When they graduated from Otselic Valley High School in the early 1970s, neither Timothy MacLean nor his future wife Kathy Richer had any idea that their future paths would lead them to Africa, Afghanistan and India, or that they would wind up working there to build homes for orphaned children.

In the mid 1990s, Timothy explained, he had been working as a pastor in Syracuse and he realized it was not what he was called to do. When a friend asked him what he wanted to do, Timothy responded that he wanted to go overseas and help build things for people who couldn’t build for themselves. Shortly after he met a missionary from Africa, a few months later he was there helping to put a roof on a new church. Timothy enjoyed the work and the knowledge that he was helping people. When he returned to the states, it didn’t take long before he found other projects to assist with in Mexico and eventually again in Africa.

During one of his trips, Timothy traveled to Kenya, and it was there that he was inspired to start working to help children. “I felt the Lord speak to me. He asked ‘What about the children?’ I’d never thought of focusing on kids before, but that planted the seed in my heart and my mind,” Tim said.