THE HOPE UNLIMITED STORY
Why a Dallas Church is Changing Lives in East Africa
The Njuthine Mission
This unlikely story turns on two men whose adult lives continue to bless their dot of a hometown in Central Kenya. Cyprian Guchienda was a pastor earning advanced divinity degrees at SMU in Dallas. Protasio Mbui was a boyhood friend, now a renowned city planner in Nairobi, still helping their hometown of Njuthine.
One Sunday Cyprian walked from SMU to a service at Highland Park Presbyterian Church, HPPC, and he kept coming, and he made friends. In those days some 20,000 Kenyans lived in Dallas and many had no church home. HPPC hired Cyprian and asked him to start a congregation for African immigrants.
The Energy Was Palpable
At first mostly Kenyans came, but as other Africans nationals joined the congregation became— “All Nations Church”. 325 immigrants filled HPPC’s Sunday Chapel Service in a dialect of Swahili and English. The energy was palpable. So was the joy. Everyone was invited to the traditional church service, but the transplanted Africans were excited to be together and worship in their own tongue. In time, starting with the children, more Africans began to attend regular services, a milestone for both groups.
Water, Medicine, and School
In Africa, water is always an issue. HPPC learned that the Njuthine women made four-mile round-trip walks to the river twice a day, trying to meet their family’s needs for water. They desperately needed to cultivate gardens for food but could not carry enough water, so a group of women decided to dig a two-mile trench from the river. A few had shovels and pickaxes. Most dug with spoons and mixing bowls. They quickly hit rock.
Coming Together
Someone from the village called Protasio, and Protasio called Cyprian. Cyprian talked to HPPC, which gathered the funds to pay an engineering firm to blast the rock. The engineers brought the pipe, laid the path, and kept it straight; the entire village helped dig. And one day the water flowed, and things began to change. The villagers as enough to eat and some left to sell and barter.
The support from HPPC continued. The local primary school was upgraded, and a medical clinic was built, providing the first medical care ever in the village. Protasio secured professional firms to plan and supervise the work. The villagers provided most of the labor. When projects were completed the villagers, with Portasio’s help, organized groups to maintain each project.
Irrigated gardens provided plenty of food, water was available without the long walk, and medical care was convenient for the first time. After years of desperation, the people found hope. And hope changes everything.
HOPE UNLIMITED
Changing Worlds in Njuthine, Kenya
Projects & Possibilities
The dollars you give to ensure water, to prevent and treat disease, to equip schools and make education possible…are converting despair to hope. And your dollars are not diluted by fees, middlemen, or salaries. Every dollar goes directly to the project you want to support.
Health Care: Clean Water and Prevention
Clean water is vital for health. It saves lives and changes futures. Njuthine’s two big killers are 1) malaria, from mosquitos and 2) parasites, almost all from contaminated water. Across Africa, a million people die each year from malaria, a child dies from malaria every minute. Of all malaria deaths, 78% are children under 5 years of age. And the people who don’t succumb to malaria are robbed of energy and strength to work. Since 2010 the clinic in Njuthine has provided medicines for malaria and parasites, as well as other common diseases. The health status of the community has improved dramatically.
As prevalence of water-borne diseases falls, malaria loses its death grip. With water to grow vegetables and raise animals people gain hope, energy, and initiative.
*Monthly Medicine Budget: $3,000 — Medicines are essential to treat malaria, parasite diseases and the other common conditions found in that area. With the people of Njuthine returning to the clinic after the pandemic and those from 5 other villages walking to the clinic, the need for medicines is great.
*Clinic Upgrades: $10,000 — To upgrade the clinic to a Health Center which is equipped to provide prenatal care, labor and delivery and early childhood care, the Kenyan government requires a room dedicated to labor and delivery, round the clock nurses, laundry, septic system, clean water, electricity, and the equipment to operate the facility properly. Birth complications kill or disable many women. At present these vital services are not available in Njuthine. When the clinic is upgraded to a Health Center, women will not have to deliver babies at home.
*Electrification of Nurses Quarters: $5,000 — Two duplexes are built and stand unfinished. At present, nurses walk in every day, some from 2 hours away, missing part of the workday. When electricity is added, the duplexes will house nurses and their families making it possible to provide round-the-clock care, necessary for labor and delivery.
Education: Sending More Children Further
Njuthine’s original primary school was a shell with dirt floors, no furniture, limited facilities and almost no teaching materials. With support from HPPC, cement floors, desks, chairs, blackboards, workbooks, a library, computers granting the principal and teachers global access, and daily hot lunches were added. Attendance increased sharply, qualifications for secondary school rose steadily, and morale among teachers and students improved dramatically.
Secondary School is life changing.
Before the Njuthine mission started, no child from the primary school had qualified for secondary school in more than 15 years. (In Kenya, a student must qualify for secondary school and pay the expenses.)
The second year after improvements in the school 3 students qualified for secondary school.
The next year, 5 qualified, the next 8 qualified and in a few years almost every student qualified. Of the original three qualifiers, two now have university degrees.
Goal: $12,000 per year for the Njuthine scholarship program
Clean Water: Wells and Purification Systems
Good health requires clean water. In this area where there are two dry seasons, irrigation is vital for growing an adequate supply of vegetables. Impure drinking water results in poor health. Insufficient irrigation causes inadequate food supply. Recent droughts have reduced the water level in the river causing the flow in the pipeline to slow to a trickle. Women are back to spending their days walking four-mile round trips twice a day to carry water and irrigation is not adequate for growing vegetables.
Drilling wells to supply clean water requires information about well locations and the depth of the local water table. The people were anxious to help and raised $540 of their own money to pay a geologist to gather the needed information. Five wells and water purification facilities to provide clean water in abundant quantities is the goal.
Three water wells: $210,000. It is impossible to overstate the difference 5 wells can make the health and prosperity of this community.
Water purification system: To be determined.
Economic Development
Pipes and irrigation can produce a surplus of vegetables to sell and support farm animals, raising the community up from subsistence farming. Cell phone service and electricity in Njuthine will make economic development more feasible. With funding, Hope Unlimited can help the people create a local economy producing food crops, dairy cattle, chickens, and craft projects to sell—business activity that will change life in the community and surrounding villages forever.
Economic development and micro finance budget: To be determined.