Man, our last week of our first month. Can you believe it? Sarah and
Lucas, our squad leaders, came in on Saturday to spend the rest of this
month with us. They travel to each team, for a week or so at a time,
the 4 months they are with us, to check up on how we are doing and help
guide us. The day they came was our big goodbye celebration for the
church, since we wouldn’t be there this Sunday, and the day we
slaughtered our goat, Mr. Tumnus. We had a big feast and had a great
time catching up on what the other teams were doing and how Sarah and
Lucas are, so fun. Kevin’s team came in earlier this week to work at
their contacts orphanage in Busia. I was SO excited to see that team, I
absolutely love everyone on that team 🙂 Leah, my little soul sister,
and I got a good 5 minutes amidst the craziness of catching up, cooking
‘brinner’ (breakfast for dinner) and feasting, to catch up and it was
awesome.
Today Lilli’s team is coming in and we are all moving out to another
household that can fit our entire squad. This house is the one the
other team’s used to use, but since we are so small, we are the first
team to stay in Pastor Gideon’s household and not the other one. The
pastor Lilli’s team has been working with is a ‘spiritual son’ of our
pastor. Pastor Gideon was actually the one to marry him and his wife.
Then, tomorrow the entire squad will be traveling to Busia, Kenya…
can’t wait to see everyone and to show them around our little home
town!!
We visited the street kids again. Handed out clothing to as many of
them as we could (we had donated some ourselves, the pastor’s family
gave some and we bought a few). The church was asked on Sunday to
donate more clothing and this Sunday they will be collecting clothing,
then heading out next week to clothe the rest of the boys. We also got
mandazi, a sort of not-super-sweet doughnut, for them and cooked even
more chai and brought it to them yesterday morning. We found that lots
of the boys sold the clothing we had given them, but that’s okay. They
need money to buy food and to survive. It was frustrating at first, but
everything I can do to help them is to love them, grace and love;
getting frustrated or mad does not fall into that category.
Actually, (warning: tangent), God has been showing me this a lot lately,
grace and love. More than just showing me His, but showing me how to
show love and to give grace to others the way he has with us. Sean
Smithchamp (sp?) spoke at launch about grace and love and it really
struck a chord with me. He was saying that God sees us without time, he
sees us from where we were to where we are going. He doesn’t just say
“oh fool, look how you’ve messed up”, he says “oh daughter, you are on a
long journey to getting to know me and be like me. You’ve messed up, I
see this and I give you my grace. I love you, keep coming”. THIS is
how we should be to each other. Someone messed up? Isn’t being an
awesome amazing Christian right now? Well they are on the same journey
you are. Grace and Love. Keep coming.
Anyways, I’ve been loving on those little street kids and the Lord has
really been laying them on my heart. I know He has called me back to
Africa and I’ve been feeling lately that I will be coming back to Busia
to help with these street kids once again (don’t freak out mom! :D) We
haven’t been to see Adhiambo again, just those two times, and I’m not
sure if we will be able to, because of time, unfortunately! Pastor
Gideon and Mama will be taking care of her. Florence, one of the youths
we have been working with from the church, already is taking care of a
few orphans and has dreams to open up an orphanage of her own. She is
planning on doing so for the street kids and we were able to bless her
with 50,000 shillings to start it up!
We leave on Sunday morning and I am going to cry, I love this place and
these people. It has already been so hard saying goodbye to the street
kids and church members, guh. Pastor Gideon’s daughters finished
classes in Nairobi and have come to Busia to be with us the next few
days too, they are so great. We head to Jinja, Uganda to go white water
rafting on the Nile and then to Mbarara. See you then!
