In the summer of 2018, Joseph and Jacob Ferguson of the Middleton Ward in the Ashton Stake joined their sister Charlotte and her husband Cameron and headed out to a village near Mombasa, Kenya.
Their reason for this visit was to help a school, run by the charity ‘Educate the Kids.’ During their two-week stay, they played with the children, painted walls, and dug ditches for water pipes to be installed, and assisted in other ways around the school.
On their return, the brothers shared their life-changing experiences with their mother Joanne Ferguson. Sister Ferguson along with two of her friends, Terie Ryback and Gill Hoyle, were touched when hearing about the poverty of the children and wanted to do something to make a difference in their lives. Each Wednesday these friends regularly met for a craft morning at Church; they decided that they would knit, crochet and sew ‘teddies’ for the children at the school.
Three hundred toys would be needed by the following summer when Joanne’s daughter Charlotte and her husband Cameron would return to the village and the school. This was a tall order; the friends soon found out that it was not as easy as they had first thought. As time went by, word soon spread what the three friends were doing, and other ward members of the Middleton and Rochdale Wards of the Ashton England Stake helped them finish their project in time for the toys to be taken to the children in Kenya.
On receiving the ‘teddies’ the children didn’t know what to do with them; they don’t usually get gifts that they can take home. On realising the gifts were for them, the faces of the children were priceless to see and made all the hard work well worth it.