June update

Finally I am able to send some of what I have been experiencing in beautiful Kenya. We have been on outreach for a little over a month now, and every day brings something new. It's impossible to tell everything, but here are some highlights. :) And yes, I will have plenty of pictures to share when I come home.

Golini (June 4-21)
Golini was so beautiful. Mango trees, coconut trees, and tons of farmland everywhere. Every place had a shamba (or farm/ garden), growing some vegetables like scuma (like spinach), or a few had maize (corn). It was mango season when we went, so we ate fresh mangoes every day. It was wonderful and oh how we miss those mangoes! Golini is a really small village about an hour walk from the small town of Kwale, which was about an hour drive from the city of Mombasa (for those of you interested in the geography). There is red dirt everywhere, which turned into red mud when it rained, and some of our things are still stained "Golini red." ha.

We fell in love with the people of Golini. We stayed with Pastor Steven and his family on their compound. They have three buildings on their property (mud huts). The boys of our team took one, and the girls took the smaller one. We crammed 6 girls on 4 sleeping mats in a tiny room probably the size of the den in my apartment. We are family now! :) haha. But seriously, there was no way we could complain, because the pastor's family was more than generous with the sacrifices they gave us. They also let us use the largest room in their home to store our food for three weeks. Because of what space they gave us, the whole family (they have 6 beautiful children, plus they often have other children in the area stay the night, and one of the cousins lives there permanently I think), took a smaller room in their house, and I still don't how how they did this, but they also fit all 8 of their goats and all of their chickens in the same house! So yea, no complaints on space. I was amazed at the generosity of this family.
The other people were not far from us, just a short walk down the road, and we just loved on all the children who were constantly surrounding us. They loved the camera, so I have tons of pictures of the children in Golini. :) They really have nothing. I was amazed that they could run around in rags of clothing - one kid's shirt literally was split in half. Yet, still so full of joy and love. The firstborn son (the third child) is 10 years old and every day looks after the goats. He and his cousin were out there for hours at a time. It made me think of young David as a shepherd boy, and I just delighted at the thought of what these two little guys were learning and playing in those fields every day as they watched the goats. It was a lot of responsibility.

We learned a lot about gratefulness. That even though our mud hut had rats crawling on us (the second night Lilian's eyebrow was bit, and the last night Lisa was scratched. They also ate my skirt), gigantic spiders, rain leakages (that was fixed though), and cramped spaces, we were thankful for a place to lay our head at night. We always had something to eat, even though some of the nearby children only had the falling mangoes to eat each day. We were safe from the elephants (we found tracks just about a 5 minute walk from the house), and each time it rained we were able to find some shelter. Despite lack of water, lack of electricity, and whatever else, we still had so much to be grateful for.

Our ministry was good. We actually found the water tanks that we prayed about before coming, already there when we got there. It was fine though - we spent most of our days playing with and loving on the children. We spent a lot of time in prayer for the heavy spiritual oppression in the area, and visited a couple of schools as well. One school in particular really hit hard for me, as I had a picture of one of the walls as I prayed for Golini a few weeks before. It was a school that was completely falling apart, yet still enrolled students. We walked A LOT and did this one hike up and down this mountain to visit the home of one of the members of the church. We found out that his grandson was one of the kids who we saw every day, little Baraka (Baraka means "blessing"). We could not believe this little guy, who was probably about 5, walked this long journey every day to school. It was incredible.

It was super hard to leave, but the last night, with the sun setting on the mango trees, the girls dancing, with little Joshua falling asleep on my lap, and little Beti holding my hand, singing praises to the Lord, captured the whole time. We had a lot of successes in the time we were there. And then the next day, as we were at church and the pastor's wife entered mid-service, home from being a week in the hospital with the baby, Mary, who had been very sick with malaria and dehydration, all the emotions poured out. My heart holds a special spot for the people of Golini.

Mount Elgon (June 23-28)
We rode the bus for about 18 hours from Mombasa to Kitale, and saw some cool things on the way. We saw zebras, warthogs, flamingoes, sheep, donkeys, chickens, dogs, and more on the way. Fun times. We also got to see the beautiful Rift Valley and a volcano. It was very cool.

We arrived and stayed at the home of the Pastor John and his family. The next day we drove an hour outside of Kitale to Mount Elgon. If you read international news, you may remember the violent riots about a year and a half ago in Kenya. Because of disagreements between tribes after the national elections in Kenya, extreme violence broke out, particularly in Mount Elgon. So it is a place that is still recovering from the issues there, and we worked with a few churches in the area to reach out to the people there.

Mount Elgon is gorgeous as well, but in a different way than Golini. Acres and acres of maize crops on an amazing landscape. The people also work a LOT harder than in Golini (we found Golini to have a lot of laziness). Anyway, we were blessed by amazing hospitality of people in the church, as well as from the family who housed us in their huge old colonial house from back in the day when Kenya was being colonized by the British. We slept in a bed! Amazing! haha.

We learned a lot of new customs here. For example, the people know you don't want any more chai (tea) if you put the handle facing the inside of the table when you are finished with your meal. Also, some of the people still used the tribal custom to take out some of the front teeth on the bottom row, so it was interesting to meet many adults who were missing their front bottom teeth. The handshake was different in Mount Elgon than anywhere else in Kenya, and we also experienced some cold weather. Some people's handshake is a clapping of the hands! I love it. :) Oh, and I should also explain some about the transportation. We used this matatu all week, that was an experience in itself. The door of the van was tied onto the side of the vehicle, so it was unable to be closed. It was funny most of the time, until it rained. :) We also crammed 21 people into this 14 passenger van the first time we rode it, which was also very interesting. I shouldn't complain about that, because now, in Kitale, we often will fit 24 people in the same space. Anyway, most of the time it was fine, and we were thankful for a ride.
We again enjoyed the people and all of their hospitality and generosity.

Kitale (last week and this coming week)
We spent the first two days last week ministering to the many widows in the area. It was a very emotional time and there was one day in particular that we just sat with and listened to and wept with these women who had lost everything in the post -election riots. They actually used to live in Mount Elgon, but lost their land and came to Kitale. We also found out that the population in Kitale went from about 300,000 to over a million people in the last year due to the riots. Incredible.
The next few days we working with some of the local churches and ministering to people in the area. It was a good work. Next week we are headed to work with a school nearby to the pastor's house, who again is hosting us so generously.

Whew! I know.. it's been a long post, and not nearly enough details. But that will have to do for now. Lisa and I celebrated the 4th of July with some American songs, and thought of the barbeques at home. :) We are learning a lot about flexibility here - sometimes we don't eat or eat really late, and just adapting to a lot of various customs. But every moment brings with it a lot of opportunity to be grateful for the Lord and to trust in Him.


A couple more things I forgot:
- The milk is so fresh and good here! We have lots of it in our chai every day. So for those of you wondering about my healing, it is real! Praise the Lord for fresh cow's milk every day and real ice cream as I splurged today :)
- Yes, my swahili is improving :)
- Next week we are headed to a very big school. We were in a big school in Mount Elgon as well - with about 70 kids in one class, to one teacher. Yikes!