Kenya Update 11/25/09 - Orphans and Termites

It's been a fun and busy week so far. It took way too long to recover from our late night of games at the Wakias home...I worry that my college "function on negligible sleep" mojo is leaving me. This would be tragic. I went to sleep at 9:30 last night, so today I'm chipper and awake, and not falling asleep during my English lesson (yeah, that was embarrassing!)

Yesterday I walked to St. Paul's Childrens Home, an orphanage about a 25 minute walk from ANU. I was asked by pastor Gift (from the church on campus) to organize the compassionate ministry for our congregation. I am working with an intriguing fellow named Sylvanus Michael Otieno - he's a retired teacher who is aiming to go back to school, but for now he's just helping with the church. An old football player, he has stories upon stories (which, of course were shared on the way to the childrens home!) The home itself was delightful - we chatted at length with the matriarch (an incredible woman named Margaret) about how the good people at ANU can meet their needs and minister to the kids. The kids are adorable, a little girl sat on my lap playing with my wrist watch the whole time we were chatting. There is also a Norwegian volunteer living at St. Paul's who seems like a great guy. He is a digital design type person, and is aiming to create a website for the school so they can raise money more effectively (for little things like food and water!)

Are there any good people at home who would be willing to take his designs and design the web interface? It would be a "fun" project that would make a HUGE difference in a lot of lives (especially for those kids) here in Kenya.

So for the next few days I'll be galvanizing all my friends to go to this home over Christmas break to do music with them, teach a bible lesson and play games. It is exciting to participate in such a dynamic and practical ministry. Pray for St. Pauls Children's home!

In other news: I made the mistake (or, had the wisdom to) lift up the loose linoleum in my bathroom to see a vast army of termites chowing down on the baseboard and stretching across the floor. A good part of my morning today was spent cleaning up and having a maintenance fellow spray the inside and outside of my bathroom...so it's a mess, but hopefully it will be a bug free mess (in a few hours) so that I can transform it back to a bug free bathroom!

Here are some pictures from Sunday's concert:

Jazz n Folk