June 2025

Jambo Everybody!

Here I am again, with a million things swirling through my head, trying to narrow it down to what’s most important to share with you guys! If I were to share everything that has happened since my last letter, this update would be more like a book!

This year’s rainy season has not been as wet and muddy as usual. We have been getting a good rain a few times a week, with the remaining days being sunny in the mornings and overcast in the afternoons. It has actually been quite mild and pleasant! The maize fields are beautiful and a good harvest is being predicted, which would have a positive impact on food security for next year!

I promised to update you on baby Alan and our suspicion that he might have hearing loss. Nurse Abby took him for a hearing test which confirmed our suspicion and the quest to fit him with hearing aids began!

I contacted my friend, Paige Stringer, who is the Founder and Executive Director of Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss. Paige has been a huge help and support throughout our journey with Joanie and was once again ready to assist in any way she and her foundation could!

When we forwarded Alan’s hearing test results to Paige and her team, they felt that further testing would be a good idea. The following week, Nurse Abby and Alan travelled to Nairobi, where it was determined that Alan’s hearing loss was most likely being caused by fluid in the middle ear! He was referred to an ENT in Eldoret and given antibiotics. He is scheduled for an examination under anesthesia in November to determine if the fluid is gone and whether or not he would benefit from tubes in his ears.

What a blessing! To think that he could have gone through life wearing hearing aids, which probably would have not really helped much! He could have had major speech problems and missed so many developmental milestones, all due to an assumption that because he wasn’t hearing properly, he must be suffering from hearing loss! Wow! I thank God every day for the team He has put together to intercede on behalf of these kids!

Another life-changing medical situation we recently experienced involved our little boy, seven-year-old Kigen.

When Kigen and his sister, Vivian, joined our In Step family, they were drastically malnourished! Their mother had really tried to provide for them, but after suffering tragic loss and being displaced from her home, due to tribal clashes, was not able to. It became apparent that the children would likely not survive without intervention, so with the mother’s permission, they were placed with us.

From the beginning, Kigen, three-years-old at the time, had a hard time controlling his bladder. At first, we thought the problem was a product of his overall health condition, which was quite heartbreaking. As time went on and his health improved, the incontinence continued. When he got old enough to clean himself up and change his own clothes, aunties sent him to school with a backpack of clean clothes, and he came home with the same backpack full of soiled ones. It became clear that Kigen was not being stubborn or uncooperative in using the toilet, he simply had no control over his bladder!

Nurse Abby took him to a urologist for review and it was discovered that he had a congenital birth defect (posterior urethral valves), which could be corrected with surgery! The procedure was done last week and it appears to be an almost instantaneous cure! Kigen has had a few accidents, as his brain is learning how to make the connection of when he needs to urinate. But Kigen is so determined, I’m sure he will be accident free in no time!

Kigen immediately became a new kid! He’s more active and outgoing, not fearing rejection from his peers, like before! He hugs Nurse Abby whenever she walks through the room, as he sees her as the person who got him “fixed”! It is almost overwhelming to think about what his life might have been like without this routine surgery! And of course, I also think about all of the kids whose families could never provide such a life-changing procedure for their kids! Our kids are so blessed because of all of you!

Our kids are also blessed because of the love and care they receive from Nurse Abby! She is an excellent nurse who could have chosen to work her way up the ladder in her field. Instead, she has dedicated herself to the well-being of our kids and we are all beyond blessed because of it! She lives onsite, giving up the opportunity to have her own home, and is relentlessly committed to the health of everyone at In Step Children’s Home and Academy! I really don’t know what we would do without her!

South Hills Church from Kennewick, Washington, has partnered with us in so many ways over the years! One of those ways has been by sending teams to the children’s home to work on projects and to interact directly with the kids and staff. If I’m not mistaken, SHC has sent a team every year since 2010 (minus the few Covid years). As a church, they have been part of our kids’ lives for as long as most of the kids can remember! This year is no different.

This year’s team, like every SHC team in the past, came with a plan! The plan was to focus on building relationships with the high school kids during their first week here, then when the high schoolers returned to their various boarding schools, the team would turn their attention to the junior and primary school kids. The plan was smooth and effective!

For the high school kids, the team came prepared to put on a very energetic youth camp, similar to an American church camp experience. It was incredible! The kids had so much fun and were way too busy to notice that they were being preached to! (I use that phrase loosely, lol!) The team was made up of five young people and five people with more life experience (see what I did there?), which gave our kids an opportunity to relate to the young adults, while also building relationships with a different generation.

The premeditated genius in the SHC plan was to divide into teams, designated by the color of your bandana. Each of the four teams were made up of both In Step kids and SHC members, providing an excellent opportunity for relationship building! They remained on the same team the whole week, earning points for every accomplishment; including being supportive of the other teams, cheering for your own team, and of course, winning the game or contest!

Each day was filled with activities, games, contests, music, dancing, etc., all while pointing to the goodness of God and the fact that he has an amazing plan for each of our lives!

Throughout the week, the kids heard testimonies about how God had worked in the lives of their new friends. They learned that people have real life struggles no matter where in the world they live, even in America! They learned that a relationship with God is the only thing that matters, no matter who you are or where you came from….even if you don’t know where you came from!

It was so powerful for our kids to get to know young people who love Jesus and are still very cool and fun friends to have! It was equally amazing to watch them grow close to the older generation of people on the team; listening intently as they shared their life experiences and their knowledge of a good, good God! I know that many of them were inspired to stand strong in their faith, no matter how hard life can be sometimes….focusing especially on the challenges of kids struggling through Kenyan high schools!

After the high school kids went back to school, the focus shifted to junior and primary school kids! This was a bit challenging as school was back in session so their time with these kids mostly included the 135 community kids who attend In Step Academy, making it more difficult to build the one-on-one relationships. They did manage, though, by purposefully making themselves available to share meals, seeking the kids out during free time, and spending evenings hanging out and joining devotion time. They repeated several of the activities which they had done with the high school kids, which meant a lot to the younger ones, especially the junior school kids who don’t think of themselves as “the younger ones”. Haha!

The littles had a great time with the Mr. Potato Head toys the team brought for them! They also painted, played outside, sang together, etc.! There was a birthday party, a dance party, fun, fun, fun!

The team also made time to hang out and play with the Stepping Stones kids, which was fun for everyone!

All in all, it was a magnificent time for everyone and all of us here at In Step sure appreciated the hard work and beautiful outcome of the SHC team! Thank you!

There is so much more happening around campus, but as I mentioned at the beginning of this letter, I don’t want to bore you with a book! But one thing that deserves mentioning is our recently installed inclusive playground for our special needs kids!

I don’t have time to get into the whole story, so will just include some photos of the kids enjoying their new playground! Thanks to all of you who made it possible!

I love you all and am overcome with joy when I stop and think about all God has done through your love and commitment to our kids! Your obedience to him has truly changed (in some cases saved) their lives and given them hope for a future!

God Is Good All The Time (GIGATT),

Mama Carla