Countdown Begins for Release of Home-Grown 'Graceland'

Excitement has begun to build in advance of the official release of a compact disc featuring the girls of Amazing Grace Children's Home in Kenya.

Amazing Grace shelters girls who have lost their parents to the AIDS epidemic ravaging the African continent. It was founded in 2005 by Fr. Ogacho Abuto, a former All Saints' Episcopal Church staff member, and the church continues to supply the lion's share of the financial and logistical support for the orphanage's operations.

On the CD's 17 unaccompanied vocal tracks, the Amazing Grace girls sing of their faith in God with an irrepressible and irresistible spirit. The songs were recorded at the orphanage last July using portable digital equipment, and evoke comparisons to the roots material on one of the most influential and commercially successful pop albums of the last quarter-century – Paul Simon's Grammy Award-winning Graceland, which introduced American audiences to Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Okyerema Asante, and other African artists.

The selections, which include Vacation Bible School favorites such as It's Me O Lord, We Are Happy to Share, and We Are Marching in the Light of God, are sung in both English and Swahili, as well as the language of Kenya's Luo tribe, to which all 72 of the girls at Amazing Grace belong.

The project has been a labor of love for All Saints' parishioner Greg Westfall, a successful lawyer who also happens to be a gifted musician and photographer. He and his wife Mollee, the church's senior warden and judge of the 371st District Court, led last summer's 12-person mission to Amazing Grace, which is located in Awasi, near the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya.

Greg not only recorded, mixed, and co-produced (with Bob Prince) the CD itself, he shot all of the jacket photography, designed the jacket, wrote the liner notes, and personally handled the legal filings necessary to copyright the entire work. It is being released on Blue Mule Records, Greg's own label.

The CD's official release is scheduled for Sunday, December 6, at a Feast of St. Nicholas "mission market" that will focus on various ways to combine holiday giving with support for All Saints' overseas mission partners. After that, the CD will be available for purchase at the church's St. Anne's Book Store and through a variety of other channels. Cost of each CD is $15 and 100% of the purchase price of every CD sold will be put toward the Amazing Grace girls' food, clothing, education, and medical care.