The aftermath

Back to blogging.

We have been back from Kenya for over six months. Since then it seems like things have been a little unsettled in our lives and they seem to be flashing before our eyes. I know that our vision and our passion is not wavering – helping orphans is one of our life focuses now and I believe always will be. But the road?????????????????

The need is massive and overwhelming if I stand back too far, and I think that is key. I(we) need to get closer. We need to see the faces and not the crowds. The faces take it from “those poor people” to Faustina, Moses, Clinton, Bafo, Churchill, Shirlyn, Fred…. real, identifiable, beautiful, children and young adults that have a need that they are not capable of meeting on their own. Needs that will determine if they have a future of hope or only of meager survival. Needs that in many cases for us are trivial to meet.

Do you see any faces?

Chaos

After visiting the Mathare slum we went to a church just outside of Nairobi that has a girls home. They keep 12 girls and just recently have added 4 boys. The maximum was going to be the 12 girls, but when you have so many kids needing help, and so little opportunity, how do you say no? So they turned an office into a boys room. There were about 70 kids there for our afternoon sports camp. So 16 kids who had some sort of structure and 54 kids from the nearby slum or possibly street kids. It was insane. We made it worse by having bubbles as one of the activities and also giving out stickers and bracelets. These kids have sixth sense about give-aways. We each had about 20 kids at our activity, and by the third rotation there were about 40 or 45 kids at Cabree’s station looking for give-aways. She was a little worried that she was going to get mauled.

After we were done, we all went into the church and we taught the kids a few songs and then they sang for us. It is so amazing to here their little voices be so beautiful! It is one of the best things ever.

We started the day at 6:30 and ended at about 8:30. After the morning in the slum and then the chaos at the camp we were so exhausted we ordered dinner at the hotel, ate about three bites and went back and crashed in the rooms. I am not sure I have ever been more exhausted. I guess that was true for all of us!

Sweetest girl in Kenya

Meet Sherlyn, she is an awesome young lady in the In-Step Foundation/Rehema Orphanage. I met her last time I was here and both Dan and I wanted to take her home! Always smiling, always helping, always ready for a hug. We all wanted to take her home with us! HIV positive, she is just learning that she has “sick blood”, but has no idea of what that really means.

School day

Happily her testing is so good that they do not believe the results, and keep wanting to retest her. Throw away baby? Unbelievable!

Cherree, Sharon and Cabree spent a big part of their week here teaching the kids and the teachers new stuff, and doing crafts with the kids that they don’t normally get to do. They had a blast.