So Far in Kenya!

Since this is the first time I've been able to blog, I'll try and catch every on up on what's been happening since I left Rocky Mount on Monday Morning.

We flew out of Raleigh to Detroit (1.5 hours), From Detroit we flew to Amsterdam (7 hours). from Amsterdam to Kenya (8 hours). If you've never sat on an airplane for 16.5 hours I certainly don't recommend it. Your butt gets sore! We arrived at the hotel at 10:00 (3:00 your time) on Tuesday. I had my first frisking at security leaving Amsterdam. They said it was done randomly, but it was gross anyway. I won't go into details here.

The first day we didn't get started until after lunch because we had an orientation meeting in the morning. We went to Langata Women's Remand Prison. This is a prison where they've been arrested, but not tried. They don't know when they will be tried either. Some have been there for years. If they have children under 5 they keep their children with them. We had someone on our team preach a message and give an invitation. We think about 35-40 prayed to receive salvation. At the same time, we had a team that went to the regular Langata Women's Prison and do the same thing. I think they had 25 to be saved. The third team when to Kiambu Prison to do eye clinics. Those are set up so that you see the doctor, and if needed receive glasses and they you have to listen to the gospel message. They had about 58 saved.

There are 20 of us so each day we're divided into 3 teams. We are covering a lot more territory that way. Today my team went to 3 places. This morning we went to 2 primary schools. Now these schools I would guess had to be around 50 years old or more. The children all have to wear uniforms and each school is different. The first one had over 700 students. They sang songs for us and then listened while a couple of us did an object lesson. We handed out booklets to most of them until we ran out. The kids in this school were not very well behaved and were a little roudy, but they did appreciate us coming.

The second school is the school that Gateway International Missions has adopted. About 650 kids here. Again the school is very old but the kids don't seem to mind. I'm comparing it to what we have in the states, so they don't know any better. This group also sang for us. Then the kids who have sponsers ($10.00 a month sponsers a child) came forward and thanked us for all the work we've done and sang a special song for us. These children were much better behaved and we really felt a lot of love in the school. The head mistress is a christian and really loves the children and they love her. We did another object lesson and one on our team did a mini-sermon type message for them. He made it fun by playing a game with them to keep there attention. One of the team members had sponsered a child so she was able to actually meet her child and brought her a gift. This particular school went up to eighth grade. We learned that they have a mid morning snack of porridge (which they missed this morning because we were there) and lunch is maize and beans (every day). Sounds real appetizing. But in some cases it could be all they get.

Finally after a quick snack lunch (I had nuts) we went to the Nairobi West Prison. Now I've been to 2 prisons and both have been relatively clean. But I found out at dinner tonight that hasn't been the case with the other teams, so I feel like my time is coming. The one we went to today was a men's prison but the "Officer in Charge" is a women. She's been there for 3 years and has really turned the place around. New bunk houses, etc. Very clean and well kept. The one thing I have noticed here is they don't have much, but what they do have they keep up very well. This prison had gardens planted between the bunk houses and the grounds themselves all had beautiful flowers. This is a medium security prison. We saw about 200 today. We all had a chance to speak, but there was one main speaker. When we gave out the booklets at the end the women on the team had to stay on the platform. They are always looking out for our safety. The hard part about speaking is having a translater. Most of them understand some English, but they speak mainly Swahili. So when you speak you have to stop and let the translator speak.

Tomorrow I'm headed to a Girls and a Boys Rehab Center. This is like our juvenille hall. Kids that can't be controlled. In the afternoon we're off to another prison.

I haven't taken many pictures because we have one person taking pictures at each location. I tried to get some of them tonight to upload, but it didn't work. So'll I try again tomorrow.

I've learned a few words in Swahili. White people are called wazingos. At the very first place we went on Wednesday there were about 15 kids at a primary school located on prison property that kept calling for the wazingos to come and take their picture. They were so cute.

Tomorrow I'll share a little about what I've seen of Nairobi. Quite an interesting place.
Until then ...