Bees in Kenya

Sunday, March 31, 2024

I'm excited that I've been chosen to participate in the Athletes in Action Path To Paris Olympic Project. Being at the Paris Olympics is a great honor, but more importantly, it is an opportunity to serve and minister to the elite athletes, coaches, and officials from my country and the many others who are there. They will then take the gospel, the Bibles, and other ministry resources back home with them and to their family and friends.

I plan to start reaching out to them now so that I can begin building a relationship with them before they become focused on their competition and security gets much more challenging to meet with them.

Will you join me in prayer and ask God if He is leading you to join my financial support team? I'll have to pay for my visa application, flights, and local accommodations. You can use this secure Cru Give page to help me cover these expenses.

https://give.cru.org/1240800

You can also donate on our website: https://www.paypal.com/donate/ with the memo "David support to Paris Olympic."

Your gift will go directly into an account I have set up. Thank you so much for your prayers and consideration. God bless David Cheromei.

Monday, November 21, 2022

Thanksgiving!

Greetings from Grace Family in Cheptigit, Kenya,

We celebrate Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, but for this past month and a half, our community has been thankful for the gift of water in their homes. As a result, their hearts have been softened and ready to hear about the Good News of Jesus in the revivals that have taken place in the various villages in our community! Praise the Lord!

God sent the us, Cheromei family, back to Kenya in August 2022, and David was ordained to be a pastor July 2022! David shared with the church on Sunday the verses God gave him to focus on for this new season of pastorship at Grace Family Fellowship:

Isaiah 61:1

The Spirit of the Lord and King is on me.
    The Lord has anointed me
    to announce good news to poor people.
He has sent me to comfort
    those whose hearts have been broken.
He has sent me to announce freedom
    for those who have been captured.
He wants me to set prisoners free
    from their dark cells.

Will you continue to partner with us as we follow this calling for our family? We appreciate your support and prayers as the Lord has sent us to help Grace family, our church, our community and wherever we can encourage others with God’s Truth and Jesus’ Saving Grace for all! Financially it would help for our Cheromei family to be supported around $400 a month.

It has taken us around 4 months to compose an email to you because of all of the brokenness and arguments we faced when we first arrived. Grace Family Fellowship was divided, Grace Family Educational Centre students were leaving because of the stress of fees, and Grace Family Children’s Centre needed structure and family unity. A lot of prayers, discussions, reunification, apologies, clarification and humbling has taken place with God as our guide and strength.

David has been teaching in the church (Grace Family Fellowship) how our personal relationship with God helps us to come together as the body of Christ and work together in ministry. We had a town hall type meeting with the church members when we first arrived in August to discuss all of the gossip, hurts and struggles they had experienced. It was a healing process for everything to get out in the open.

Grace Family Educational Centre has been hit hard with students needing to move to a public school because, even though our fees are low for a private school, we still have to pay our teachers and feed the children 10 am porridge and lunch. With the job shortage and the economy in Kenya, the families in the Cheptigit area find it very challenging to meet our school fees of $55 for each term (3 months of school) or $165 per year. We could lower the overall fees for our community children if we got sponsors for our great team of teachers. Would you consider helping to pay the teachers’ salaries? We are looking at $150-$200 a month to sponsor a teacher. Whatever you can give to help our school would be so greatly appreciated! We would love for more children in our community to join our school to get the quality education and Bible teaching.

Grace Family Children’s Centre currently houses Mercy Jerop, Moses Kipkoech and Paul Korir as well as our staff. We are thankful for the work of the staff in caring and guiding the children. We had to have some staff meetings since returning so that we could all be on the same page of how to raise the children and help them grow into the people God created them to be. Chores and job duty lists were reintroduced, and now we are getting back into a better groove of caring for the big house and each other. During breaks, we see Dennis, who is finishing up his senior year, Timothy and Victor Kirwa, who are juniors in high school, and Paul and Gideon, who are sophomores. We are still catching up on all the older children (now young adults of Grace Family). We thank you for your help and prayers for each of the children God brought to Grace Family for however long or short they were with us. There have been heart breaks and heart praises at different times. May God continue to provide for the children with us and those being sponsored in school.

We had some fun teams join us for God’s work. In October, Tom, Jackie, Shelia and Greg from Roanoke joined us and our community with laying more pipes for clean water in Cheptigit and the surrounding area, donating their time, lab equipment, baby clothes and baby porridge to our local health clinic, building a water tower on the property, and moving and rebuilding the playground closer to the school! God provided great weather, strength and health, encouraging conversations which lead some to Jesus, and teamwork to get the projects accomplished. Can you imagine getting clean water straight to your home instead of having to walk to a river or well in the area? This project of laying pipes has been a huge undertaking but with God leading the project, it has been wisely done to make the best use of the pipes that were donated by the Roanoke team, the Uasin Gishu county and fundraising in the villages. David was inspired to have revivals in each of the villages that the Roanoke and water project team visited to continue to awaken souls to the Lord and His work in all of our lives!

