Update #5

We are rockin' and rollin' in the van en route to home and right into
planning for tomorrow. It is funny that we plan every night. Things
change so quickly and so often. We were told to prepare for that, and
believe me, they weren't kidding. God bless Jill and her leadership with the
VBS this afternoon. How many kids, how many teachers, what we are
doing when and for how long must have changed a dozen times from last night
right up to the moment we opened our mouths to teach. Actually, even
while we were teaching. Monica and I were doing games after the bible
lesson as one of three groups rotating activities. It was hilarious. The
amount of time we had for each activity changed every 2 minutes! If it
weren't so funny, and we weren't having so much fun, and weren't doing
it for the Lord, or we weren't in Africa right now....we'd probably
cry. LOL. But let me back track and take you to the start of our day...

Wednesday, August 13th
7:30am Breakfast. Boiled white sweet potatoes, pineapple so sweet and
juicy I can taste it right now just thinking of it, buttered bread, and
a green pepper and tomato omelet. Um, um, UM...was that ever good!
Everyone raved about the omelet. It was cooked well on both sides and
reminded me of Egg Foo Young, and home.

8:30 off to work! We met in the chapel for morning devotion and praise.
Some older children joined in as well as the mothers who would be
working side by side with us. As soon as worship was over, it was snack
time. What?  We just had breakfast! Oh, but it's those triple decker jam
and butter sandwiches. Well, we do eat lunch very late, will be working
very hard, and do need our sustenance. I talked myself into one. :o)
Then Jeff took us group by group to our designated work stations. I was
gardening the first day along with Hillary, Pat, Danielle, Lauren and 7
or 8 project moms. We worked in a 25'x25' fenced in area filled with
debris, weeds and rocks.  Let me say this...Lauren is an animal with
African garden tools. None of us knew what we were doing and we all were
given lessons on how to hold and swing the tools (some of us more than
once), but Lauren was swinging that thing and didn't stop! We all worked
hard to do what they said and wanted., but there was quite a bit of
giggling going on from those on the sidelines and the cute little children
peering over the fence. The moms did it with such ease and even with
babies on their backs. Low and behold, we got it done! We cleared the
junk, loosened the soil, dug trenches and made seeding rows. I pulled a
mom over at one point and asked her a few questions about this whole
process. She shared that they start working in the gardens at 8 or 9 years
old. By 10 they are skilled at it, and it becomes their assigned duty.
What really blew me away though was how they water. When I asked how,
she answered nonchalantly, "We go to da reeva." "Well, how far is the
river?" I asked. "Maybe about one and a half kilometers", she answered.
"One way. There is one person who travels to the river to get water.
She goes 3 kilometers 5 times in the morning AND 5 times in the evening
so they can grow their crops." Wow. What do we have to be thankful for
at home? Hmm. Let me start counting.

When we completed the garden for the day, we wandered past the painting
crew. Monica looked like she was having a ball up there with an
African mom partner. Then onto watching Jared and Marshan being tortured, I
mean working, (just kidding) doing the deep seed holes. These are some
monster seed holes. 2'x2'x2', lined with rock which they had to crack
through to create the cube-shaped planting hole. Each will house 9
plants. They had chugged along all morning and after having about 50 of these
things dug were told they hadn't even started.  Not deep enough. Get
digging. All said with a big warm smile! LOL! No one said it would be
easy work. The next moment I looked up and Jared had his tool in 2
pieces! It broke. See how hard they are working!  Finally Jared and Marshan
moved down to the machete weed chopping area and I grabbed a tool and
joined in where they left off. Everyone (all the Africans) got a good
kick out of my efforts in there, but I just smiled, cracked a couple of
jokes they didn't understand and kept digging. Finally I got into a
groove where I partnered with a mom (with baby, of course) who flew through
those rocks with her pick and then I would shovel out the debris after
her. We were jammin' and then it was lunchtime. Darn! ;o) Meanwhile,
however, we bring our attention to the dam. From what I hear, the boys
and girls over there worked HARD swingin' that machete! Kenny, Jon and
Delos (by the way, that's what I call my husband, Donn) were up in the
trees pulling the branches down while their compatriots slashed away
until they fell the entire tree. At one point, an African grandmother came
up and shoved a big ole' root into Delos, indicating that he should eat
it. He looked at her quizzically but she persisted. So he took a bite.
She would not give up until he had eaten every single bite. Now you
must understand that this is a man who, as a child, had a completely
different meal cooked for him apart from the family's. We are talking PICKY
eater! I tasted a bite of another "casabo" Delos brought for us to
take home to the boys as part of our ancient African studies, and he
wasn't exaggerating. It's pretty awful.  Imagine the starchiest, most
bitter, dry, raw potato possible, and you are almost at how bad this root
actually tastes.  He ate at least 4 inches, with a 2 inch diameter. I
think he deserves some great kudos for  maintaining respect for their
culture.  
Lunch: goat stew, cabbage salad, mashed potatoes/greenbeans/peas,
chiapatti. 

