More ABO

As I type this post, there are only two days left of ABO. Hard to believe. We have learned so much, our heads and hearts are full as we begin to process all of it. Above, Malachi is enjoying the last bit of Coke at one of our meals in the dining hall.

Part of our curriculum has to been to learn some about Islam. Africa is home to many Muslims and no matter what our ministry focus, we will have some interaction with Muslims. The more we learn, the more we come to know that there are SO many differences between our faiths, but that we can still have meaningful (hopefully leading to salvation!) relationships with Islamic people. At the end of two days in the classroom, we were able to visit a local mosque.

Here we are on our way to the mosque. I wore a silky headscarf, which was just a bad idea. It kept slipping off and was quite awkward trying to adjust it :) The women's section is at the top and back of the mosque. We could just get a small glimpse of the men below as they said their prayers. Afterwards, the imam came up and we had a Q&A session.

One day last week we had a scavenger hunt in Machakos town. There were teams and we competed against each other. Since town is a ways from where we are staying, we took public transport in. Leo and the kids rode bicycle bodas. I took a matatu instead (mini-van). We felt sorry for the little guy hauling Leo on the back of his bike!

One of the places we visited was the butcher. yummy! Our team didn't win, but we had a fun (and entertaining) day :)



There is a family here who offers laundry service. They collect the laundry in the mornings, watch it by hand and then put it on the lawn to dry. Here's a picture of "the dryer". Since it's been so cold here, the laundry has never been dry when I've gone to pick it up, so we can hang it on lines in the back of the dorm, where it dries eventually. The picture right above is the dorm where we've been staying.


Yesterday we did home visits. We were with another couple and a single guy from our group and met up with this really sweet Kenyan couple. We then walked to their house, which ended up being at least a couple of miles away! We walked to town, through town, out of town, down a valley and up the other side... Malachi walked the whole way and did great.

Here we are in the home of Martin and Faith (and their friend, Lillian, in green). They were very strong Christians and after sharing porridge with us, we sang a song, heard a sermonette and had a prayer time. The kids were pretty wiped out by the end of the visit. We had a "family debrief" last night about how we can do better next time... :)

Kenya

A lot of this may be old info. for some of you, but I didn't want to leave anyone out, just in case! It's been almost three weeks since we loaded up the Land Rover and left Entebbe. Here is Leo loading the roof-rack by the light of the moon the night before we left.

We were on the road by 5:50 am. The sun was just coming up as we left Kampala.

The source of the Nile River in Jinja.

The car over-heated coming up a long hill so we pulled over for about 45 minutes. I thought I'd share some fruit snacks with the group of school children who thought we were especially interesting to look at. I was pretty much mobbed once I brought out the snacks. I can only hope everyone got one...

14 hours after leaving Entebbe, we arrived in Nairobi. Friends fed us dinner and had our place all ready for us! The next day we went to Java House for lunch. It's SO yummy and the kids still love to play on the rock slide.

The children really wanted to feed the giraffes at the Giraffe Centre, so we had a fun Sunday afternoon with friends, doing that.
After one week in Nairobi, we met up with all the other new AIM missionaries and drove about an hour East to Machakos for our orientation. We are on the Scott Theological Campus, representing the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, Ireland... There are about 80 of us and half of those are children!

We had a half day off last weekend and some of us went to a game ranch not far from here. After a yummy lunch we went on a game drive. The kids had the best seats in the house :)

We saw giraffe, zebra, impala, ostrich, thompson gazelle, wildebeest, all kinds of birds... it was a great day away.

When we arrived there was a trail of ants going across one of the steps on the way to the dining hall. They've since moved to another location, but you've got to be careful. They pinch hard!

Here is where we're eating our meals. Some people are concerned that they are losing weight... I'm concerned that I'm not...


Somehow, Rylea got "invited" to help in the kitchen. Here she is making chapatis.
The kids have an awesome program and do all kinds of cool crafts. Here is Samuel in our dorm hallway with his home-made car and trailer.



Often in the evenings before dinner, there is some sort of sports event. The big one was last week when some of our folks played a Kenyan "football" team. Of course, the nationals won but it was a fun game :)



A view of Machakos from the top of the hill.

This morning we had 17 of us in the Land Rover to go to church. Everybody splits up and goes to different churches. This week was so much better for us than last week. The service was only 2 hours long and it was in English!!!

Ready to go!

Hard to believe we've only got about a week left of ABO. We are learning so much and really enjoying the friendships beings formed. God is so good and we are excited to see how He will use all these things we are learning.