Saturday, May 2, 2009

A 4 YEAR OLD PRISONER...FREED !!

Meet Augustine...
He's 4 years old.
His mom is in a Kenyan prison for life.
She is a murderess.
Augustine was born in jail and has lived every day of his life in prison.
By Kenya law, a child of a female inmate may stay with his mother until age 4.
So Augustine has lived his entire life inside the walls of Kitale Prison.

Until a few weeks ago...when Augustine turned 4...everything in his world was women and prison.
It's all he has ever known...
The inmates...all women...
The guards...all women...
The staff...all women...
It's all he's ever known
Enter Jana O'Guin, a woman who has served faithfully in Kenya and Ukraine for many years, on many teams.
One day, as she was teaching a step group of Celebrate Recovery in the Kitale Prison, one of the inmates walked up to Jana and handed her child, baby Augustine, to her...
She wasn't saying, 'please hold my child' or 'please comfort my crying child', she was saying 'TAKE MY CHILD'
Through the last months, with alot of time and effort and concern, Jana has arranged for baby Augustine to live and be cared for and educated at Purpose Driven Academy...a ministry of Deliverance Church, in Kitale, Kenya...a school of 500+ kids run by Margaret Wanyonyi.

I had the wonderful opportunity to be at PD Academy with Margaret, the day that baby Augustine went from living behind bars and barbed-wire and brick walls...to living with nurturing and caring teachers and 500 new siblings...

As the transition was taking place, Augustine's lips were quivering...he was looking around the room for ONE familiar face...but there wasn't one...tears were welling up in his chocolate eyes.

But by the end of that day, Augustine was already settling into a new world...laughing and running and loving his new school uniform.

  • Please pray for Augustine as he begins this new chapter in his life
  • Please pray for his pre kindergarden teacher
  • Please pray for the foster parents...Pastor Joel and his family...who have lovingly taken baby Augustine into their home
  • Pray for more advocates like Jana O'Guin
  • And please...please pray for a young mom,  sitting in a prison cell in Kenya, who is feeling very much alone tonight.

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