After lunch some headed to their original posts (dam/seed holes) and
the rest headed to VBS. We had no idea what to expect, but at least we
had prepared our teams of teachers in 5 sets of two. We were given 3 very
long (for children....well, for American children) bible verses to
have them read aloud, 3 fill-in-the-blanks and one short memory verse.
 The theme was "faith". In all, it was about 15-20 mins of work if I were
teaching at home. They sent us on our way with that and said' "you've
got 45 minutes to teach." 45 mins for a 20 minute lesson? Okay. Time to
be flexible and creative. We arrived happily, ready to go into our 5
groups. Oops. They are in 3 groups. Okay everybody....regroup! Hillary
and Jill grab Pat. Danielle, Lauren and Jenny were a trio and so Cindy,
Monica and I buddied up. We let Bill off the hook (he was supposed to be
my partner) to prepare for his sermon at the open air crusade tonight.
 We walked into over 50 shining faces with bright eyes filled with
apprehension over what they were about to experience. Cindy leaned into me
and asked, "So how do you wanna do this?"  I offered to do the
introductions and get us started if she would lead off the bible verses read
out loud by the students. Monica kept the engine running smoothly to
make sure the students all had the right supplies and were given a candy
for volunteering (how they do it here). So I started doing what I do
best: geography! LOL!  Yep! I introduced the 3 of us, had them repeat our
names out loud after writing them on the board and proceeded to draw
the continent of Africa on the board too. I asked for a volunteer to tell
me which continent that was. "Africa!" One young boy called out.  A
response!!! Now we were getting somewhere. I continued geography by
adding Kenya, the Atlantic, America and then California. They were
gangbusters...until CA. Voila! A lesson learned.  Now they know where CA is too!
Yea! A win! A small one, but a win nonetheless.   That said, we moved
onto bible verse read alouds. Cindy initiated that and we did our best
to encourage the children to be comfortable and read loudly and
clearly. One little girl was so soft spoken that she probably read 15 verses
before Cindy (thank heavens)noticed that she was in the wrong chapter!
So she began again, and all was well. I walked among the children and
asked silently, "Lord, how can we take your words off the page, make them
personal and pour them into these students' hearts?" I don't know how
successful we were, but I do know that they soaked in what the Lord
wanted them to. It was really a somewhat scary time for me on some levels,
wanting to do the right things in the right ways, but also a special
time, in getting to know some of the children by name. I now feel a
special bond with one beautiful little girl, Elizabeth. So sweet. I can see
special relationships building all around me.  The children did a
wonderful job on their memory verse. They filled in the blanks nicely and
then did a little craft in which they drew a card which on the outside
said "I pray for_____", and     on the inside "I pray ____", indicating
where they pray with a drawing to reflect that place. From there, it
was onto the activities. Here is where we were just a weensy bit
stretched. Again. Within about 5 minutes we got several different directives on
how much time we had. 40 mins, 20 mins, no, make it 15. Nope back to
20. At some point in there Monica and I said, okie dokie...let's just
get on with it and stop when we're told to. Boy was I excited about this
activity! While teaching kids acting classes in the states, there is
always one game which every kid just eats up and never wants to
stop...Zip, Zap, Zop!  Its a game of speed, focus and concentration. News flash:
Zip Zap Zop was a Flip Flap Flop! You need eye contact to do this
game, and that just was NOT going to happen. So we tried an ABC hand game
which Lauren suggested as a plan 'B'. Negative. That one was a no-go
too. So what was plan 'C'?  What they wanted me to do in the first
place...Duck, Duck, Goose...with high schoolers. You couldn't have paid me to
believe that 50 high schoolers would enjoy duck duck goose. They didn't
enjoy it. They LOVED it. They smiled, laughed, ran and were so engaged
for a long time. We sat in wonderment. Then Monica and I thought we'd
try relay races. All was going super well...right to the last pair when
Monica (who partook in the race) completely biffed it on some rocks.
 She was not hurt, just feeling a tad goofy. It was one of those totally
slow motion trips, you know what I mean? She is still laughing about
it a day later. What a memory! Well it had been a long day, we were hot,
filthy and pooped. So now it's time to all pile into the vans
for....our first open air crusade! WooHoo! I have heard of OAC's but had never
actually participated in one, as this is my first mission trip. I had
all kinds of images, fears, excitement and insecurities about how this
evening might unfold. We were en route when the vans all stopped because
of a broken down cart attached to 3 Donkeys. I went out to join Cindy,
Cristin and Laurin to take a picture with the Donkeys.  After a while
I asked why we can't just go around the Donkeys? It looked to me like
we had enough room. "Why? Because we are here", someone informed me.
 Here?  Where?  There were about 6 empty clay structures around us, a few
people walking by and a big dirt road. That's it.   Well, wouldn't you
know it, little by little people started walking into "town", some with
benches on their heads, a table shows up with a keyboard on it, and
suddenly there are speakers...one in the road, the other in the tree.
Soon there are maybe 150 Kenyans standing, singing and praying. Voila! We
have an open air crusade all right! There were 2 dialects and English
spoken. We did our Lifehouse Everything Skit, praise God, they got it!
They oo'd and ah'd with embarrassment when Jen and Kenny portrayed
sexual abuse and laughed with Laurin's drunk. When Delos came in as God and
blocked all the sins from Jenn the clapped and cheered. When all the
sins were tossed aside to die by him, they roared. It was great. The
choir members sang beautifully, Pat shared a very courageous testimony and
Bill preached a salvation message. Finally, the church ladies did a
Congo line dance which we eventually joined into. You should have seen
Jared dancing down at the other end. Priceless.  Such a ball!  Then Jenn
and Ana broke   out the bubbles for the children to catch and a few of
us danced with the project moms. What a glorious way to cap off a day in
the field.

