I am privileged and honored to be part of this amazing authorship group. My name is Humphrey M. Kanga, I am married to Helen and we are blessed with two grown up children, Alex and Abigail. Alex and his wife Mercy have made me a grandpa of two beautiful grand daughters, Teagan and Meghan.
I am the founder and CEO of Kenya Connection Ministries International headquartered in Chuka Kenya. I left my family for five years to attend Erskine Theological Seminary in South Carolina USA and attained a Master of Divinity degree in 2006. I am passionate in my call in ministering and empowering the poor and destitute in society. I started and lead a multimillion social enterprise that provides support to the poor, the sick and abused in society. The parachurch organization has built a campus that houses the four children’s homes, the technical institute and administrative offices. I am a preacher of the gospel and serve the community in many ways including mentorship to the youth, leading a book reading club and being a board of member of a few public institutions.
I grew up in bigamous family comprising of fifteen children, (brothers and sister), two mothers and a father. In such a large home the resources were meager especially the basic needs of life. The lack of these basic needs weighed very heavily in my heart. At times I felt stressed and discouraged. I had many questions in my heart. Why others have plenty and others very little resources. In 1976 when I was in class 6, I committed my life to Christ as my personal savior. The Christian Union Teenage boys from Ikuu Boys High School visited our church one afternoon and our Sunday school teachers invited us for an afternoon fellowship. In that team was my brother, Benjamin who had joined Ikuu High School. When Benjamin joined form 1, I noticed a great change in his life. He came home during school break (holiday) very different. He told me that he had an encounter with Jesus Christ. It made him then realize that he was a sinner and that Christ died for him. He then became saved and made a commitment to Christ as his Lord.
Benjamin is the one who had brought the teenage Christian boys to church that afternoon. We had had an afternoon service in church where they conducted and preached in the afternoon worship service. The boys shared with us how they were born again and the experience and joy that had come into their lives. As we worshipped they were so fervent and enthusiastic. They talked with joy and were full of life. You could tell from their passion, excitement and confidence as they shared their testimonies that truly Jesus had touched the core of their lives. One of the boys called Daniel who I later understood was the leader of the group preached the sermon that afternoon. He made an altar call for those who wanted to accept Jesus as Lord and savior. I stepped forward to the altar for prayer. As the appeal for commitment to Christ was going on, the congregation of teenage boys and girls in the church sang, “I have decided to follow Jesus and no turning back”. I thank God that that song is still very live in my heart to date.
I became very aggressive in knowing Christ whereby I bought a New Testament bible at six Kenya shillings; from the money I raised by working in the coffee garden. The small pocket bible became my companion. In two years, the small bible became red, brown and tattered. It had become my companion in class, in the garden, in the field as I looked after goats and cows and in church. It got torn and some pages were falling apart but my soul, spirit and body were not. In 1979 I joined Ikuu Boys High School and the band of boys welcomed me to the Christian union for they had known me earlier. They acted as my mentors and role models. They taught me how to pray and fast, how to preach and also gave me the opportunity to be a leader in the Christian Union. I became a C.U treasurer in form one, a position I held for six years. In class six it is where the seeds of writing were sowed by my English teacher Mr. Frank Murithi.
Before Mr. Frank took over class six, I was very poor in English. I used to score three out of twenty in my composition. When Mr. Frank took over English class in class six, he motivated and encouraged me showing me that nobody should fail in English. He introduced the class to the habits of reading story books in order to have a good foundation for English language. I heeded to the advice and devoured storybooks. In second term, my English language both spoken and written had greatly improved. In class seven, I wrote a composition and scored thirty nine out of forty (39/40). It was the talk of the school. It was read to the class and I was made a point of reference for good composition writing. It was then a seed was planted in my subconscious that I can write. In high school, I almost lost my grasp of the English language. It was like it had all gone back to England. For your information, I did not do English Literature in secondary school, I got demoralized.
I have realized that you do not have to be an English major to write a book. Writing takes a resolve that once I start, I will finish. The most important thing is jotting down your ideas. With the help of English major teachers and editors they can help you fix the grammar. The truth is, the ideas you have nobody else has and that what a story is. I can say without blinking that everybody has a story to tell. The fire of writing was ignited again when I joined college and theological seminary. I was exposed to a lot of writing, reading and research. Since 2006, very close friends in America and in Kenya kept on pushing me to write a book. They impressed in me that I had a story to tell the world. This was after founding the Kenya Connection Ministry which has rescued and given hope to very many orphaned and destitute children and the disfranchised in the society.
These friends impressed on me to write that story for posterity. I slept over the idea for some years and finally I had to break the mold and start the writing journey. The book Rebranding to Win is a collection of my experiences, thoughts and ideas that I have come across through my personal and corporate leadership. It is so amazing that when you hold a pen and focus on writing, once you scribble the first sentence, the second sentence comes, the third, then a paragraph, a page and on and on. Rebranding to Win- is my second book. It’s a personal empowerment and leadership tool. Its intent is to light a fire that has been waiting for a trigger to action. Rebranding to win is about rediscovering the great potential in each one of us and hence reshaping destiny by means of personal empowerment. I look at this book as a toolkit for our individual and corporate transformation. This book calls the readers to be driven by values, habits and principles that are carefully thought, selected and internalized. The book equips the reader and gives guts to face challenges and road blocks. It encourages individuals to be trailblazers and hence be willing to travel on the road less travelled. This book brings to your attention the attitudes, mindsets, principles of champions.
It is a book suitable for students, corporate CEOs, pastors, church leaders and servants, self-employed individuals, politicians, intellectuals and all who want to win in this life. It took me five years to write and publish my first book titled The Journey Against All Odds. This is a true story that shows you can have a dream and with God’s help actualize the dream into reality. What provoked me to write this book was my absence from family for five years. The book covers my experiences in the United States. I left the country by faith in pursuit of education and empowerment for ministry. I had a visa that would not allow me to come back incase I left the States. That is why I ended up staying there so that I could finish my mission. By God’s divine intervention, I realized the purpose that had led me to the States. While I was there, I felt a call to do ministry among the destitute and orphaned children, the sick and the lowly in society.
I returned in 2006 and close to fifteen years that is what I have been doing with my life. We have established four children’s homes, touched lives of thousands of children, and we have sponsored over 250 children and youth in primary schools, high schools, colleges and universities in Kenya producing teachers, engineers, Christian gospel singers, technicians, doctors and brothers and sisters in Christ who are now living as comfortably as other normal Kenyans. All these were from a pack of kids who were either orphaned or destitute. The book is about walking the journey in life with hopeless, down trodden, orphaned and destitute children. The story is about empowering these children, mentoring them and guiding them through life and many of them excelling in academics and hence in joining universities, colleges and technical institute.
It’s also about how God lined up people to that cause in Kenya, America, Britain and Australia.
