making one of the holes.

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Singing and praising the Living Saviour ...
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The Team of Teret planting the one tree ...
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... and the Njoro Team planting the other tree.
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After the occasion we gave the children of Teret some merits ... juice, sweets and biscuits.
What a pleasure to serve them with God's love!!