Our Friends in Kenya
Clive and Mary Beckenham (pictured), British Assemblies of God missionaries, arrived in Kenya in 1989 with two of their teenage children, Wesley and Rachael. They came initially for a two-year assignment at a Bible
College but with the overall plan to develop a Christian humanitarian response to the overwhelming needs of Kenya. Through the fledgling work named "BARNABAS MINISTRIES Africa" they began to investigate the needs of Kenya amongst the poor, particularly the children, and within a short time began educational sponsorship for children of primary school age. Nursery and pre-schools sponsorship followed in rural areas as well as feeding programmes for AIDS orphans and nomadic children.
In 1992, through reading a Sunday feature in a local newspaper, Clive and Mary and their daughter Rachael became aware of the plight of the abandoned and orphaned babies of Kenya, particularly those born HIV positive. Babies were dying in Kenya's hospitals and clinics and on the streets, discarded as rubbish amongst the garbage of the city or drowned in the city's sewers.
They learned that children's homes often refused to accept an infant if it was thought to be HIV positive lest it pass on the pandemic to other children. Hence babies were being left in medical facilities, lying on rubber mattresses two or three to a cot with only a cloth to cover them to pass the final days of their life with the minimum of care and compassion.
In 1994 New Life Home Trust was born with the opening of the first home in the Loresho suburb of Nairobi. In 1999 the home moved to the Kilimani suburb on Lenana Road. Now there are five homes and centres: two in Nairobi, one in Kisumu (in western Kenya, on the shores of Lake Victoria); and two on the Indian Ocean, Island of Lamu (off the Kenyan northern coast, near Somalia)
It is the Trusts dream to open further satellite homes in Kakamega, Kitui, Meru, Mombasa, Nanyuki and Nyeri to link with main home and offices in Nairobi