What a season of celebration we have had!!! Having the Grandparents around has been the icing on our cake!! It all began with School Closing Ceremony on Dec 3. The children were awarded for their hard work and also performed some beautiful pieces of poetry, songs, plays and Scripture memory.
We are so proud of how they had excelled in school! The next event was the Open Fun Day to honor Mom and Dad Stern and to launch the KKV Friend’s Club.
Once again, the kids impressed everyone with their charm and excellent performances.
Above, you can see they even did some traditional dancing!! We also sold some of the kids crafts—it was our first trial at selling and we actually made some money!! The kids were so excited to be a part of helping KKV financially. They stood tall and strong. One exciting thing that happened on that day was the miraculous provision. We had so many people donating goods that we could not contain it!! We had been given about 300 loaves of bread! We could not use it all before it would expire and didn’t have enough freezer space, so we were able to bless 3 other orphanages that night with fresh bread!! That was really fun. Last, but not least, was our own Christmas Day. We had a wonderful “family” dinner together at our Pavilion. It was complete with roast goat, goat stew, rice pilau, cabbage salad, kachumbari (a tomato salad to be eaten with rice), chapattis, and mokemo (a kikuyu dish with several mashed veggies together). We topped that off with cake, watermelon and sodas. We all waddled around for a while after that. Mom Stern got on the keyboard and we sang Christmas songs and we also taught the kids a couple of Mom’s choruses that she had written……they loved that! Of course, we had TWO Santa’s, Grandpa’s Hensold and Stern!! They passed out all the kids presents from the back of their sleigh (the van!) Every child got clothes, shoes, and some toys!! We are so THANKFUL to “The Cause” from Bend, Oregon, Leigh Ross, from Arkansas, Albrecht’s from Bethesda Christian Church in Detroit, Michigan, and the Rantoul, Illinois church folks who gave toward the gifts!! Christmas was great!