All I want for Christmas
By Ruth Schenk | .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Nolan Thompson’s wish list is not long this Christmas, but it is surprising for a normal 10-year-old.
His dream is to make room for 700 children at the Tumaini Center Orphanage in Kenya. Orphans trump the guitar he would like to play some day.
Nolan already is a veteran fundraiser. Last May, when tornados swept through Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi, he organized a food drive at Spencer County
Elementary School, where he is a fifth-grader. So many students pitched in to help that Nolan’s parents had to rent a truck to haul the canned goods.
“Helping someone else was so much fun and so gratifying that ever since then, Nolan wanted to do it again,” said his mother, Jenifer Thompson.
Nolan was looking for another project last August when he asked his teacher, Southeast member Beverly Hill, for suggestions. She had heard about the Tumaini Center
Orphanage in Kenya from Jerry Schooling, a friend at Southeast, who had been on a recent, short-term mission trip to the orphanage and knows the orphanage director,
Charles Juma, who is finishing a doctorate degree at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
In Swahili, the word “tumaini” means “hope.”
That’s what Nolan wants to give to children who have been orphaned by AIDS, to little ones who have been abandoned by parents who cannot care for them and to children
who need to know that someone cares.
According to UNICEF, there are more than 1 million orphans in Kenya.
At the Tumaini Center orphanage, children have a safe, loving environment where they go to school and learn about Jesus. About 300 children now live on the first floor.
Finishing a second level would make room for 700 more children.
To help with construction costs, Nolan has organized the Kenya Orphanage Project Variety Show. It will be held at Spencer County Middle School on Wednesday, Dec. 14.
The event is free, but there will be an offering collected for the orphanage.
Middle and high school students and adults in the community will perform, and some local bands have asked to play.
Perhaps Nolan’s biggest dream is to go to Kenya one day to spend time with the children.