Siblings James, Jacinta and Veronica are healthy and happy living at Cindi’s Hope Christian Academy in Naivasha, Kenya

Loving Homeless Garbage Eaters

Transforming lives with food

Dear Friends,

During my visit this month to Cindi’s Hope Academy in Naivasha, Kenya, I was very blessed to meet some of the children who are benefiting from bulk foods provided by your gifts to the Food Ministry. Let me introduce you to 5-year-old James and his sisters, Jacinta, age 7, and Veronica, 10. Their faces looked happy and contented when we met, but they were not always able to smile so easily.

Last year these kids were living on the street. No one fed them. Their parents abandoned them. So the starving trio learned to eat garbage, and became accustomed to eating anything they could find, even totally putrid items. When some neighborhood folks caught them stealing their food, they reported the children as “homeless garbage-eaters.” They had never been to school.

The authorities brought the abandoned children to Cindi’s. Not surprisingly, their health was very poor and all 3 children were suffering from malnutrition. Jacinta’s hair was orange due to severe nutritional deficiency. James was infested severely with intestinal worms to the extent that no matter how much he ate he continued to feel hungry—the worms were consuming all the nutrients.

The children still occasionally look for food in the garbage—a lingering instinct from their past—but that’s changing. At Cindi’s they not only receive nutritious food, however, but their minds are fed meaty Christian education and their souls drink plenty of loving nurture from Cindi and her staff! All 3 are bright, and they have a bright future ahead of them!

At left, ready for school; at right, James enjoying a hot, healthy meal when he first arrived at Cindi’s Hope last year, thanks to Heaven’s Family’s Food Ministry

Thank you so much for caring about James, Jacinta, Veronica—and many other children—through your gifts to the Food Ministry. May the Lord richly bless you!

Serving Together,

Diane Scott
Director, Food Ministry