As this is written, Donna and Abbey are with us for one more day, and we have enjoyed fun art projects with the kids, lots of card and board games, fellowship with church members and uplifting conversations. I love how God brings the body of Christ together to do different work according to how He has made each of us.

The church building has been on pause since the fundraising for the roofing and the intense labor in getting the roof in place before the rainy season! Thank you for your generous support and prayers for God’s house.

It is now time for our next phases of fundraising:

CHURCH CONSTRUCTION QUOTATIONS

PHASE 4-SLAB

Marram@$480

Sand@1,680

Ballast@$2,100

Cement@$1,600

Black Tarp@$120

Mixer/vibrator rental@$100

Labor@$1,000

Sub Total: $7,080

PHASE 5-WALLS

Cement@800

Stone (Machine cut) @$4,000

Sand@$750

Hoop Iron@$100

D8 Rebar@$320

R8 Rebar@$200

Labor@1,000

Sub Total: $7,170

Total: $14,250

Yes, this was a lot to take in! We thank you for your patience in reading through our updates and your generosity and help with the ministries God has given us here in Cheptigit, Kenya. At times we are overwhelmed with all God has given us to do. We thank you for partnering with us as a mission team, financially and through powerful prayer!

Happy Thanksgiving, David and Laurel for Grace Family Ministries

Here is the donation link: Donate or http://www.graceofgodchildren.org/give/

Or send checks to:

GOGCP

C/O Jill Moore

6498 Van Ness Dr.

Viera, FL 32940

Saturday, February 12, 2022

Church Building

Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

God continues to do great things in Kaptagat, Kenya. As most of you know we are currently in the process of building a church since June 2021. We divided the construction of the church into 6 Phases as follows:

1. 1st Phase: Ground breaking/Foundation(completed)

2. 2nd Phase: Pillars(completed)

3. 3rd Phase: Roofing( in progress)

4. 4th Phase: Slab and Walls

5. 5th Phase: Flooring

6. 6th Phase: Finishing-Painting, chairs, etc.

We are currently focusing on roofing as our 3rd phase and we have a mini fundraising drive this week. As you know roofing is important to help get the foundation protected from the weather and we would appreciate your help with this! “The Lord will accomplish what concerns me. Your lovingkindness, O Lord, is everlasting; Do not forsake the work of Your hands.” Psalm 138:8

We are in need of the following as of 2/12/2022 to complete the roofing:

· Meters iron sheet/metal roof: 60 pcs@$45=$2700

· 8 Meters iron sheet/metal roof: 85 pcs@$40=$3400

· Ridges (30pieces), Plain sheet(22 Meters), Iron nails(40 KG), and rubbers(40 packets)=$400

Total amount: $6500

You can make your contribution by clicking HERE

You can read more information on our website and can make online contribution through

http://www.graceofgodchildren.org/give/

You can also mail a check to (recommended):

Grace God Children’s Project

191 Rocky Hollow Road

Atkins, VA 24311

Here is the video we sent out, take a look and see what God is doing in Kenya:

https://youtu.be/SQuHF7XowgA ( What’s needed)

https://youtu.be/K5fA4NyGtE8 (updates)

Thank for your generosity and support, David and Laurel

Friday, December 24, 2021

Change is coming

Dearest “Though the seasons change, your love remains,” this song by United Pursuit has been running through my head and encouraging my heart recently. We have been in America since the end of June after some intense ministry years in Kenya and we were supposed to return in a few weeks as per our itinerary. God had other plans for our family as He always does. Our kid’s passports expired while we were in Kenya, and we came back and send them in for renewal. It looks like it going to take a long time to be processed due to everything being behind due to COVID-19. The Lord has now led us to a new season and time to focus on the family. David started working at Mt. Rogers Community Service Board in Marion, VA as a Youth Case Manager. This is the same job he had when Lily and Levi were wee ones and we were living in Damascus, VA. God has placed staff and leaders in Kenya to help Grace Family, the school (Grace Family Educational Centre), and the church (Grace Family Fellowship) while we are in more of a support role as we live in America. As we shared with you earlier Hillary graduated college and is now working at a place where paints chemicals are mixed and made. Christine is in classes trying to improve her grades for retaking high school exams to one day join nursing college. Sharon Jelagat is in Nairobi at a university studying Banking and Finance. Vincent, Ian, and Winnie Kiptoo completed high school and are still trying to figure out what they want to do next as they stay with family or relatives. Winnie Awino, Naomi, and Brenda are seniors, Dennis is a junior, Timothy and Victor Kirwa are sophomores while Gideon is a freshman in high school. Please keep them in your prayers that they would persevere, have faith, and finish well. Allan Kipchumba is in grade 6, Mercy Jerop is in grade 5 and Moses is in Grade 2. I can’t believe how much everyone has grown and been supported through the years by you! Thank you for helping them through prayers, financial support, and love for them when you visit or connect! We will send out another e-mail sometime soon concerning Grace’s Family needs and prayer. We just wanted to update you of our changes. God bless and talk to you soon