Kenya...

So here I am, going to Mombasa, Kenya in 2 weeks. The main focus of going there will be to work at a school for street kids. A very Godly woman that lives in the city started the school by simply opening a building for the street kids to come hang out in a safe place. Most of them have no homes, no money, and either no parents, or parents that can’t provide for them. 30% of them are HIV positive, and none of them have any money for an education. They range from ages 3-6. And there, in a single room, in a dusty, dirty building on the outskirts of the city, a single woman is showing them the love of God. She is teaching them things they would never learn otherwise. The alphabet, numbers, even Bible verses and worship songs—but most importantly, she is teaching them that God loves each and every one of them and cares about them. She is leading them to a REAL Father, when theirs is really not even there. She provides most of them with the only food they will get in a day, such as a cracker or two and, if they’re lucky, a half cup of black tea (a Kenyan staple). She is giving them a hope and a future. Teams that have gone there before talk about how so many times they could only cry as these kids—desperate for affection, love, ANYTHING—recited the 23 Psalm or sang praises to God. Everyday these kids show up, all on their own, because they know there is a God in that building that loves them, and a woman that does her best to show them that. She spends hours and hours trying to create her own posters and sacrificing so much or order to have a few crayons for the kids to color with. School supplies aren’t even thought about, and she doesn’t even have the money to make copies, so she has to make up to 40 individual pages of everything she hands out to them. Lastly, the school is breaking many laws and functioning against code, which means it will most likely be shut down within a few months. We can’t let this happen. Our goal is to go there, do work on the building, set up some kind of support system for the kids, but most of all—to spend time with them and show them love. It is very important that we get some sort of financial support system for each kid jumpstarted while we are there, or the school will not be able to exist.

However, it is hard to get much done in 6-7 days, so we are trying to stretch out our time as much as possible. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if there were more flights flying into Mombasa. Currently, there are two choices we have. Spend less money and spend 2-3 less days there, which could really limit what we can get done (well, with God anything is possible), or go significantly past our budget and get to spend 10 days there, missing some of the school sessions. We prayed for 2 hours tonight as a team, but nothing clear came of it. Please pray for us as we try to make a decision together and only want to follow God and what He wants. Not easy, especially when a few of our team members do NOT have the finances to go in the first place, much less pay for a more expensive plane ticket.

Thank you everyone for all the ways you have blesses me so far. From cards to money to prayers, I feel it all and it keeps me so encouraged. Please know that your contributions are helping change my life and the lives of others here in this Discipleship Training School. I will truly never be the same person I came here as..

PS-For those wondering when I am going to post pictures, I only have a limited amount of data I can upload per month, so I can only put them on Facebook. If you want to see them join the stone age and GET A FACEBOOK (if you dont have one), or just ask to be my friend. JK about the stone age thing, didn't mean to offend you.