Dinner: chopped kale, mashed potatos, goat stew, orange slices,
chiapatti

Debrief: we shared about our feelings throughout the day. Most feeling
inadequacies and wanting to do more, without knowing how. Shared
perspectives and encouragement. What will we bring back home from this? What
is our theme, how and what is God trying to work through each of us?

Thursday, Aug 14

Back at the projects. The truck the tractor was being brought in on
broke down. Now the tractor has to drive itself to us. Won't make it here
for quite some time. The Dam folks became deep seed hole workers. Lucky
them. :o) The painters work looks great. The drab gray building is now
white with a red bottom and an angular simple design. Today a stripe
will be painted up high, and the window "specialist" is slated to arrive
to install them and ready them for painting. We in the garden
(Danielle, Pat and I) have completed our task, Praise God!  It is SO awesome
looking at our garden with neat little rows, walking pathways and 2 types
of seedlings growing in there. The work in there was hard, utilizing
unfamiliar tools, but when it came time to water, they went so easy on
us. I saw one mom carrying 2 huge buckets of water at once, yet they
give us maybe 2 inches at a time. I said , "more please. I can carry
more". The water guy said "yes", smiled at me and gave me 3 inches of water.
So the next go around I went over to where the moms got the water and
filled my buckets high. Then my homeboy Robert, a dad who speaks no
English, but had a ball teaching me Swahili came running over and via much
grunting and sign language told me that I cannot use that water. It is
for drinking only. 10 minutes later I saw everyone lined up there
getting the drinking water for the garden. The big tank ran out. (Big
smile) Welcome to our world.

The deep seed hole crew worked SO hard. Aching muscles and joints
abound. Delos' entire shirt was dripping with sweat so much, I thought he
had poured a bucket of water over himself. When everyone else was done,
he kept going. He did over 50 of those things on his own. Ana, our
resident doctor, was concerned about his health and told him to stop, but he
wouldn't. Later in the day, after lunch, he could barely walk. The
next thing I knew, while we were playing Dodgeball with the kids, he was
right in there with them. "I can't sit this one out. It's the boys
against the girls!". I guess that brings us to afternoon VBS. As we were
having lunch, the amount of time we had to do VBS fluctuated several times
until 10 minutes was settled upon.  10 minutes?!?!?  Jill asked gently
if we may forgo the curriculum they provided and utilize the Abeka
bible study reading cards I brought along. It was a go!  300 children
walked en masse up to the classrooms, 3 of which carrying requested chairs
upon their heads. After a moment of confusion, we got the 300 children
seated on the ground in front of the 3 chairs. 2 were for volunteers to
hold the card, 1 for me to read the Jesus Feeds 5 Thousand story
aloud.      You could hear a pin drop. These children are so well-behaved
and attentive, it's unbelievable. We prayed before and after, and recited
a poem asking Jesus into our hearts to finish off. All went well, so
we were onto activities. I am not certain what game Danielle's group was
doing, but Cindy and Laurin's did relay races which were very popular.
Monica and I had Dodgeball. Do they ever like that. Soon enough Jill
and Hillary informed us that we would do one giant game of Dodgeball
with every kid there! 150 in the middle, 150 in a circle! Wow! Was that
ever a blast. We ended with a hilarious round of 300 kids outside and all
of us inside with 1 project mom!  Laurin made it down to the wire with
the project mom, who in the end  


Dinner: kidney, liver and heart stew (probably from the goat we've been
eating the past few days! Boiled pumpkin, rice pilaf, tomato salad,
sliced oranges, chiapatti.

Breakfast: taro root, Mambo cake (sweet white, kind of like a dry pound
cake), watermelon.