This past month has been heavily inundated with football. We finished the primary school tournaments on Wednesday, then closed the school term on Thursday and then I left for a short vacation on Friday. I was able to drive a group of eight missionary friends from various parts of Kenya to Uganda to raft the Nile over the weekend. WE arrived back in Nairobi on Sunday night. This week I will be staying in Nairobi as I watch the Kenya National Secondary School Basketball Championships.
2010 is a historic year for CGA as our first graduates will sit their secondary school national exams in October/December. Many of these sixteen students were in CGA's first 
Nursery class back in 1997 and with the support of their sponsors, CGA has helped to see them all the way through their primary school and secondary school education. A few weeks back two of these "Form 4's" called me up and asked if I could come to the parent's day at their boarding school. I don't usually come on those days because we want to encourage their guardians to take the parenting responsibility, but this time they insisted. "Rose" began at CGA in the first class in 1997 as a total orphan under the care of a distant relative. She has had many obstacles throughout her education without much support from home and with the burden of many responsibilities in her family, but she has continued to persevere. During the parents day I was able to meet with all of her subject teachers and see her recent performance. She has really been improving and has climbed into the top ten in her school out of over sixty students. By the end of the term she reached the top five. If she continues that upward trend and God provides a way, she would like to study architecture after secondary school.
Nursery class back in 1997 and with the support of their sponsors, CGA has helped to see them all the way through their primary school and secondary school education. A few weeks back two of these "Form 4's" called me up and asked if I could come to the parent's day at their boarding school. I don't usually come on those days because we want to encourage their guardians to take the parenting responsibility, but this time they insisted. "Rose" began at CGA in the first class in 1997 as a total orphan under the care of a distant relative. She has had many obstacles throughout her education without much support from home and with the burden of many responsibilities in her family, but she has continued to persevere. During the parents day I was able to meet with all of her subject teachers and see her recent performance. She has really been improving and has climbed into the top ten in her school out of over sixty students. By the end of the term she reached the top five. If she continues that upward trend and God provides a way, she would like to study architecture after secondary school."Alice" is not an orphan, but is in a very difficult situation. She had come to CGA in 2nd grade even through her family lives on a neigboring island. Her father is a polygamist and had abandoned her mother several years ago to be with his other wives. He still has contact with his children, but says his only role in their lives is to give them a little money a couple times a year. The mother resorted to brewing and selling illicit brew to provide for her family, but after many run-ins with the police she finally abandoned her family to go somewhere else for a fresh start. The children were left in the care of the elderly grandmother. Alice says that without the support of CGA she would have never reached the level of education she has reached and would have remained very bitter towards her parents. Her goal is a B on her national exam so that she can pursue her dream of being a nurse. Everyone one of the sixteen Form 4's has a different story and it is exciting to see God at work in their lives. To look at where they have come from and where they are going.
Our girls' football club captured the Coca Cola Regional Championship in Homa Bay, we dove head first into the primary school ball-games schedule. It works like an all-star selection because you start at the school level with tournaments and then the best players are selected to proceed to the next level. Usually there is 1-2 days between tournament to train with your new team and prepare for the next level. Through all the levels (pre-base, base, zonal, divisional, district, regional and provencial) we were fortunate to win all twenty matches that we played up until the Provencial Final. Our regional team was made up of ten Suba Laker Football Club Girls and six others from various parts of our region. We reached the finals undefeated (and untied) and had already beaten our opponent in the preliminaries. They played a tough match and didn't allow us to score even though we had multiple chances. Eventually it went to post-match penalty kicks where we lost 4-3. Fortunately four of our girls were selected for Nationals, including a CGA student for the third straight year. Adah Sharon Awuor will be the goalkeeper at the N
ational Tournament.
ational Tournament. Prayer Requests:
1) Pray that my short time away from Mbita would be spiritually and physically refreshing
2) Pray for the students and staff at CGA to refocus themselves during this school breaks so that they return in Term 2 with renewed passion and energy to carry out God's calling in their lives.
3) Pray for our Form 4's in secondary school as they study and prepare for their National Exams later this year.
4) Pray for our Suba Lakers Girls Football Club to continue to positively impact the lives of these girls off the field in every area of their lives.
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