New Scholarship student goes from not attending school at all to earning fourth place in her class!

New Scholarship student goes from not attending school at all to earning fourth place in her class!

Well done, little one! Your school career is off to a great start!

On Saturday we went to the end-of-year program at the school that our boys attended this year. After some singing, dancing and a skit, the top ten students in each grade (1st through 6th grades) were called forward to receive a prize. When I heard the name of a certain six-year-old girl called, my heart burst with joy! This first-grader had not been to school before, never having attended preschool or kindergarten. Over the summer we had talked to her father, encouraging him to put his two young daughters in the church school and letting him know that the Kaffrine Scholarship Project could pay the $12 monthly tuition as well as the registration fee and the cost of their uniforms and school supplies.  

Our SIM Kaffrine Team began this Scholarship Project in 2007 when some mature Wolof Christian leaders from another region of Senegal encouraged us to invest in the children and young people in the small Christian community here. Many families can’t afford to pay for their children to attend school, particularly a private school where the teachers don’t go on strike and the students can get a good education. So we launched this project which has helped over two dozen young people at different points in their education, from preschool all the way to university or job training programs. We have seen the short-term impact already, and now that the project has been running for twelve years, we are beginning to see glimpses of the long-term impact as students graduate, get jobs, and choose to serve the Lord as adults.  

We are so grateful to all of you who have given money towards the Scholarship Project. Our young friend who came in fourth in her class this year thanks you for the opportunity to go to school! I am praying that she will go far!

If you would like to help these young people through the Kaffrine Scholarship Project, you can give here. Your prayers and gifts make a big difference!

Praises and Prayer Requests

  • It has been a very busy six weeks – we were able to go to Guinea to pick up the boys and have been getting to know each other and connecting as a family since then! We know many of you were following on Facebook and praying with us; we were so busy with the boys we weren’t able to get a real Prayer Log update out til now. We are so thankful for how well Will and Jake are adapting to all the change. Every day they learn so many new things – new foods, new words, new games, new rules, new relationships, new experiences! They are kind and sweet and playful and tough and so small and tenderhearted. Their hunger to love and be loved almost breaks my heart as I know they have been missing this kind of family connection for years now. Thank you for your prayers. Continue to pray for the Lord to knit us together as a family of seven!
  • We still have not been granted a visa interview appointment by the US Embassy in Dakar. Online we just saw today that the Embassy has marked our case “Ready” (There’s a tracking number so we can check on the status of our case, just like you check on the status of a package) but it also says to wait to get an email from them with an appointment date and time. Please continue to pray that we will get an appointment soon and that the Embassy will grant our boys’ visas with no problems. We are so ready for this long bureaucratic process to finally be over!
  • Continue to pray for our team’s work in the two “new” villages, specifically that the Lord will draw us into relationships with the people He wants to call to Himself and that He will prepare people’s hearts so they will want to read the Bible for the first time.
  • As God allowed His disciples to perform miracles and healings to confirm the preaching of the Gospel many times in the New Testament, in the same way, pray for the villagers to see the Lord answer the prayers we pray for them in Jesus’ name to confirm that what we are teaching about Jesus is true. One of the couples who have been the most welcoming just had their 5th miscarriage even though we prayed for them to not lose this baby. Pray for God to show them His power and His love and to give them a healthy child. Pray too for those who are sick, that Jesus will heal.
  • On Friday (June 1st) our team is going to a different village where a Senegalese brother from the church here has been doing Kids’ Clubs with games and Bible stories every week. We are helping him and Pasteur give Samaritan’s Purse shoebox gifts to the children and show the new version of the Jesus film in Wolof on an outdoor screen with a projector run by generator. Pray for this village too and for the seeds that have been sown there over the last year-plus to bear much fruit. Pray that there will not be any technical difficulties with our new sound system and that people will come, watch, understand, and be drawn to Jesus.