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How It Began
In November of 2003, I visited two
teachers I had been sponsoring for a year through a charity in
Golden, Colorado. These teachers were teaching in an
impoverished slum in Nairobi, Kenya called Fuata Nyayo. During
our time together, they confided that they were not getting the
money I had been sending but that the school director was
misappropriating the money. The principal, John Andirah,
substantiated their claim. John and I then agreed that we
should have our own school. There was never any doubt in our
minds that this project was God's Will. We rented 4 rooms in
the slum for $13/month for each room. The rooms had dirt
floors and were made of used, twisted metal sheets, but they were
the beginning of our school. When asked, the teachers named it
Bright Star Academy, but I've changed "Academy" to "School" so that
no one is misled.
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Rooms were formed with tree
branches and iron sheets |

Classrooms had iron sheet walls
and dirt floors. |

We started with almost nothing,
but God had great plans. |

This
may be the only meal some children got that day. |
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Children were fed ugali, which is boiled corn meal, a staple
food of Kenyans. |

A desk built for two had to hold
4-5 students. |

The older students
got the desks. |

The
littlest ones had to sit on the dirt floors. So I bought
sisal mats for them to sit on. |

These were our first teachers. |
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The iron sheets provided some
privacy for the classrooms. |

Pastor John is the school director. |

This
playground
is the site where the new school has since been built. |
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Within a few days, the rooms were crowded with children who wanted
to learn. When I was told most schools do not provide lunch
for the children and that the majority of the children would go all
day without eating because of the profound poverty in the slum, the
decision to provide lunch for the children was an easy one to make.
The teachers and John prepared ugali (corn meal boiled in water)
each school day. Ugali, the favorite food of most Kenyans, is
not nutritious but it's filling.

Within a couple of months, we had 300 students
and consequently had to rent a church during the week for additional
classroom space. The church, which measured approximately
50'x40', held about 120 students in 4 classes.

The children were getting educated
and fed.
In February
of 2004, I had a heart attack, a gentle reminder from God that I was
not immortal and that I needed to put to good use the money He had
blessed me with, the money I had stashed away in a savings account.
That summer, the money was paid to the Kenyan government to purchase
land in the slum, a contractor was hired, building materials were
purchased, and construction of a permanent Bright Star School began
with eight stone classrooms, a bathroom, a girls' dormitory with a
bathroom, an office, and living quarters with a bathroom for John,
the school director, and his family.

Once
these rooms were completed and were being used, additional money was
donated by family and friends to complete a training center, two
more classrooms, and a kitchen. Construction of these rooms
was completed by April of 2005.

For
the protection of our 42 orphans, we built a security wall (the
first wall was washed away with the spring floods and a second was
built, was partially washed away, and was rebuilt), added 4
bathrooms, and converted one classroom into a boys' dormitory,
adding a bathroom to that room.

Although
with reservation, I agreed to continue the educational process into
secondary school, adding a ninth grade class in 2006, a tenth
grade class in 2007, and an 11th grade class in 2008. Two new classrooms were built with a
huge donation from Bill Kring. See photo below.

With
God's blessings, construction of a science laboratory, three
classrooms, and a clinic was completed in June of '08. Having
taken the playground in the school compound for our new classrooms,
we purchased land outside the security walls for the children's
playground.
We also built a
new boys' dormitory (red roof) in '07 and expanded the girls' dormitory,
adding a bathroom with 2 showers, 2 toilets, and 2 sinks in '08.
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