Okay, it’s our day off and we’re found an internet cafe that works decently…so I will attempt another blog.
We are in Lodwar, Kenya. They say that Lodwar is so separated from the rest of Kenya that when someone travels from Lodwar into an urban centre of Kenya, they are actually “going to Kenya”. This is the Turkana district. The languages are Turkana, Kiswahili, and English. We are also in the desert and it’s very hot here….I think it gets up to 42 degrees Celsius (108 F)
Getting here was an adventure and a half. We left Kijabe (which is close to Nairobi) on a Friday. Our bus was to arrive at 9:30am…it arrived at noon. We got to Eldorret and stayed the night with Pastor William & the rest of our teams being hosted by him. We then we to leave at 6am the next morning to get mosquito nets & sunscreen and then off to Lodwar….and somehow ended up getting in the vehicles to leave at 5:30pm….we then got out of the vehicles and stayed the night again in Eldorret while our packs went ahead of us. We eventually left the next morning on a van to Kitale. We sat on curbsides in Kitale for a few hours (and we used the restrooms in people’s hotel rooms) and then hopped on the 9am bus (which we got on again near noon) and there was only 2 seats on the bus for 12 of us and no space for our backpacks & food. Our friend Patrick hopped on the bus and started shifting people and explaining to them that we had bought seats. People started fighting over top of Christi and eventually were kicked off the bus and somehow, someway all 12 of us had a seat somewhere with our stuff on top of us.
The ride is about 350km and took us 9 hours and we picked up about 30 more people who had to stand in the aisles on the bumpiest ride of my life. I had been vomited on, had 2 girls I have never met lay their heads on my lap, my hair pulled on every bump we went over and thought our bus would tip over about 12 times…but it was an adventure!! This is what I had expected the race to be! And I have never been so thankful to walk off a bus before. Praise the Lord through the good times & crazy times. :0)
This past week we have gone out to the desert to the shepherds & their families to go hut to hut evangelizing. The huts are pretty far apart and we would walk up and introduce ourselves and then ask them if they know Jesus Christ as their Saviour (via a translator). Most of them tell us that they do and ask us to pray for them for jobs for the young men and for the health of the babies and the elderly. There is a lot of malaria, pneumonia & malnutrition. They are also desperate for rain, but if it rains, they also get malaria breakouts…so they need to see the Lord provide them rain & protection from disease!
We have also gone back to the desert for women & children’s ministry. The women who seem so expressionless when they talk to you, jump up and down and clap and dance in worship like nothing I’ve seen before. It is amazing to be in the middle of a desert, where they walk for up to 2 hours to find fellowship together and to worship their creator. They have so little and yet they have so much. I feel like they could come to North America and teach us a thing or two.
There is also an orphanage called “House of Hope” that we have gone to a couple times. They have just opened up their doors a month ago and they have 15 children. They have room for a lot more, but they only have funding for 15 so far. Their funding comes from an American company called “Serv International”. Most of the kids are orphaned by AIDS and had their grandmothers taking care of them…but the grandmothers are elderly and sick and if something happened to them, the kids would be left with nobody, so the orphanage is making a new life and home for these kids. They treat them as a family and they are the most loving kids ever. The second time we rolled up, they wouldn’t even let us out of the vehicle they were jumping all over us and hugging us!
My heart also hurts everyday as I have people walking up to me and say “Mzungu, money” (Mzungu means white person)…and then shows me their thin stomach or the skin & bones of their arms. Their is just too much of a need to hand out 50 Shillings to each person who asks…and the need doesn’t just end when you give them money….it’s much greater. I don’t know the answer, but I know who can answer. These people need our prayers. They need us to do what we can….if we can give through ministries, or churches, of our money or of our time, or through our prayers…..imagine what difference we could make if EVERYBODY DID SOMETHING?!?!
