WayMaker
Making A Way
The Goodness of God
Dear WayMaker Friends, Partners and Sponsors,
First of all, let me thank you for being a committed supporter of WayMaker be it in prayer, with financial support or encouragement. THANK YOU!
Following my diagnosis of Stage 4 Bowel Cancer at the start of this year, it would be easy to assume that the year has been overshadowed by cancer, it’s metastasis to my liver, the two rounds of chemo, two operations, and many scans and procedures. However, that is not the case. The year has been an overwhelming testimony to the goodness of God, not just in my life and with my health and recovery, but with His incredible financial provision to WayMaker which has allowed us to continue making a way where there is no way for so many.
I wanted to take some time to summarise what has been accomplished in 2023, what we expect to happen by the end of the year, as well as what we are dreaming with Father about for 2024 and beyond.
A Review of 2023
We gave away over £200,000 to projects and people in the financial year July 2022 - June 2023
A Secondary School in Kitwe Zambia
In September 2022, a little over a year ago, we agreed with Joseph Mwila in Zambia, the Zambian Ministry for Education and the local member of parliament for Kitwe that we should build a Secondary School to complement the already incredible accomplishments of the Primary and Pre-School we had built before WayMaker was founded.
We began fundraising and raised £105,000 in just 8 weeks allowing us to begin development on the first phase in November 2022. Phase 1 would give us enough classrooms for the children coming up from Primary School and allow us time to raise the additional funds to complete Phase-2 over the coming two years.
However, in the goodness of God, in early 2023, we were able to raise the remaining £45,000 for Phase-2 meaning that we could keep the contractors and builders on, keeping a better rate, and the whole school will be operational in January 2024 for the start of their academic year.
Equipment for 2 Secondary School Classes
It was apparent that the DaySpring Academy Secondary School would be complete and ready to be opened at the start of the Academic Year which in Zambia is January. However, there was no equipment in the school, and whilst plans were progressing to collect equipment and send a 40-foot container, that would be arriving until after easter at the earliest.
As a result, WayMaker was able to provide the finances to allow the school to purchase the equipment locally to set up the two classes that they need for the start of the school year with the remaining rooms being furnished when the container arrives.
WayMaker Africa
WayMaker Africa NGO and Charity
To increase our influence in Zambia, and Africa in general, it was advantageous to set up a sister WayMaker organisation, an NGO (Non-Government Organisation), in Zambia and we hope by the end of this year that this will be recognised as a PBO (Public Benefit Organisation) which is what we would understand as a charity.
The Directors of WayMaker Africa are WayMaker International (UK), Goodson Kaluba and Joseph Mwila and it is officially, and legally, called the same as it is in the UK – WayMaker International, but we affectionately call it WayMaker Africa.
We have also designed and developed a separate website too – www.waymaker.africa.
WayMaker Africa Employee
As a direct result of my diagnosis, the WayMaker Trustees agreed to employ, part-time, a wonderful, godly pastor and capable businessman, Goodson Kaluba, who would, in my absence, look after the affairs of WayMaker Africa.
He is entirely responsible for the creation of WayMaker Africa, its company registration, its application for charity status, setting up bank accounts and working through all of the official red tape that are necessary for setting up a not-for-profit in Zambia. We really need to see Goodson employed full time but at the very least to see him on an appropriate salary for the work he is carrying out. (See hopes for 2024)
Trained Foundations for Farming Trainer
As part of our vision to help combat the effects of climate change on subsistence farmers, address the lack of clean drinking water, help relieve poverty, share the gospel and plant churches we have developed an initiative to go to very rural areas of Zambia, approach the chief, and ask if we can sink a borehole for them, train their farmers in Foundations For Farming (Formally Farming Gods Way) to allow them to maximise their crops (We also provide the seed and fertiliser for their first crop. We then have a crusade, share Jesus with them and then because of all the benefit to the community we ask the chief for some land to build a little chapel.
In preparation for this WayMaker sent Goodson to Zimbabwe to become a trainer in Foundations for Farming so he can officially train these subsistence farmers as part of this initiative.
We estimate that the cost of each initiative, essentially to plant a self-sustaining church, is £10,000. We hope to take it as one of our first initiatives in 2024.
Church Planting and Buildings
3 Church Buildings
Working with UK funding partners such as, Lifespring, in Horsham, WayMaker has funded 3 church-building projects in Kenya.
One build was a relocation of a church in the slums of Nairobi that I have been working with for many years. Their Pastor, Kevin Onyango, is an apostolic leader overseeing about 10 other churches and he has brought those churches into ChristCentral, under my and Joseph Mwila’s apostolic oversight.
2 Church Plants
The other two Church Buildings were, and are, for brand new church plants.
