Greetings from Kenya!

My second week here has come to a close and there's one thing I forgot to mention about last Wednesday's lunch at the Graceland Hotel. It was a real southern meal - coleslaw, french fries, collard greens (okay, kale, actually, but close!) and barbequed ribs. The only thing that was a giveaway that this was Nakuru and not Memphis was the fact that the ribs were mutton.....

Thursday was a pretty quiet day. We did a lot of number crunching and created financial statements and wish lists for the school, hospital project and church. Also wrote out a history of past donations for the school and started researching ways to reduce the food cost for the students. Unlike most other schools, since this is in an low-income area, they feed the students two meals and tea (British leftover!) each day. So food is one of the highest expenses they have. Thursday night was another 90 minute Gospel aerobics class and revival meeting.

Friday, Pastor George's oldest daughter, Irene came home from boarding school for the week, which was a great surprise because I didn't think I'd get a chance to meet her. In the afternoon, Pastor George and I drove downtown into the government compound (equivalent to the Florida state house) to visit with Kate, one of the supporters of the church, who has just been newly appointed Minister of Health for the District. It was Kate who lent Pastor George her car and came with him on the Thursday I was originally scheduled to arrive. We had another revival meeting that night.

Come Saturday, we went to the school in the morning - this time the children greeted me by name, and I was able to remember a few more names as everyone shook my hand. Then we went back around 3pm for a wonderful fellowship with folks from the church. We all sat around a wooden table and Maizy, one of the lead women in the church managed to feed all of us, and those who straggled in after the food had been served, from the food that was brought. It was a wonderful experience. And then we had a praise and worship service for 3 hours - including a surprise that the choir and I had put together, which was a short little ditty that's been in my head for years - which Pastor Evans and Ken the keyboard player created music for and then also translated the lyrics into Swahili. So the entire church was singing:

Holy Spirit, move in me.

Holy Spirit, move in me.

Holy Spirit, come and set me free.

Holy Spirit, move in me.

I'll have Pastor Evans write out the Swahili words for me.

A pretty funny moment came when they started singing a song that was very familiar to me... one verse was:

Someone's praying Lord.... but when they sang the next line I realized, the "African Spiritual" we'd all been singing since childhood was actually a really bad translation of a song that Africans had been singing in English.

Someone's praying Lord... Kumbiya... is actually:

Someone's praying Lord. Come by here.

Sunday, 10-1 and 4-7 was church again.... and then because we had thunderstorms every evening, we made an executive decision that instead of having open air crusade meetings in town, we would ask people to let us know if they would like us to make a home visit to them, to pray with them and bless their home. Twenty eight people signed up to have us visit and pray with them.

Monday we visited 11 homes. And Tuesday we visited 11 homes. It was incredibly humbling and powerful. We drove as far as the roads would let us, then got out and walked. One mother asked us to come into her home and pray for her 2 1/2 year old daughter, Danielle, who had malaria. Several of the women we prayed with had HIV/Aids. Several had lost their husbands in the post-election violence. Many of the women had found housing after having been living for 6 months in the displaced person's camps. A few had managed to get a few items of furniture. Most of the houses were single rooms, about 12 x 10, with a clothesline hung across the middle, to create a sleeping space for the family. Every square inch of space is used wisely. Under one couch was were the family stored all their tomatoes, on the concrete floor. The kitchen area is a corner triangle, with a wide mantle and a square chimney. Most people cook with coal or wood, in a small cast iron pot. No matter what they had or didn't have (one family had electricity, run through a series of batteries), they were overjoyed to open their homes and have us come and pray with them. One woman burst into tears last night and I stayed behind a few extra minutes hugging her and praying with her. What struck me most is their strength and their joy and their willingness to start over. And how we are all the same.

A woman who was resting because she was ill refused to come out from behind the bedroom curtain until her neighbor handed her a kerchief to cover her hair, because she had bed head and wasn't going to be seen with her hair like that. We're all the same when it comes to vanity, yes?

