About 10 years ago, newborn twins were
delivered to the Rev. Peter Ndungu in Nairobi, Kenya. The children had been
abandoned, left to the elements in a plastic bag.
Now, 10 years later, Ndungu is the
director of the nonprofit Happy Life Children's Home in Kenya, which houses more
than 60 abandoned children, mostly infants, in need of families.
Ndungu will speak from the pulpit Sunday
about his mission at Lakewood Village Community Church, 4515 Sunfield Ave., at
8:30 a.m. services. Afterward, at 10a.m., he will show a video and answer
questions.
This is Ndungu's second visit to the Long
Beach church. He and his organization came to the attention of church leaders,
and last summer the Lakewood Village church's retired pastor, the Rev. Richard
Irving, and his family visited the orphanage.
Ndungu tries to make trips to the United
States yearly. His wife, Faith, is accompanying him on this journey.
Patricia Sanders, director of World
Service and Missions at the church, said she and the congregants were touched by
the plight and the depth of need of the Kenyan children.
"They're not just orphans, they're
abandoned babies," Sanders said.
The Lakewood church uses 10 percent of the
money received from congregants to fund about 16 organizations. Most are local,
but Happy Life Children's Home is one of three international organizations
supported.
So touched are the Lakewood Village
congregants, they agreed to
Ndungu said abandonment was uncommon when
the twins, who have since been adopted by a Delaware family, were delivered. It
is troubling that the trend has grown, and according to Ndungu's group, has
reached crisis proportions in his home country.
When Ndungu got into ministering and
evangelism at 17, the pastor, now 43, said he never envisioned his current
life's path.
"It's been a progression of one thing to
another," he said. "It's not like I thought I'd do this. I just kept growing and
growing into it."
And when he saw the plight of street
children, the need to save them became even more apparent. As did his life's
purpose.
"Some children are adopted into the
streets," Ndungu said, and invariably led into lives of crime and often
substance abuse.
Since taking in the twins, Happy Life
Children's Home has grown slowly and carefully.
With the backing of the Heritage
Presbyterian Church in Delaware, the orphanage has become registered as a
nonprofit in the United States.
In Kenya, it is registered under Ndungu's
Overcoming Faith Ministries.
In an age when some orphanages have been
accused of being little more than baby mills, Happy Life Children's Home tries
to dispel that notion.
The home takes in mostly abandoned babies
with no known family. The first priority is to adopt children to Kenyan
families, for whom the cost is about 10 to 20 percent of foreign adoptions.
While about 85 percent of the early babies taken in by Happy Life were adopted
internationally, now Ndungu says 80 percent have homes in Kenya.
Ndungu says to prevent child trafficking,
the Kenyan government requires adoptive parents to spend six months in Kenya
prior to adoption and the process can take a year or more. The cost, he said,
ranges between $7,000 and $12,000, depending on where the adoptive family
chooses to live.
Happy Life has adopted out 25 children and
more than 40 are in the process.
Not all children will be adopted, and
Ndungu says Happy Life is now housing older children in an arrangement akin to
foster living, with schooling. The church oversees both.
Ndungu says his church does what it can to
make the operation self-sustaining, but still needs considerable donations.
"Even with all the challenges we go
through, it's rewarding and quite encouraging for us," Ndungu says.
That's especially true when he catches up
with children such as the twin boys, who are now 10 and thriving, according to
Ndungu.
On Sunday, he said his message will be
simple.
"I try to open eyes to see from a global
point of view," Ndungu says.
Ndungu says the Christian belief of
treating one's neighbor as oneself isn't just a local concept.
"Sometimes he might not be next door, he
may be in China or somewhere else," Ndungu says.
For more information about the home in
Kenya, visit www.happylifechildrenhome.com.