Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon Donnell.
Hi Brandon, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
In the 70s & 80s & early 90s I worked at a Christian Radio Station in Dallas called KVTT. One of our outreaches was sending books, bibles and cassette tapes to many countries throughout the world. Through that media outreach I came into contact with many people in India and Africa. I traveled to India in the 80s and in time we built a church there. In 1999 I traveled to Kenya to meet a pastor I had corresponded with and had sent many books and tapes to. He was a poor man living in a mud hut in a small township near the border of Tanzania. I stayed for over a week with his large family crammed into the little mud hut. He was generous man with a big heart. His name was Jackson Mwita. He had seven children of his own but had also taken in two orphan boys. He shared with me his vision to help more orphans. I came home and shared the vision with my wife Darnelle. We did not have to think or pray for long and jumped with all we had the next month which was January of 2000. We started taking in more orphaned, abused and abandoned children. It took off and many have joined us along the way. We are not an institution, we are a big family. The children are our own. We have witnessed many transformed lives along the way. We have seen children come in beaten down and terrified after being abused. We have watched them transform into happy secure children with hope for a future. Pastor Jackson Mwita has since passed away but his children work with us today to manage and direct ‘GENTLE SHEPHERD CHILDRENS HOME’ We currently care for over 160 children.
PRAISE BE TO GOD FOR HIS GOODNESS!!!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
When we began in 2000 we had no running water, no electricity. There is a river close to us so we would carry water by hand to pastor Jacksons home, boil the water then bathe out of a basin. All the water that we drank had to be boiled. But, by Gods grace we slowly grew, dug a deep well which gave us pure drinking water. It time we got electricity. Now all our buildings and dormitories are lighted and have ceiling fans. There is no air conditioning or heat but it is not needed. The equator goes though Kenya so there are no seasons……. no winter or summer. It does not get cold there but it sure does get hot!!!!
There are police in our area but they are nothing like here in the US. There is a brutal reality in our part of Kenya called “Mob Justice” If someone is caught stealing in the market place a mob will surround them. The will be dragged out into the middle of the street and beaten to death or burned alive! There is no arrest, no trial. When the Mob gathers the police look the other way. They are to scared to intervene lest they be killed themselves. Once my wife Darnelle was in the market place, there was a 12 year old boy caught stealing cigarettes. They pulled him out to beat and or kill him. Darnelle being the hero that she is ran into the middle of the mob screaming, she grabbed the young boy and pulled him away. By Gods grace she managed to intimidate the angry crowd. They backed off. The boy was saved.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
We focus on taking in children who have been orphaned for various reasons. The local authorities sometimes take children out of violent and abusive homes and bring them to us to care for. Sometimes babies are abandoned and brought to us. We have a number of children who were abandoned immediately after birth and fortunately someone found them before they died and we took them. Newborns are sometimes abandoned in open fields.
We also conduct leadership conferences to train pastors and other local people. We visit jails and prisons in southwest Kenya and northern Tanzania.
We take groups of people on mission trips from the US to Kenya and it is often a life changing experience for them. It is transforming especially for a young person to go to another culture and spend time with the people. Learning to love, learning humility and compassion for less fortunate people of other nations and cultures.
Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
We married in 1974. We were not able have our own children. This longing to have children caused us to adopt two girls. One was from Brazil. I flew to the city of Curitiba. I hired a lawyer there to legally adopt her so I could get her out of the country. When I came home I hired another lawyer and adopted her here in Texas. Her name is Analise. She is double adopted!!
We believe God used the fact that could not have our own biological children, to push out into the world so that in time we would become the parents to many more children than we could ever give birth to ourselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ilsministries.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ILSministries/
