My wife, Patti, and another member of our church first met Steve Peifer during a trip to visit Keith and Jamie Weaver, missionaries sent by our church to the people of Kenya. There, Patti met Steve and worked with this beautiful wife Nancy in the library at Rift Valley Academy. I first met Steve at my home church when we invited him to come and tell us about his efforts to feed hungry school children that he describes in A Dream So Big. Since then Patti and I have answered a call to pastoral ministry and have not only followed Steve’s adventures through his regular emails, but have, on several occasions, invited him to speak in the churches where we were serving. I don’t think that his story has ever failed to astound his listeners.
Steve is an average, middle class guy whose life was turned upside down and
who, through no particular plan of his own, ended up in Kenya, Africa seeing
things that most of us cannot imagine, and doing things that we would be afraid
to do. Throughout this story, Steve
insists that he is not an amazing man, just a man through whom, God is doing
amazing things.
In A Dream So Big, we meet Steve, Nancy,
and their family before the adventure began, at home, in Texas. We walk with them through one of the most
difficult times that a parent can imagine, the loss of their child, Steven, and
then follow them as they head to Africa.
At first, their African adventure is intended to be just a year away to
sort things out and to process the pain and the trauma of losing a child, a
time for their family to be together and to heal. But, as Steve often points out, Africa
changes a person. After a year in Kenya,
the Peifers feel called, if not compelled, to return on a more permanent basis,
and it is then that the real adventure begins.
Not
content to see children lying in the dirt at school because they are weak from
hunger, Steve sets out to change the world, or at least his little corner of
it. Steve asks, and with the help of his
friends and supporters in the United States, begins to provide lunches for two
schools nearby. Two schools become four,
and then ten, and by the end of the book become a truly extraordinary
number. Providing food not only allows
the children to be free from hunger, but gives them the strength to get an
education and an incentive to stay in school.
Even with these successes, Steve is not content. Building on the feeding program, Steve and
his friends begin to build solar powered computer centers.
Just
because I said the word computer, do not be tempted to think that this is just
another story about wealthy, white Americans swooping in to “rescue”
Africa. Those stories are old and they
often are the picture of “Ugly Americans” with all the cultural insensitivity
that you might expect. That is not Steve’s
story. Steve builds a program in which
the villages take ownership of their schools and their computer centers. The parents know that when these children
finish school and head into the city to find work, as most of them do, that
they will find good paying, skilled jobs instead of living in the slums fighting
with untold thousands of others for a handful of unskilled jobs. The school children, their parents, and many
others have seen Steve’s vision, and it is a vision that can break the back of
poverty in Africa. It is a vision that
can change the world.
I highly
recommend A Dream So Big. As you follow Steve, Nancy and their family
on this amazing adventure, you will laugh out loud at the ridiculous situations
in which Steve finds himself. But you
will also weep at the poverty and hopelessness that he sees all around him. A Dream
So Big invites you, not only to follow along, but to be a part of this
incredible adventure. I have no doubt
that Steve Peifer is changing the world, one child at a time. When you read this book, you will discover
that you can too.
Steve's book, A Dream So Big was released today and can be found on Amazon here: A Dream So Big.
