January 23, 2015

Life in Africa!

We are now two weeks into our trip and I can't believe how much we have already been able to accomplish! We have painted the school house, rearranged the kid's room, made a new study room as well as a sewing room! We have had the opportunity to meet many new friends and without fail are invited over to their homes for a unique meal. It is amazing the hospitality these people have shown us! I love being here and building new friendships!

In my opinion the best part of being here so far is being able to love on these beautiful children. We get to play soccer with them, give them as many hugs as possible, tell them Bible stories, let them play with our hair, color with them for hours, and so many other fun things! I have loved to get to know them and each of their unique personalities! Christina and I have now gotten countless lessons in Swahili from the children. At times, we feel like they are our little children! It definitely has been AWESOME!

We have made friends with our bodyguard (Griffin) and his friend Pastor Tony. It has been a blast hanging out with them and meeting their families! Pastor Tony has a church out in a very remote area called Kituni. There he has a feeding program for about 120 children that are mostly orphaned children. They stood in line patiently to get some rice and beans and the saddest part of it all is that they were only getting ONE meal on Monday's, Wednesday's, and Friday's! That means they were getting only THREE meals a WEEK! Well after seeing that Vic (the man who began the orphanage that we are at) decided that his organization could pull together some money and pay for 2 more days a week! Now those children are getting five meals total a week! One of the days, we got the opportunity to go and help with feeding the children and we were able to sit and sing with the kids (they didn't know English very well) and they ended up braiding all of our hair! It was a mind blowing and emotionally draining day. I'm excited to go back there again and show the Jesus film and love on those kids!

In the upcoming weeks a team from America is coming and helping here, we will be heading to Uganda for a few days, going to Kitale, visiting new churches, showing the Heaven is for Real film, and lots of fun activities with the kids.

This is just a short update as I am still trying to gather all of my thoughts on all I have seen and all that I'm learning! I truly appreciate your prayers and encouragement! I will try to continue to update my blog in the coming weeks!

“Serving God is not a matter of location, but a matter of obedience” -Nik Ripken-