Orphanage in Zambia to honor Claudia Peyton

By BOB WITHERS -- The Herald-Dispatch
bwithers@herald-dispatch.com

The following story appeared in The Herald-Dispatch on Sunday, March 5, 2001.

Claudia Peyton, who grew up in the Cyrus Creek area of Cabell County and spent 54 years as a missionary in Africa, is about to be immortalized among the distressed people she loved.

The Wesleyan Church, working in partnership with Global Samaritans of Greensboro, Ga., is raising money to build a critically needed orphanage in Zambia that will be named after her.

"Zambia has a population of 10 million people, and that includes 1.6 million orphans," says the Rev. Daniel E. Finch of Culloden, district superintendent of the West Virginia District of the Wesleyan Church and founder and president of Primetime World Outreach. "AIDS has wiped out a whole generation of adults, and the teachings that have been passed down from generation to generation to show people there how to survive is gone."

Finch says that in the African country which is slightly larger than Texas, 34 percent of the children younger than 15 have been orphaned, and the annual population growth rate is 3.7 percent, among the world’s highest. There are fewer than 10 orphanages. The largest cares for fewer than 40 children.

About $60,000 has been raised toward a $200,000 project to construct the new facility at Senkobo, north of Livingstone. The first phase -- which will provide dormitory space for 12 boys and 12 girls, a guest house for 20 people that at first will accommodate construction teams, and living quarters for a native family who will serve as house parents -- is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

All that, Finch hopes, is just the beginning. "We have land enough for 2,000 orphans," he says.

During her Cyrus Creek years, Peyton took many children under her wing and developed a talent for making taffy out of molasses. For that, she became known as "Aunt Candy."

"We may name it the Claudia Peyton Children’s Home, but it may end up being Aunt Candy’s Children’s Home," Finch says.

Peyton, born in 1894, felt God’s call to Africa early on, and went to God’s Bible School in Cincinnati to prepare. She graduated in 1926 and applied to the Sudan Interior Mission Board.

"They turned her down, saying that she was so frail that she wouldn’t live a year in the harsh African climate," Finch says. "She went to work in a Cincinnati orphanage and, four years later, paid her own way to Africa."

Peyton adopted many of the needy Zambian children she cared for, giving them her name. She hadn’t intended to, she once said, but God spoke to her again.

She came home on furlough only once -- for six months in 1963. "We told her we were ready to send a one-way ticket to her so she could come home, rest awhile, and go back when she wanted to," says the Rev. Don McMellon, who was pastor of Hebron Baptist Church near Barboursville at the time. "But she refused to come until we sent her a round-trip ticket."

Peyton died in 1984 and was buried in Zambia.