Never Give Up

One of the writings on the wall at our Eastleigh Center is "Never give Up" in huge letters.  We often talk to the street kids about this.  And we remind one another that, even if one of our students runs, we never give up.  And if we have conflicts or struggles or disappointments, we never give up.

We had a girl named Advella in the very first girls' program at MITS.  Remember when Lynley Baker (now Phillips) came wanting to do a girls' class at the WorldWide Youth Camp event at Eastleigh?? And we said, "That's hard!"  And Lynley said, "Please."  And she did, and it was hard, but out of came a special camping trip for several girls and an invite to our first boarding program at Kamulu. There were seven of them at first.  Joann ran away the first week; she couldn't stand the wide open spaces of Kamulu (those were the days).  And Advella ran a few months later.

She is in the green in the first picture, fourteen years ago.  And the second was taken this week when she came to visit us (that's Darlene on the left).  Now she lives at Huruma, has her child in school, is attending our congregation at the Eastleigh Center and teaching Sunday school.  She has a job with the Child Welfare Association - she gets to see that what happened to her will not likely happen to some of the cases she deals with.

And she is very grateful to MITS and to those who support our work and to the teachers at MITS.  She had tears in her eyes as she expressed her gratitude to us.  Then she talked to John Wambu and did the same.  He said it was the first time one of the former students actually came back to him to say  thanks and express joy.

So...never give up.