A Day with Children and their Families

This morning we met with Bishop Kamau to finalize our safari plans and booked 2 nights at a lodge in Maasai Mara. We head there next Monday for 2 days and we’re pretty excited about it! Then we bought and packaged food for 5 very poor families and took off to Cornerstone Ndeiya, one of their 30 sister churches planted in Kenya. The church was about 45 minutes drive outside of Nairobi and the country was beautiful! They have a preschool for the children (4-6 years old) in the area who are orphans, living with guardians (usually Grandmothers) or whose families can’t afford school. We got there right as they were having lunch; ugali and greens. All I can say is that these children are stinkin’ adorable!

The church sent along bags of clothes for the children and they let Ryana and I present shirts to the kids. I was playing peek-a-boo with the little guy as I put on his shirt!

They sang songs for us and they loved the bubble gun we brought and were total hams for Lanae’s camera.

They let the children out early from school since it was Friday and we crammed 5 children and 4 adult teachers into our van. We visited the families of these 5 children and I was totally humbled by their homes and the simple way they live. The mothers were gracious and appreciative of the food and I got to pray for each of the families and bless them and their homes. Below are 3 of the children we took home, one of the moms and me presenting the food gifts to another mom. The last is of a young girl doing laundry in a wheel barrel - everything here is done by hand! And behind her is her home, built with a frame of sticks then filled with mud.

They live in tiny one room shacks with dirt floors and tin and scrap wood held together with nails. They have very few possessions and moms are struggling to raise their children in these conditions. One mom shared with us a traditional meal of beans and corn which she had just prepared. She washed the utensils by rinsing with a cup of water and put them in the food dish. So we prayed that we wouldn’t get sick and we tasted her Kenyan meal. It was quite good!

It was an amazing day spent with the children and their families. I have so much respect for what this church is doing for their people. And of course I want to help them care for the children.

We were covered with red dust from walking through the red soil all afternoon; we returned to our hotel, tired, dusty and happy.

We had delicious pizza in the restaurant and relaxed in the hotel until bed time. We finally figured out how to use the showers. There is a heater switch that you have to turn on to get hot water. We didn’t know that, so our first showers were very invigorating with cold water! Sure was nice to discover hot water tonight!