Kenya, Kenya, Kenya

I’ve been home from Kenya for a few weeks now. It has been quite the whirlwind around the office, our team came back, a team from the Colorado Springs office arrived, and volunteers for another trip out of our office (with Janet) arrived. Most have returned to the States after their project trips in Mbale, Uganda, and Masaka, Uganda.

The Kenya trip was incredible! Though each project trip has been different, and exciting, l’d say this one was my favorite so far. Miracle House has a beautiful vision for their 10 acre piece of land, and the first few days we jumped right into the design of the master plan.

The vision includes a children’s home, school, vocational centre, dining hall, staff housing, guest housing, a chapel, and agricultural plots, for sustaining the occupants and also for practical training in farming. This will take a lot of time to make it a reality, but the ministry plans to start the first Children’s Home this year, and get the children moved in as soon as possible.

Our team was lead by Brad, and Jaclyn, Travis, and I came from the office. Four volunteers joined us from the states: Jason, Casey, Roger, and Elisa. The founders of Miracle House, Dan and Deanna, joined us, as well as Andy and Pastor Sammy.

We were staying at a very nice guest house, and every day we would have breakfast in the dining hall as a team. One morning after breakfast, when we getting ready to start the work day, we realized that sometime between Jaclyn and I going down late to breakfast, and Brad leaving early, we’d been robbed.

Our rooms were locked, but each door had a skeleton key, so it was very easy to pick. We had actually seen the thieves the night before-they had checked in around 9, stayed the night, knew when we were going to breakfast, and took the opportunity to break into three different rooms, and walked out the front gate with 3 laptops, our office projector, an ipod, wallet, my cell phone, and about $800 cash.

Jaclyn and I were lucky enough to have our ipods, passports, and wallets hidden away in my suitcase, but both of our laptops, my phone, and about $25 I had in Kenyan shillings in my purse were stolen.

We also had the office travel printer in my room, and the case was open, but nothing was missing, and my camera was moved from the top of my suitcase to a bed by the door, which makes me think they had been spooked and ran without taking it. I am very grateful for that.

Brad and a few of the other guys went out to look for the thieves, thinking they couldn’t have gone far in such a short amount of time, but they were probably already on a taxi to Nairobi.

We still had a few laptops left, so after a prayer meeting, we buckled down, figured out who could do what without a computer, and really started working hard. It was so good to see the team bond and come together even though such an awful thing had happened.

Later that day we were able to go out as a team to the project site, and met, ate lunch, and played with some of the orphans we were designing for. That definitely took my mind off losing a silly little laptop; God is so good at showing the big picture when we need it most.

Even though a bad thing happened, I am still glad I went on the trip. I had so much fun with all of the team members, I wished they could have all come back to work in the Kampala office! We managed to get what was needed done, despite having to share computer time. And, just for the record, I’m completely fine. I find myself laughing at all the crazy things that I’ve experienced.

Keep praying for me, that I would use my time here wisely, to draw closer to God, and to learn more about myself. And pray for our office, that we would stay safe, productive, and focused on the Lord. Thank you so much for thinking of us here, your prayers and thoughts mean the world to us!

The Interns are Here!

Last Wednesday, the new set of interns finally arrived! Kyle, David, Jaclyn, Travis, and Peter will be in the office here in Kampala, and Danny, TJ, Jack, and Jang Won will be in Jinja. The night before they came I was so worried that I would oversleep (it’s a bit of a trend) and miss picking them up from the airport, my anxiety woke me up every hour. I did get up on time, and I could empathize, on a small scale, with their jet-lag!

On the way back from the airport, we stopped at an eMi project site, Music for Life. Steve Hoyt, the construction manager and eMi staff, led us on a tour through the site. The project is a primary school for the African Children’s Choir. (I think they sang at Kearney E-Free, small world!)

The rest of the week was orientation: cultural discussion, touring town, getting familiar with the Kansanga neighborhood, and office orientation. We also had a ‘service day’ when we dropped off the Jinja guys. We helped Phil Greene, who just came on staff with eMi this summer, and is working as the construction manager for a project called Mto Moyoni, a retreat and counseling center. We dug foundation trenches, and bent rebar and stirrups for concrete columns (doing both without machines). It was a lot of work, and I was sore for quite a few days after, but I really enjoyed doing it.

This week Jaclyn, Brad, and I have been preparing for the upcoming trip, the boys surveyed a site for a small in-house project, and Janet, the Bergs, and Travis, went to Kapchorwa, following up on a water project done by eMi in February 2008. Paul will be working on this for his 10 month stay.

A few volunteers are flying into Uganda today, and we will meet a few others in Kenya. We leave tomorrow early, 4 AM, and will go by bus to Nakuru, which will take about 10 hours. We will be designing an orphanage, for a ministry called Miracle House, which currently has two day schools in Kenya. They have 55 children attending the schools, but all of them are living in slums. The ministry wants to move the children to full time care at the new center in Nakuru. Pray for safety, community, and understanding between our team and the ministry. It is going to be a great trip!