Monday, we visited with a woman named Eunice, who has four daughters. They were all dressed up in matching dresses, that differed only in their colors. The two oldest girls were in peach and pink. The youngest, Anit, was in baby blue and her next older sister, Faith was in light green. They came with their mom from house to house in the van, and every time I stepped out of the van, before I got my window rolled up, Ani was there, putting her hand in mine. We walked all around town like that, and one time when we had quite a long walk, we passed a school, where all the students started following us, like a Pied Piper, wanting to shake my hand, saying "how are you?" as a greeting and waving, wanting only to be acknowledged, one by one. One young man on a bike shook my hand and wanted to continue talking to me, but Faith stepped up and grabbed my hand and led us onward, realizing that he wasn't someone I was supposed to be talking to.

Monday night I got a great picture of Pastor George and his four children playing a computer game. It's fun to watch a dad interact with such joy with his kids.

Yesterday, we drove to the Nakuru National Park so Pastor George could get the prices for the game park. The parking lot was full of baboons, including some baby baboons who were just too cute. Saw two resus monkeys as well. Then we stopped for a Coke at a place called Florida Bar (no kidding) and drank it watching antelopes play and warthogs wonder in the distance.

White people here are called mzungu. So sometimes the children shout out mzungu - sometimes in surprise, sometimes in glee. I pointed out a mzungu walking in the park and Pastor Evance pointed toward me and said, there's another one... and I turned around and said "where?," just like a true Kenyan, according to Pastor George.

Today we went to the school to congratulate the children on finishing out the session. I went from classroom to classroom handing out Ron Jon Surf Shop stickers (which most of them promptly peeled off and put on their uniform shirts/sweaters), crayons and two pictures of Jesus for them to color, as well as a glow in the dark star, which I explained was to remind them that God's love is always shining in them, even when they're having a dark day, and if they needed a reminder, they star would continue shining in the dark at night if every day they would take it and expose it to light while they prayed. I took "class pictures" for each class, and took a bunch of group shots outside (lots of great Ron Jon shots, Drew!), and shots of the kids playing with the new swingset.

One class (Grade 4) all signed their coloring pages and gave them to me to bring home with me to share with Fran, who had been kind enough to donate the crayons, so she could share them with her Sunday school class. I also took a picture of the teachers and pastor George. Then we had an unexpected surprise. The headmistress, Florence, asked me to pray with her and talk with her because she wanted to accept Jesus as her personal savior. It was really cool because I was able to help her ease some concern she was having because her family and her husband are all Catholic - so I got her to understand that all paths lead to God  and that if she honors their path, which they are very happy with, then they'll most likely honor hers too.

A few hours rest, and making contact with Heifer Kenya to start the process of inquiring about them funding a project so the school can provide milk and eggs for the students, and an income stream from the cows and chickens, and then Pastor George and I went to visit big Ken, who leads the praise and worship team. Got to meet his sister who lives with him. Then we stopped back home and picked up all four children and went to Naomi's house, who is the mom of little Charlie's best friend Leon. Naomi and her sister, who is in university, cooked us a wonderful dinner, including bananas and oranges. They were both so sweet it was like eating sugar. Fresh picked today. Naomi is a nurse and she has brought her brother and her sister from their village. Her brother graduated university recently and does odd jobs as he can find them in the city right now, while he looks for a full time job. Family is very important in the Kenyan culture and they go out of their way to help family first, even before building up any savings or buying a home.

Back home now, and ready to have my "after dinner chai"...so I'll leave you now...

Monday we leave for Bungoma and I'm not sure yet whether or not we'll have internet access, so I'll either write next week's update on Monday morning before we leave, or it will arrive Wednesday!

Please write! I love getting email so I feel connected to home. Share something that's new and exciting in your world!

Upendo and Amani,

Love and Peace,

Paula