A few weeks ago we made a weekend trip up to Makutano, Kenya, which is about 350km north of Nairobi, to visit one of the recipients of the Rosslyn Christmas Project.

Diversion….. Each Christmas season the Rosslyn Academy community celebrates with the Christmas Project.  The purpose of the project is for our community to join together to bless deserving organizations within Kenya that are serving their communities for the Kingdom.  Jamie has served on the Christmas Project Committee all 4 years that we have been in Kenya and has had the joy of chairing the committee for the last 2 years.  In the 4 years we have been here the project has blessed 9 organizations with over 3million Kenyan Shillings (over $35,000) which has been used to build classrooms, provide orphanage housing, start a cow/milk project, complete a garden project,  provide beds for orphans, and purchase school supplies, sports equipment, food, clothing, and toys.  This year the project was more successful than ever.  We were amazed at the committment of the Rosslyn students and community as nearly 1.2 millionKES was raised through a variety of fund-raisers and personal donations.  In addition a huge supply of food and clothing was collected.  We were able to bless two schools with sustainability projects…a cow/milk project and a garden project (details of project in video below).

….and we’re back.  We visisted Heritage Academyin Makutano, which is a part of The Village Project Africa.  VPA is a multi-faceted project aimed at blessing the community of Makutano in a variety of ways.  Heritage Academy is a school reaching over 400 students and is one part, but VPA also has programs for single mothers, a teacher’s training program, community gardening projects, and home outreach.  We were able to check on the progress of the cow project as well as spend the weekend getting to know the staff and seeing the vision of the school and overall project.  We have visited and supported many projects over the years, but we were extremely encouraged and amazed by the quality of Village Project Africa.  It is an inspiring model of how a handful of dedicated, Christ-following, people can change a community.

For more information on Heritage Academy/Village Project Africa, check out:http://www.villageprojectafrica.org/

Here is the Rosslyn Christmas Project Video as well as a couple of videos of the kids from Heritage Academy welcoming us to their school….