Missions Partners in Focus - February 2024
As a step towards facilitating deeper relationships between the Soul community and our long-term missions partners around the globe, beginning this year, we will publish regular features on our partners. Each of these features will provide a more detailed examination of two selected missions partners, in order to promote a greater familiarity of each. The hope is that this will help to cultivate a genuine heart of connection, so that we as a community can join with our partners in mission, prayer, and support.
Little Hands School, of Helping Hands Organization of Kenya
Bernie & Celia Mascher
Little Hands School is located in Naivasha, one of the larger cities in Kenya, with around 200,000 residents, located on the eastern shore of Lake Naivasha and about 100 kms north-west of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Naivasha, along with the other major urban centres of Kenya, has seen rapid growth in the last several decades, with about half of the city’s current population having arrived in the last decade alone. More broadly, Kenya is a democratic and predominantly Christian country in East Africa with a rapidly growing population of over 55 million. Kenya is generally considered to be a lower middle income country, which despite significant, steady economic growth over the past two decades, continues to see radical discrepancies in living standards between the wealthy and the average Kenyan.
Little Hands School is the central project for Helping Hands Organization of Kenya, headed by Bernie and Celia. The school operates an inclusive education program for pre-school and primary school-aged children, integrating children with intellectual and physical disabilities. Primary education in Kenya is state funded, with the vast majority of children completing primary school. However, children with special educational needs often face barriers to accessing education in Kenya, as a combination of stretched educational resources and strong social stigma most often leave them hidden away at home. Some children are locked up if there is no one to watch them during the workday.
This is the impetus for Little Hands School: to bring children with disabilities out of the shadows and give them the opportunity to go to school and be with other children in a supporting and encouraging environment. The school has approximately 200 students. Around a quarter of them have special educational needs and/or disabilities, which often require complex support. Still, the school staff work hard to provide a full school experience to all their students. Soul has been partnering with Little Hands for years to help them continue to perform this good work, where local funding is insufficient. As a part of our 2023 Legacy Offering, Soul has contributed $10,000 towards the purchase of playground equipment and new technology for their computer lab.
The attached documentary provides insight into the life and passion of Sophy, a special needs teacher at Little Hands School.
Assemblies of God Church in Lutsk, Ukraine
Katherine & Serhiy Semenyuk
February 24th will mark the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That day does not mark the true beginning of conflict for Ukraine, which goes back at least to the Russian-backed insurrection in eastern Ukraine in 2014, however, February 24th marks a radical escalation. Since that day in 2022, millions have been forced to flee their homes and leave their worlds behind, now becoming either internally displaced persons or international refugees, critically dependent on the support of others. For those who stayed, trips to bomb shelters have become a common experience as civilians are not spared the destruction of modern warfare. General mobilization for the defence of the country has forced Ukrainians to put their lives on hold and has split families apart.
These are the circumstances in which Soul’s missions partners, Katherine and Serhiy at the Assemblies of God Church in Lutsk, Ukraine, find themselves. Lutsk is a city of over 200,000 in north-western Ukraine, about 90 kms from the Polish border, and the administrative centre of Volyn Oblast (province). From the outset, their church and other Assemblies of God churches in Ukraine have opened their doors to refugees, operating as temporary refugee centres, assisting waves of Ukrainians move west, away from the conflict. Since those early days, Soul has teamed up with our partners as they have collected and distributed food, supplies, and care for those beset with hardship. In the uncertainty, difficulty, and instability that the war has brought, they have proved to be a steady and reliable team to bring resources to those in need.
As the conflict has worn on, Pastor Serhiy and his team continue to offer leadership among the Assemblies of God churches of Ukraine all the while serving as a significant international resource funnel and coordinating force for the provision of aid. They have gone so far as to have established a church for war refugees in Czechia. Soul’s long standing connections with this team have well-positioned our partnership to make a real difference in the midst of these troubles. Relying on a high proportion of volunteers, the church exemplifies Christ in the flesh as they serve their war-stricken community, even as their own lives are likewise impacted by these same harsh circumstances.