As many of our readers know, Lighthouse Trails began supporting the Understand the Times (Roger Oakland) missions outreach – Bryce Homes of Kenya – in 2011. Since then, many Kenyan Christian families (primarily widows and children) have been assisted. Lighthouse Trails readers have been a vital part of the ongoing support of this missions work. The following slideshow was put together by Lighthouse Trails author Chris Lawson (founder and director of Spiritual Research Network). For more information and ways to support Bryce Homes in Kenya, visit Understand the Times, International. Below this slideshow is the December report sent from the board members in Kenya. You will see photos of Canadian Bryce Homes delegate, Kevin Fox, who recently traveled to Kenya to spend time with the overseeing pastors and the Bryce Homes widows and children.
BRYCE HOMES KENYA – DECEMBER REPORT, 2023
Written by the Lukio (Bryce Homes board member in Kenya)
We are glad, as Bryce Homes Kenya, to convey our warmest seasonal year-end greetings to everyone. As we end the year, the weather here has drastically changed from the heavy storms we experienced earlier in the last four months to sunny days with occasional evening rainfall. It has been a long year indeed, and we have to thank God for His continued grace to enable everyone of you (UTT and LT readers) to take center stage as participants in this noble cause.
To begin with, we were so glad to be visited by Kevin Fox on behalf of Bryce Homes International in mid-November. Despite the rainy weather, we had an opportunity to visit every household (Bryce Home), and everyone was delighted to share their testimonies with us. In summary, we again were reminded how this Program has been so impactful in the lives of these widows and orphans. In households with averagely six people to feed and give care, it proved to be cumbersome, and this led to malnourishment of both the orphans and their widowed mothers. We thank God for your intervention as readers of UTT and Lighthouse Trails for coming in to support this impactful program.

The Bryce Homes Kenya testimonies are numerous and spread right from when Roger Oakland first visited Kenya and began the Program with three widows over twelve years ago. Since then, the program has expanded and touched over 200 lives of widows and orphans. In order to restrict the number of widows to a manageable level, Bryce Homes Kenya Leadership introduced an arrangement for graduation of the young widows to become self-sufficient. This has been made possible by the introduction of Small Business Opportunities where some of these widows are provided with starting capital to begin small businesses. This way, we have been able to keep only 35 Bryce Homes at one time receiving foodstuff every month as others (graduated) grow their SBOs for self-sustenance.
As we earlier shared and equally noted by Roger many years back, negative culture and tradition still continue to be a challenge to most of these widows. In most communities here, widows are sent away by their brother in-laws from their matrimonial homes upon the demise of their husbands. This they do to grab their property. In most cases, they remain helpless and lost because they are not able to hire services of attorney to handle their cases. Bryce Homes Kenya came in rescue of one such widows (Finter BH #13) who was bought property and built a house. She is living a peaceful life to date. Nearly eight years down the line, we have come across a similar case with the daughter to Margret (BH #63).

When Kevin was here, we also had time with the Bryce Homes children in different localities, and it was fun interacting with these members of the future generation. Since today’s children are the future of these households, we have always tried to put these children firs,t and their happiness is our pride. It was quite unusual, and every little child here was left joyous with the gifts they received. Above everything else, upbringing these children in the knowledge of the word of God has really been helpful given the humble backgrounds they are in.

As we again visited every Bryce Home to distribute the December support, we were received with excitement as everyone regarded the end-year gifts to be so special. As you can see from the photos below, every face expressed satisfaction. I must say the support for these households has really been helpful throughout the year. As we begin a new year ahead, we pray for more favor from God to continue expanding Bryce Homes Kenya to impact more lives. May I finally thank all the readers for their tireless effort in ensuring these women and children of God continue to put bread on the table. This support goes beyond nutrition as it also spreads the good news of the love of God, and many receive Christ and begin to live new life. Happy New Year 2024.



For more information and ways to support Bryce Homes in Kenya, visit Understand the Times, International.