The work that is going on via members of Singing Oaks Church continues to amaze me. The following is a brief description of what Mary Mayoli is doing to help orphan children in Kenya.
Mary comes from a semiarid region in Kenya that is drought stricken and lacks clean water. Many of the communities suffer from waterborne diseases, malaria, jigger’s infestation and malnourishment due to poverty. Like much of Africa, HIV/Aids are high on the list of problems faced by the people of Kenya. Many of the orphans left to live on the streets due to the loss of parents from HIV/Aids. If children are lucky, extremely poor grandparents do their best to provide 1 meal a day. Many don’t have grandparents and they don’t survive.
Mary works with CANNAN WOMEN AND CHILDREN ORGANIZATION. It is a registered non-governmental organization formed to help the poor. Members have little money to buy food but give what they can to provide one meal a day to a limited group of children. They also provide school supplies and medical care to as many orphans as they can. This depends on their own personal giving and donations they might receive. They have limited services but have started a small non-profit health facility run by volunteers. This organization also helps women and men learn the simplest method of producing food and fruits, keeping poultry and dairy livestock, water conservation and soil conservation. Mary started her involvement in this work at an early age. Her mother who is 86 years old still supports an orphan. The orphanage that Mary is working with currently has 120 children.
Singing Oaks members in 2011 help Mary buy food for five orphans under her guardianship – both parents had died of Aids. That same year, one family in the congregation helped with clothing. In 2011 one of our members helped in finding donors required to drill one water well. This well was completed and handed over to Mary’s community in September, 2012. The well provides water to thousands. There is enough water to meet this community’s needs and have some left over to sell. In 2012 Singing Oaks members helped fund part of the college tuition for a student wishing to study Clinical Medicine. In 2013 we have contributed numerous boxes of clothing for export to Kenya. These clothes are items you donated that were left over after Denton area families came to our clothing room for assistance. Currently Mary has ten boxes that are packed with clothing and clothing donated by Kenyan friends living in the metroplex area.
The cost of shipping the clothing has been the financial burden of Mary. It costs approximately $100 per box to ship these in a container to Kenya. Mary is hoping for a little discount if the container used is well filled. Mary is sacrificing to save enough money to ship these boxes of apparel items to an orphanage she is supporting. Mary and her contacts in Kenya have been able to shield information from the government. The local governments are quite corrupt and would want part of whatever is in these shipments.
Mary’s work is not a formally recognized ministry (i.e. a budgeted work) of the church. The things Mary has facilitated have been benefited by individual church members. If you have talked to Mary you find that she is very passionate about this work because it helps people from her home there in Kenya. She is to be praised for this great work.
This is another great ongoing work at Singing Oaks that I believe needs to be spotlighted. We have a remarkable number of members who are trying to spread the gospel like Jesus told us to… take care of the widows and orphans in their affliction, feed the hungry and clothe the naked. This also has a lot to do with the Biblical teaching regarding loving our neighbor as ourselves.
