Kenya via Jordan

Today was such a simple, yet great day. After our normal morning routine of waking up, eating, and cleaning up, Bre, Alice, and I walked over to Oasis and began our day. Alice helped to take pictures of some of the kids and put those together with their interviews and then input them into the computer. Bre and I each went to different classes and helped to teach. I helped to correct some English (they were working on opposites and the different forms of to, too, and two and when each are used) and then helped teach and correct long division problems.

I have never found teaching to be one of my gifts, but it was so fun to see all the kids participating and getting so excited about understanding the problems and shouting out the right answers.

After class, the kids had break which consisted of us playing jump rope, swinging the kids around, and otherwise just hanging out. It also consisted of Bre accidentally letting out a dog which then proceeded to chase all the kids around while they laughed and screamed until Julius caught the dog and tied her to a stake in the corner of the campus. After that break, the kids had Bible class and during that Bre and I sat and talked with Leila and Manu (Emmanuel) about the cultural differences between Kenya and America while Alice kept on with inputting the children’s info.

After Bible class the kids had another break and shortly after that lunch was served to all the students. It was SO cool to see how efficiently the center manages to feed all these kids.

Look at just this portion of the line for food:

But the entire line was had received their meal in about 5-7 minutes! It was so cool to see this because these are kids who, if it were not for Oasis, would be begging for bread, avoiding beatings from the security guards, and otherwise just trying to get by and stay alive. But at Oasis, these kids are receiving education, vocational training, food, and genuine love and relationships. It is SUCH a beautiful thing to watch and be a part of.

Peter enjoying lunch in his awesome blazer

Michael is digging in to his githeri

After lunch, Bre, Alice, and I walked back home to eat lunch  and rest up. After that Bre and Alice went to Boys’ House #2 to do some tutoring. You can see pictures from that at Alice’s blog. As for me, Alice started a conversation between Geoffrey and me to begin working on designing a new website for Oasis of Hope and so I spent my afternoon and evening working on that. It was so awesome to be able to use one of my God-given gifts for ministry like that. Here is a sneak peak of the up and coming redesign. (You can click on it for a bigger version)

Thanks for reading!

Peace and love,
J

Hello again everyone!

Here is my first attempt at a more readable (read: smaller) blog post about my experiences here in Kitale. Today we woke up and got ready and were picked up by Richard, Sister Freda’s husband, to visit the school, hospital, and other facilities that Sister Freda and her staff run.

For those who don’t know, Sister Freda runs a free hospital out here in Kitale. By free, I mean that people can pay whatever they can afford, even if it means nothing, to receive the care and medicine that they need. Anything from childbirth to surgery, vaccines to malaria treatment, it is all covered here. She also runs a school and feeding program for neighboring children as well as has a traveling clinic where she and some staff travel to towns further away that cannot walk to her hospital to provide health care.

They are also building a nursing school to train more nurses to help around her facilities. Lastly, they have tens of acres of various crops that are used primarily to feed the children, and secondly to sell to raise funds to run their other facilities (in addition to donations).

It was so amazing to see all that Sister Freda and her staff are doing for so many people free of charge. It really hits home for me because with all of the talk about universal health care in the States, I really feel that the Church has such an awesome opportunity to step up and fill the need like Sister Freda has.

When we first got to the compound, we visited the children at the school.

Elia!

Unfortunately, there were so many kids and not a whole lot of time before they got called in for porridge and class, but there was one little girl who absolutely stole my heart. This girl was Dot.

Alice holding Dot

Dot is the cutest little girl I think I have ever seen in my entire life. She didn’t say a word to any of us, though she made a few noises, but she was calm and just loved to be held. You could try and try to make her smile or laugh and she never would, but occasionally she would let out a big smile for seemingly no reason.

Dot came to Sister Freda’s extremely malnourished. Sister Freda actually described her as being unrecognizable as even a human because she was so tiny. She lives at Freda’s compound and has been being taken care of and although still tiny, she is now doing much better and growing healthily. After we hung out with all of the kids, Richard took us on a walk around all of the acres of crops and we took Dot along with us. I took quite a few pictures of her hoping that maybe I could capture part of the reason I loved her so much for everyone reading along.

She was absolutely adorable and I loved having her on the walk with us. After our walk around the premises, we went and ate lunch with Freda and Richard (black beans, rice, and potatoes – there were also two meat dishes which I passed on). Freda then had to run and take care of other things and Richard took us home after the brief rainstorm passed.

I got to catch up on blogging and reading and some Youtube watching (go there and search “boy sees lobster for first time” for a good laugh) and then Alice made us some delicious buttered noodles with corn. After which, our Kenyan friend Leila who lives with us informed Alice that she would be making dinner from here on out.

So now it is almost time for bed and another busy day tomorrow! My closing note for everyone is that always remember:

Peace and love,
J

First off, let me just say that I am very happy with the alliterative quality of this post’s title. Secondly, let me apologize in advance for this long-winded post. I have some serious catching up to do, but from here on out plan to do much more regular, and bite-sized posts. But now on to the real reason you are probably reading this blog: Kenya updates! (more…)