Testimony Faith Homes began as the mud and wattle home of John Green. The house was situated within the grounds of Maseno Hospital compound, in a small town in western Kenya, called Maseno. It was a small 40 x 20 ft house made of mud and timber with a tin roof. It had no ceiling, no glass in the windows, no plumbing, and no internal doors. John opened his doors to the first two children on 29th August 1969. By Christmas the same year there were 8, and by February 1970 there were fifteen
In July of 1970, John moved with the children to another, larger house on the mission hospital compound, and took the numbers of children to 28.
From there in September they all moved to the private home of Archbishop Festo Olang, the first Anglican Archbishop of Kenya who very graciously let John use it for an orphanage until 1971. Soon after that the Family moved to a place further north west of Maseno called Ramula in Siaya District. This was a conglomeration of decaying buildings that had once been a Chief’s Camp. Numbers remained at around 28. All boys, and for the most part between 12 and 18.
Soon after moving to Siaya, John married Esther Wanjiru a High School teacher of English and Home science. Esther lived in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city, but moved to Ramula to live with John. Nothing could have prepared her for instant motherhood to 28 teenagers! John wrote in a recent newsletter:
“I did not meet Esther (my wife) until June of that year. My 28 boys were rowdy, given to fighting, glue sniffing, and theft. A rough lot of teenagers – diamonds still in the rough! It cost us Ksh.150/- per head per month in those days- a far cry from the present day Ksh.8,000/- (approx £60).
But to know where that 150/- for each of the children would come from was to me then as BIG a question as it is today. Perhaps even bigger then, since I had never had to trust God for a shilling before”
On Boxing Day 1972, John and Esther and the children moved to the new site of Testimony Faith Homes in Eldoret. Eldoret was a small farming town in the Kenya highlands, about 130 kilometers East of Ramula.
The house they moved into was an old colonial house built by Dutch Trekkers. Again a house made of mud brick and timber with a corrugated iron roof. The house is now almost a hundred years old, and remains a warm and friendly house.
John and Esther remained Mum and Dad in this house from 1972 until January 1998 when they retired from house parenting. They brought up their own three children in this house, along with all the children that they cared for as parents. They created an atmosphere in the home that simulated as closely as possible a normal household with 2 parents and lots of children. This model worked well for John and Esther and the whole family, and was adopted in the children’s homes that were formed soon after.
Read more about The Nature of the work of Testimony Faith Homes.