(Boeng Mealea ruins in Cambodia)
We started the travel day off with an 8-hour bus ride to the airport in PhnomPhen, Cambodia. We then flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (good to be back!). After Malaysia we flew to Hydrabad, India, followed by a flight to Dubai, and finally a flight to our final destination KENYA!
This travel day consisted of roughly 55 total hours, 14 hours of flying, 25 hours of layovers, an Easter service in the Malaysia airport, and a lot of time sleeping in random locations. Even though I thoroughly enjoy the traveling, I was so pumped to finally get to Africa!
This month my team (Day 3) and I are living in the Mukuru slum on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. We are living with another team (Tumblers) in a small tin shack right in the middle of the slum.
Our ministry this month consists of several different things. On most days we are working at a small clinic helping the patients and helping deliver babies. We are also helping out at a school in the slum with over 300 students. We play with the students, help with feeding them, and speak in the classrooms. We also get to meet with a group of women once a week known as Compassion, who are HIV positive and make and sell bracelets and bags. It is such an honor to sit with these women and share how much God loves them. We are also preaching and leading worship in the churches.
However, my favorite thing about this ministry is due to the fact that the school we are helping at is part of the Sports Outreach Ministry, we get to travel around Kenya on the weekends and put on sports clinics for the children. We get to teach the kids about soccer, rugby, and hopfully maybe a little American football. We also get to practice with the Good News Team, a local Christian soccer team. We were also blessed enough to get to attend the Kenyan championship rugby match, which was amazing, and for the first time in quite a few months, I felt like a small human being, in comparison to the rugby players.
(practicing with the soccer team and at the rugby match)
I was really surprised about coming to the African slum. I wasn’t expecting to be in this type of slum in Africa. However, I truly love it. Having only experiencing a slum in Kenya, I am already in love with Africa and the people here. It is so great to interact with them and especially the children.
I love walking through the slums, having children fight to hold your hand, and feeling like a celebrity because every single person call out to me and yells "Mzungu" (white person) or "How are you". It provides so many opportunities to minister to them! I love coming back after a great day out in the muddy slums to our little house and spend some time with the team, get in the Word, watch the History Channel Bible series, (with 13 others huddled around a laptop), and continuously being molded and refined by God. Life can't get much better!
