Watch this Proverbs 31 story from coastal Kenya

She was 21 years old, pregnant, abandoned by her husband and had no real skillset or way to earn an income. That situation would be difficult for any woman but where Blessing* lives on the coast of Kenya, the hardship seems almost insurmountable. Women with no husband are often destitute, left to endure the shame of their community.

Blessing had no inkling that two years later, at age 23, she’d be the owner of three small businesses.
  When Blessing’s husband, a Muslim, tried to force her to leave her Christian faith and convert to Islam, she vehemently refused—knowing that she and the child she was carrying would be left with nothing.

“I had held onto my Christian faith, and we separated,” she says. With nowhere else to go, Blessing moved in with her parents. When she came to them, she had little to speak of other than a willingness to work hard.

  In 2021, our teams came alongside Blessing to provide vocational training and sewing equipment to start a seamstress workshop and earn an income. As she says, “you helped me get my own skills that enable me to do the work of my hands so I can get my own money.”

Because of your support and prayers for persecuted believers and support, Blessing can stand strong in her faith and provide her child with an education. The young mother smiles wide when talking about her daughter: “My child is able to study, dress well, eat slightly better,” Blessing shares. She can also lift some the financial burden from her parents and lend support to her family. “Right now, I am able to help them personally by handling small issues,” she says. “I am now someone who can be depended on in my family.”


 

Blessing is an entrepreneur

With the profits she has earned from her sewing business, Blessing also started a roadside café that brings in additional income during the off seasons when the seamstress shop has less business. She is soft-spoken but determined in her resolve to steward the support she’s received.

“I started thinking about something else because where I live, sometimes the sewing business goes down,” she explains. “I thought I should open another business and began thinking of starting a café.”

With some of the profits she makes, she also buys fuel, which she sells to motorcyclists in her neighbourhood.

In many ways, Blessing now reflects the woman described in several of the verses in Proverbs 31:
Because you stepped into the lives of Blessing, her daughter and parents, she is now “clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come” (Prov. 31: 25).

  “I’m grateful of where I am right now. I have made progress,” Blessing says, adding a specific prayer request: “Pray that I [will] be able to grow in my business... so that I can earn more to employ others to also rise to this level, so we can work together."

*Name changed for security reasons