“Brothers and Sisters, I bring you greetings from our brothers and sisters in the United States; I have some news for you. Our great friends and partners have mobilized funds to begin the construction of the primary school dormitory and five houses for widows and orphans. I already have the money in the bank!,” he broke the news.
The brethren were overcome and went wild with joy for over 10 minutes. Emma stood there smiling sheepishly, not knowing what to do next. The Lay reader had to call for calm in order to give room for Emma to finish the announcements. He concluded by informing them of a village council meeting that would take place the following day and whose agenda was to make selection of the beneficiaries of the five houses.
After the Church service one widow, Elizabeth, a widow aged 78, and had served Papoli Church several years ago as a leader of Mother’s Union leader went over to Emma and greeted him. Elizabeth has virtually no financial income and looks after six orphans. The children occasionally make some little money, in kind, by scaring monkeys and birds away from other people’s gardens.
Earlier in the year, Elizabeth had missed out on the chance of benefiting from the construction of houses done at that time. One day, very early one morning (about 6.00am) she went to Emma’s home, quite un usual, and after taking breakfast, she said, “Manueri (Emma) my son, I am humbly requesting that should there be another opportunity for houses, do kindly consider me along side other fellow widows!”. This left Emma so touched and the “special greetings after Sunday fellowship this time seemed to have been a reminder about the plea.”
The next day, the Village Council met and selected five zones out of seven’ chose the beneficiaries and forwarded the five chosen families to the village zonal committees. This time round, Elizabeth was the lucky beneficiary after the committee of Pakamalungi, village zone where she resides picked on her. Elizabeth was overwhelmed by joy that she sang Christian songs traversing the whole village, door to door!
At the time of writing this story, Elizabeth’s house is ready for roofing with tin sheets, this will be accomplished within the week and mudding will start and hopefully by end of October Elizabeth will be in her new house! Thanks to Village Partners International for lobbying for the houses for Elizabeth and four other four widows.
— Emmanuel Ofumbi
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