In Partnership with Wycliffe Abuko, and a church planter working with Joseph Mwila, we funded a plant on the outside of Nairobi, which now has a pastor and a growing congregation of 20 or more which was again funded in partnership with Lifespring.
The other plant is a brand-new one by Pastor Kevin from Nairobi in a place called Kalimindi in the west of Kenya, near Lake Victoria. WayMaker has funded the initial deposit on the land purchase and Kevin and his churches have funded the building materials for the construction. We are currently in discussion with Lifespring again to see if they would like to partner with their international building fund for the remaining £3,500 needed to complete the land purchase.
Reaching a Nation
Kenyan Pastor & Church Planter Funded
For the second year WayMaker, through the kind and sacrificial giving of donors, have been able to pay the salary for Kevin Onyango, the pastor I mentioned earlier who already oversees 10 churches, but is also a prolific church planter.
Kevin is building and planting a new church in a place called Kalimindi and has planted 8 other churches and oversees 11 more.
Churches Kevin Has Planted:
Location: 2001 Tanzania
Pastor: Pst Joshua Okidi
Location: Nairobi 2019
Pastor: Dominic Onyango
Location: Tanzania Mwanza:2018
Pastor: Emanuel Otieno
Location: Kenya, 2016
Pastor: Ezekiel Mwendwa
Location: Kenya, Kaloleni 2007
Pastor: Joshua
Location: Kabiria, Nairobi
Pastor: Kevin Onyango
Location: Kenya, kinoo. 2018
Pastor: Japheth
Location: Kenya, South nyanza;2005
Pastor:Ben
Location: Kiambu, Kenya
Pastor: Christopher
Location: Kenya, Rift Valley
Pastor: Kemboi
Churches Kevin Oversees:
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Pastor: Caleb
Location: Kenya
Pastor: Shadrach
Location: Kenya
Pastor: Meshack
Location: Kenya
Pastor: Gilbert
Location: Burundi
Pastor: Jeanclaude
Location: Rwanda
Pastor: Emanuel
Location: Kenya
Pastor: Elias
Weekly Radio Show to 400,000 in the Slums of Nairobi
When I was in Nairobi this time last year I had the pleasure of doing a live radio show on the Sunday Morning before preaching in church. I had provided pre-recorded sermons to be played before but doing it live, with phone/text in, to 400,000 of the poorest people in Nairobi was a humbling experience.
Pastor Kevin did the show periodically when he could raise the funds, which was of course infrequent and sporadic. I felt that this gospel opportunity was too good to not do something regularly and so after negotiating a deal with the radio station we were able to find a wonderful donor who was willing to sponsor the show on an ongoing basis. Kevin now shares the gospel every week with over 400,000 listeners.
Help us plant churches and reach the lost
We would love you to partner with us and give monthly into our general funds that allow us to employ apostolic leaders to reach the lost through things like this radio show and plant many churches as Kevin has in Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.
You can give as little as £5/month as an individual, £50/month as a church or £100 as a company or organisation.
WayMaker secured a £1,000 grant to help Kenya flood victims, but more is needed
The form is not published.
1 Church Pastor & 4 Church Members Dead, 3 Pastors hospitalised
Three pastors in some of the churches in Kenya working with ChristCentral and WayMaker Supports, have been hospitalised due to being in the flood water too long trying to rescue others. One other pastor has died along with 4 church members doing the same.
Many of the church members are missing, swept away, and presumed dead, including pastor Ezekiel’s daughter who, by the grace of God, has been found alive but is now bedridden.
One church we have there has been swept away along with all their instruments, PA, everything!
£1,000 sent, but so much more is needed
WayMaker supports pastors and church planters in Kenya with our UK Partners ChristCentral Churches, Lifespring Church and many individual donors all of whom, along with you, we are appealing to for additional emergency funds.
This past weekend has been devastating!
WayMaker was able to send a £1000, gift from the ChristCentral emergency relief fund within hours of the disaster to our Kenyan partners, overseen by Pastor Kevin Onyango, whom we work closely with in Nairobi. He personally took aid to the region and is administering the use of these funds, the purchase and distribution of food, water, aid and bury the dead. (Many thanks to the CCC Exec team for their speedy response).
Kenyan Churches Farming Cooperative to Feed the Poor
Supporting Kenyan Churches initiative to feed the poor
Our friend, pastor and pioneer Kevin Onyango has been given, for one harvest, a sizeable piece of land to pioneer a Churches Cooperative project to feed the poor.
WayMaker provides the seeds, fertilisers and materials
WayMaker has been able to fund all of the necessary crops, and supporting materials and for this incredible initiative.
This is a key initiative because it supports churches in making a way to be self-sufficient in how they help the poor among and around them.
We hope over time that we can help them get the permanent land needed so they can reserve seed from one harvest to seed the next and be totally self-sufficient in this project.
