April 14, 2008

Changing lives through education

Dear Friends,

We wanted to share with you the tremendous role you are playing in changing the lives of people who without your help would have no opportunity to develop the talents God has given them.

Orphans receiving uniforms.

Imagine yourself as an orphan child. One or both of your parents have died, and you are so poor that you have only the one set of torn clothing that you are wearing. You have no shoes. On school days you watch other children, dressed in their clean uniforms, carrying their school sacks. You stand on the outside of the school fence looking in at the other kids playing at recess and listening to them recite their lessons, knowing that you will never have that opportunity.

Imagine yourself as a young teenage girl. You are raped and get pregnant. Your family disowns you for the shame that you have brought upon them. You give birth and love your child in spite of all of your hardships. You didn’t go to school beyond the third grade. You have no skills and are very alone. What hope have you?

Maybe you were more fortunate, and had two parents who could afford to pay your fees to primary and secondary schools. You got the highest grades in your class and took the entrance exams at the nursing school. You got the best marks of all the students who took that exam. However, now your parents can no longer afford to educate you, as they are pressed to provide even the primary education for your eight brothers and sisters. There are no jobs available. You have dreamed long of becoming a nurse. You live in the village right next to the Presbyterian mission station, which boasts a renowned school of nursing. You might as well live on the other side of the world.

These are the realities of the lives of so many of God’s children but, for some, they now have opportunities, thanks to you.

Thanks to you, over the last five years, several hundred orphans have gotten that chance. Currently, local orphans are attending 13 different primary, secondary, and trade schools in our village of Tshikaji and in the nearby city of Kananga, thanks to your gifts, which have paid their school fees. Fifty dollars a year pays for uniforms, books, tuition fees, food, and lodging. This gift gives a child a chance and hope for a brighter future.

Today, your gifts are helping 20 single mothers learn the valuable trade of machine sewing and improve their basic education (the “three R’s” plus). Without your help, they would have no option in life other than subsistence farming. If they’ve been cast out of their families, the family plot may not be available to them, and they are forced to turn to prostitution to survive.

You are also helping to provide partial or full scholarships to 22 students at the Institut Technique Medical de Tshikaji (ITM), which is the four-year nursing and laboratory technician school at our partner institution, the IMCK (Christian Medical Institute of the Kasai).

Tshiaba Tshilanda (left) and Mbuyi Lushiku.

We would like to introduce you to two of these wonderful village students. Tshiaba Tshilanda, a first-year student at our laboratory technicians school, is a 20-year-old orphan, having lost his father years ago. He is the oldest of seven children. Tshiaba, who graduated first in his class in secondary school, is a serious student who wants an advanced education to help support his family and improve health care in his country.

Mbuyi Lushiku, a 19-year-old village nursing student, had the highest score in the pre-admission exam. She is one of eight children and hopes to become a midwife following graduation in order to provide quality care for women and babies in the village. Through scholarship support, you help make their dreams a reality and help their families beam in approval and joy at their graduation ceremonies.

We are privileged to attend those graduations, to watch these impoverished children walking in their school uniforms, and to visit the schools to see the joy on their faces as they participate with the other village children in school activities. We see young women sitting at the hand-cranked sewing machines with their babies nestled snugly on their backs, learning how to make clothing for those very children. We interact daily with those amazing nursing and lab students during their clinical rotations at the hospital, and we see them dancing and singing with their classmates during worship at our local Presbyterian church.

We thank you for giving us, and them, these opportunities.

Our love and deep gratitude,

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 17