Inside Samaritan Liliaba’s church

Inside Judy’s house

(I’m not entirely sure this works. Please let me know in comments.)

Helping to sort the crop yield

Today (Tuesday) we visited a first-year group (and experienced a tremendous hassle trying to exchange $20 for Kenyan shillings at a Barclay’s in town).  The group lives in a fairly dry and dusty area about 30 minutes from Maua.  The area is just beautiful, but it’s the terrible beauty of inhospitable land.  The soil is a dramatic red and VERY rocky with igneous rocks embedded in it.  The group didn’t get enough rain in the last growing season, and I think they were discouraged.  They certainly weren’t as vibrant as the others we met.  Their stories were sad, partly because they are still ongoing.

Continue reading Today: Visited a First-Year Group →

Today was the last day of our outreach to the working groups.  Tomorrow is an “us” day.  We’re going on a safari.  There’s no telling what the wi-fi situation will be, but I can’t imagine it being much better than here at the hotel (and that wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped).

I have just uploaded another longish half-baked blog post which I will have to expand on later.  Between the availability of wi-fi, jet lag and just plain being busy here, I have not been able to blog as much as I’d hoped, BUT there will be more posts, either as I travel or when we get home.

(Oh, this is fun: as I type this, sitting in the courtyard of the guest house, under an umbrella, it’s starting to rain a little bit, in spite of the fact that this a dry season.  Hopefully it won’t drive me indoors.)

(Blogging fast before supper while chatting w/co-missioneers.  I’ll probably have to clean this up/amend it later.)

We met our group today, and I took some videos and a photosphere of their church.  Unfortunately, the hotel wi-fi is idiosyncratic and I’ll have to upload the pictures tomorrow.

These kids have experienced Bad Stuff, and this is their second year (of a three-year program), but the speed at which they have taken off is incredible.  All they needed was a lift, and they have this to say to us, our congregation:

Thank you, University UMC, for your support and your prayers.  Please know that we are so grateful and we have been praying and will continue to pray for you.

(I’m paraphrasing a bit.)

Continue reading Today we visited our Working Group! →

… with pictures taken on our way up.

After a 9-hour trip on paved roads, including a rather spectacular lunch, we have arrived at a beautiful guest house in Maua.  It is seemingly tucked away on a back street, although, probably, many of the streets in Maua will probably seem like back streets to my unaccustomed eye.

Continue reading Arrived in Maua →

July 2 (midnight, local time)

Well, we arrived in Nairobi, at what seems to be a nice hotel that is not a Holiday Inn (and definitely doesn’t have that corporate American hotel feel).

We’ve been traveling for 26 hours, including a 6-hour flight from Philadelphia to London, and an 8-hour flight from London to Nairobi.

Reegan (pronounced as if it were spelled “Reagan”), the director of the program here in Kenya, met us at the airport, along with two of his staff, Caroline and Perpetual.  (Perpetual is his communications director.)

The weather here is in the 60s (and not particularly high 60s, either), a very welcome change from the heat of North Carolina.

Reegan told us of the honor that ZOE received just today, but I may have to type it up later.

I was mistaken. (It’s pronounced “Ma-ooh-ah”, I think.)

http://goo.gl/maps/nKTSu

“What will you eat?” is a question I’ve fielded a few times now.  I have no idea.  We’ll be staying in a guest house in Meru (I think), and eating morning and evening meals there.  It’s said to be very good, but I don’t know what it will be.

However, I did find this, in our documentation:

The staple diet of the Meru include rice, Ugali (white corn polenta), potatoes, beans and bananas. In the morning, most families will have tea with or without milk and sugar.