Pastors on the Front Line in the Ukraine War
Resourcing Pastors on the Frontline
In the first half of 2023, I became aware that the ChristCentral Apostle in Ukraine had built a team of 7 pastors, men and women, who would go to the soldiers on the front line, minister to the Christians and share Jesus with those who were not. Apart from my utter amazement at their bravery, selflessness and love for Jesus, I realised too that they were going without any real protective equipment.
As a result, WayMaker secured a grant to allow us to send bulletproof equipment such as helmets, etc, along with camouflaged waterproofs, gloves, boots etc, to allow them to minister as safely as is possible on the front line.
Resources for Zambian Secondary School
Purchased a Shipping Container
On the 14th of November, a 40-foot container will be delivered to the Lifespring site which has been purchased by WayMaker ready to be filled with items to furnish the secondary school.
Miraculous Conciseness: Through a friend, who had a business colleague, who remembered my previous PA, Maria Ferrie, had shipped school equipment to Africa we have been donated 50 chairs, 34 Desks, Whiteboards, sports equipment, books, and much more.
Miraculous Conciseness: Earlier on in the year Andy was contacted through his social media posts for TheBigCinMe, by a convert from Hinduism who was going through the same treatment as him. Miraculously Andy ended sitting next to him in St Luke’s Cancer Centre in Guildford. They have struck up a friendship and recently over coffee Andy was talking about all the desks that had been donated and this friend said that he was the Community Liaison Officer for a supply chain company called Wincanton. Wincanton provides logistics, trucks, and drivers that collect and deliver for companies like Wicks, Waitrose, EDF, Ikea, Primark and many more. They have donated, free of charge, the use of a 15-ton Truck and 3 men to go and collect the equipment from Kent, load it into the truck and then deliver it to the container in Southwater and unload it too as part of their service to the community.
Container Shipment to School
Whilst WayMaker funded the initial £3,000 to purchase the container and have it delivered to Southwater, there is still the need, once it is full to send it to Zambia.
The cost is three times the cost of purchasing it, but we are delighted to say that in the past few weeks, a donor has come forward to cover the entire £9,000 cost of this shipment allowing us to end the year knowing that the secondary school is complete and sending the contents of the container is covered.
We now need to fill it with donated school equipment. So if you are a parent, school governor, teacher or on a PTA then please ask your school.
For more info click here.
StreetLife
Putting a smile back on a child's face
StreetLife Bus
One of the things that we want to see is others getting caught up in what God is doing through WayMaker and earlier in 2023 one of our supporters approached Lilly Mwila who leads the StreetLife team as she felt God prompt her to ask if they needed a Minibus. The answer was of course a resounding “Yes” and so the individual gave the funds to WayMaker who were able to make a grant on their behalf.
This is an exciting escalation for us as others get connected through WayMaker and start making a way themselves.
The bus purchased is similar to the ones WayMaker facilitated for the DaySpring Academy Primary School pictured here
Child Sponsorship
StreetLife is a children’s charity in Zambia working with orphans and vulnerable children. One of their principal operations is to find donors to provide a child with educational sponsorship as state schools will not provide a good enough education for these children to be educated out of poverty.
This sponsorship has traditionally required each church or organisation that agreed to promote it to its members to have an administrator to collect the funds, chase payments, keep sponsors up to date and provide information to trustees regarding income/expenditure etc. As a result, many churches were unable to commit to this and so, I believe, many sponsors were lost.
WayMaker recently took on the responsibility for all Lifespring Church’s existing Child Sponsors and the amazing Shelley Woodman who was administering the program for them has not only kindly volunteered to do this for WayMaker but has also agreed that she has the capacity for more.
As a result, since July WayMaker has been administering sponsorship for not only Lifespring but also 3 additional churches, one outside of Newfrontiers. The result, in just a few months, is that 20 more children have found a sponsor so far! It is my hope to be able to promote this more in 2024.
You can join in for just £25/month
Technology Upgrades
30 Laptops for Teaching Staff
When I visited the DaySpring Academy this time last year, I asked the faculty staff what they liked about teaching at the school, what they think we could do better and, if money was no object, what could I do to help make their teaching better. Their answer was for each teacher to have their own laptop that they could take home to prepare lessons on. This would mean we needed to provide 30 Laptops!
WayMaker did not have the financial resources to buy 30 laptops and so could not commit to meeting that need, but neither did we forget it.
Then in the first half of 2023, I contacted a company that would supply Laptops at a price below cost as part of their social conscience to give back to society. They agreed to sell them for £84 per unit, a total of £2,500, which was a great price if we had the money, which we did not.
