Week 3 - Begin classes

Hello there!
I hope this finds you well! It is the end of my third week here, and I have definitely learned a lot, including to not assume anything - my expectations are changed all the time.

For example, I thought I would be working with kids right away. We have work with a group of middle schoolers and high schoolers on Sunday mornings, and there is a group of younger kids who come to the base on Satuday mornings, but aside from that, we don't get to see a lot of kids. I thought we would be able to go to the orphanage more often, but we haven't gone yet. I am not sure when that will happen, but we will see. (The one we went to last week was a one time deal.) The bulk of our outreach work will be the second half of my time here - the last three months. We do not yet know where exactly we will go, but we are praying for direction. But, there is a young family on base, and we all take turns holding Baby Devin and playing with 2-year old Daniela. They are quite fun. There are also some neighborhood kids who come by each day, and we hang out with them sometimes.

The Sunday morning ministry is fun. We just taught a song last week, but I had a chance to pray with one of the eighth graders. His concerns in life are so different, and it was humbling to just talk to him. I am looking forward to going tomorrow.

So what exactly am I doing then? The first three months is training and a LOT of learning (although, I'm sure that we will have our own share of learning on the second three months as well). My average day these days looks like this:

6:00 Go for a short run
6:30 Breakfast and clean up (clean up takes a lot more time than it does at home. Breakfast is tea and jam and bread, unless someone makes mandazi the day before. But with over 30 people at the base now, it is a lot to make.)
7:30 Prayer
8:30 Worship and prayer all together
9:30 Class. This week we learned about the character and nature of God. It was really good and a lot to learn.
12:30 Lunch. (Lunch and dinner are HOT meals. We are already sweating with the heat already, but after meals, everyone is really warm. haha. Everyone has these handkerchiefs that we carry around everywhere because it's so warm. We then have a lot to clean up.)

2:00 Work. The work is different each day. On Tuesday, I was in the shamba (garden) and was working with the planting of some crops (we were told "your job is to put the manure in when we dig the holes." My first thought was, "okay, well, we learned this morning about not complaining, so I will see the good in this." They gave us the bucket and no shovel, but luckily Martin asked us if we wanted some gloves. Praise the Lord. haha. Then we found out that the manure was just from chickens, and the whole work was fine.) The rest of the week, I was doing clean up in various areas of the base. Other people did things like sorting beans and rice (when you buy these here, they have to be sorted before cooked, because the bags have all kinds of dirt, bugs and rocks accumulated with the food).

6:00 Dinner and clean up.

7:30 Evening activity. This changes every day. On two of the days, we work and train for presentations that we will either do at churches on Sundays or in the outreach in the second three months. Wednesday nights are for prayer, and the other nights are for meeting with smaller groups of people to formally check in how things are going and build team work.

9:00 Get ready for bed. By this time, we're exhausted, so it's good to start getting ready to sleep. Even getting ready for bed is different because it involves taking a shower (an ordeal in itself), and tucking in the mosquito net, among other things. For some reason, it has been taking me a long time to actually fall asleep (perhaps because I have been really careful to sleep straight so that I don't touch the net (the mosquitos bite through the net if you are too close)), and I have been waking up around 4:30 each day as well. It is really the strength of the Lord getting me through the day each day.

It is important to note here too that Swahili time is 6 hours ahead than the regular time. It is because they start counting when the sun rises at 6:00 each day. So you have to add six hours to each hour. The good thing is that at the base, we use the standard time. But if we go anywhere else, we have to calculate. Good math problem, fourth graders!! You can also calculate that a dollar is about the same as 70 Kenyan shillings.

It has been a fun, yet humbling week. I have learned so much. There is so much that I still don't know. I am still learning a lot of Swahili:)
Some highlights:
- I had a huge painful bite on my left thigh and knee at the beginning of the week. The one on my thigh was really big, covering a space a little larger than my hand. With both so swollen, I was a little concerned. But then, you can imagine the scare when I found a centipede in my bed later in the morning. Yikes. It is important to note here that the first week, we had two centipedes in our room. Both times, we had someone else come in and kill them for us. Fridah killed the second one, and her words were "yes they bite and it is painful, but it will not kill you." So with that in mind, I thought I had been bitten by the centipede. But with my earlier comment about not complaining, I was tring to see the good in it and was assured that I would be okay. At the end of the day, Fridah said that centipede bites hurt so much that I probably would not be able to stand. So, then we figured that this was either not a centipede, or it was a miraculous healing from the Lord. Either way, I was thankful.
- Later in the week, I had a few bites that started on my toe and foot, and then my whole left foot swelled up so that I could not even put on my flip flop without a lot of effort and pain. But that too, has healed for the most part. Other physical thanksgivings: my right ankle was in a lot of pain last week and has healed, and the swelling of my ankles has also gone down for the most part. I still have a lot of bites, but it's okay.
- I have really been enjoyying time with the team. They are so much fun and it is neat to see how each person is coming together and growing. There are fun stories every day, even if it is just laughing at how someone says a normal word, like "what" or "oh." I realized how much I have grown to enjoy these friends, when I came back last week from the Internet and was so glad to see them at dinner.
- I am personally learning a whole lot and, like I said before, am being quite humbled in every way. It is good and I am thankful.

I think that is good for now. Here are some pictures so far:

This was the pillow on the airplane. How cute! I thought it was fun so I took a picture. :)Kristy in Kenya








This is a picture of the base. I am standing in the place where my dorm is, and looking at the main building. In the front is our dining room and kitchen are. The back building is our classroom and the family stays upstairs. The building to the right that is cut off is where the other clas
s and library is.

The lizards and geckoes are huge here and are everywhere. Our pet Geico in Room 15 is tiny compared.







(Sorry the formatting is weird, but this is taking forever as it is) This is a treasured picture. These are the girls (minus Judy) from our team: Left to right: me, Catherine, Lisa, Lillian.


I am trying unsucessfully to load more pictures. I will try again next week. Sorry!

Until then, have a great week!