Friday, September 14, 2007
September 13, 2007
We made it!
Kenya is beautiful, mostly because of the people. We arrived only yesterday but I already feel encouraged and blessed by the graciousness of the SP staff, and the Kenyan people in general. Teresa and I arrived in Nairobi after 26 hours of problem free traveling and were met by Raymond, the extremely jovial SP Guest Relations guy. He drove us, white-knuckled, to the Nairobi SP guest house and office, and since then we’ve met many of the local staff as well as a number of missionaries and national pastors. The people are wonderful, and if the rest of Kenya is a friendly as the people we’ve met in the last two days, then we will be really really blessed.
Some exciting news: Today we met our fellow Kenyan inters who we’ll be working and living with for the next five months. Their names are Winny and Judy and we’ll be working together in Kwale district to install BioSand Water Filters and do the health and hygiene program in the villages. I was nervous about meeting them, but everything went fine, and we had fun together today. Winny studied marketing and is very good-humoured, and Judy is a counseling and community development major and is quite, thoughtful, and I think, super smart. Both have grown up in middle class families in Nairobi, and haven’t spent any significant time in rural Kenya, so village life will be a big change for them too. I’m praying that we’ll develop strong relationships over the next few weeks and be able to form a good team – we have some huge challenges ahead of us!
The SP Kenya office is also the headquarters for SP Sudan, so I’ve had a chance to talk to Sudan field staff staying at the guest house and around the office. Their work is so challenging: all the churches in the country have been destroyed by the war, so SP is working on a church reconstruction program there. We also met two pastors from Maasai Mara, who lead a church for the Maasai people. One of them told us that his wife and their son are on the way home from Illinois, where SP sent their son for heart surgery (this is the Children’s Heart Project). He said the operation went well and he was excited for their homecoming. It was cool to hear this good news.
Well, that’s all for now. We’re only in Nairobi for a few more days and then we’ll fly to Mombasa to meet the project staff for the Household Water Program. There was a tsunami warning for the Kenyan coast yesterday, so if you think of us, please ask to God to keep the tsunamis away!
Take care everybody,
taya
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Hey its chris. Kenya sounds like a great opurtunity for you.i wish i could see it. You really have a gift with helping people in need, seriously i cant even remember a time that you werent helping anyone.keep it up. ive got to go so il blog you later.
cya,
chris honch
Taya,
Thanks for the update. Glad to hear you made it safely. You are on an exciting journey and I know that God will use you! You are in my prayers.
Love,
Julia