However, we quickly realised that the Gift Aid from the donation for the minibus to StreetLife was exactly enough to cover this cost! Amazing! Sadly, there was still the small matter of getting 30 Laptops to Zambia and those additional costs to consider.
Again, through a donor who has helped with shipping computers to the primary school, I was able to speak to the company he used, and they agreed to ship them for FREE! As I said earlier, so much of this year has been overshadowed by the goodness of God!
6 Laptops to StreetLife Staff
Now with a source of very inexpensive laptops, it was apparent that the StreetLife Team needed some too. They had been getting by with two second-hand laptops which were over 5 years old. Again, unprompted, another church who was aware of this (and the laptops we sent to the school) asked if they could buy 3 for WayMaker to send to the StreetLife team. In the process of doing that Lifespring Church agreed to match those 3 so that every member of the team could have their own machine.
So, in October, when Lilly & Joseph Mwila were with us they were able to take all 6 laptops back with them along with a donation certification from WayMaker to show they were a charitable donation!
Warriors
WayMaker had a wonderful opportunity to provide a £4,000 grant to a Children’s After School in a deprived part of Horsham, West Sussex. The project was part of an initiative of Lifespring church which their own budget could not meet.
Our grant helped the club grow from 15 children at the start of the year to 30 currently by providing a warm welcome to everyone without exception. Four specific families whose children have been excluded from all other after-school clubs report that by contrast they are welcomed and loved at Warriors and their child’s behaviour has improved at home over the time they have been attending.
WayMaker Merchandise
We have also launched a small selection of WayMaker merchandise such as mugs, bags, t-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts which, while there is a small profit built in, is more about trying to create brand awareness. We hope that people will have these times which will just get people used to seeing the WayMaker logo about the place and help with our message that we are MAKING A WAY. Visit the WayMaker shop at shop.waymaker.org.uk
WayMaker Partner Program
WayMaker has developed a wonderful network of partners in the countries where we work who have the same mission, vision and values as us which allows us to make a way where there is no way in those nations.
However, we have noticed that people seem more likely to make donations for things like child sponsorship, projects or a specific need but seem less willing to give towards the general funds of WayMaker that allow us to administer the sponsorship, oversee the projects and ensure that that money for specific needs genuinely ends up in the hands of those it was donated to.
We always want to keep our operating costs to a minimum and ensure that every penny given to specific projects go to the project but recognise that running a registered charity incurs genuine costs. Even fundraising incurs costs, and so we want to cover those costs through our partner program and not by taking a percentage of project donations.
To that end, we have looked to develop the WayMaker Partner Program where individuals, churches and organisations can give monthly to the general funds of WayMaker and partner with us at various levels and in various ways.
INDIVIDUAL PARTNER
- Your choice of monthly amount (£5/min)
- No minimum payment commitment
- Payments cancelled or amended in our Donor Dashboard
- List Regular email updates which you can stop at any time.
- Mission trip oportunities
CHURCH PARTNER
- Your choice of monthly amount (£50/min)
- 6 Months minimum payment commitment
- Payments cancelled or amended in our Donor Dashboard
- Partner & Promote Child Sponsorship
- Regular email updates which you can stop at any time
- Send Individuals/Teams with us on Mission (Romania/Africa)
- Partner with ENVIRONMENTAL Projects
- Partner with EDUCATIONAL Projects
- Partner with FARMING Projects
- Partner with CHURCH PLANTING Projects
- The opportunity to invite Andy to come and speak at your church to inspire for mission, social action and overseas kingdom advance.
- Priority on mission opportunities
ORGANISATION PARTNER
- Your choice of monthly amount (£100/min)
- 12 month payment commitment
Everything included in Church Partner PLUS
- The opportunity to develop programs with WayMaker to help the poor, uneducated and marginalised, that fit with your organisations interests or your staffs passions.
At this point in time WayMaker has 9 Individual sponsors for which we are so grateful. It has been these amazing people who have allowed us to cover bank charges, file accounts, host websites, incorporate WayMaker Africa and so much more! Thank you!
However, our budget for 2024 includes expansion, more projects and making a way for more people than we have in this past year. It is our hope and prayer for 2024 to see not only the individual sponsors’ numbers increase but to have both churches and organisations partnering with us too.
If you would like to become a Partner at any level, then please contact Andy or visit www.waymaker.org.uk/PartnerProgram
Looking to Pioneer in India
It has always been our heart that WayMaker become more than simply the apostolic reach of Andy alone and we are delighted to be exploring the possibility of partnering with the Lead Elder of The Well Church in Islington and Basildon as they look to Make A Way in India through a great apostolic initiative to the poor.
They are looking to make a way among the Hindu rice farmers across rural India. Working together with a native apostolic leader who oversees 10 churches of between 20 to 60 believers per church.
If you would like to find out more, then please contact us