The final leg!

Faithful blog readers, pole sana (sorry so much) for being late in attending to this little story portal. We both returned from our assignments a couple of weeks ago but haven't had time in the schedule to sit, collect our thoughts and share with you. One thing is for sure, there has been so much incredible transformation among the students, so many good and hard questions asked, and numerous stories of God shared.

Just to give you an idea, all forty of us returned from our various 3 week assignments and stayed in Nairobi for 10 days full of tons of different experiences and training. Here's a quick list of what we jammed into this crazy time period...

• a day of Hindu training, visiting two temples
• working at an orphanage for abandoned babies, disabled children and women
• visiting "Sanctuary of Hope" a home for children from Mathare Valley slum
• evangelizing and praying for people walking thru Mathare Valley slum
• visiting a mega-church, seeing westernization
• a day of Islam training, visiting a mosque
• visiting FOCUS, InterVarsity's sister movement in Kenya
• relational evangelism at a youth prison
• visiting Africa Inland Mission, non-tradition missionaries (pilots, mechanics, accountants, etc.)

 

Here's John playing soccer with some boys at the prison. (He's wearing their uniform)

 And here's us meeting a missionary girl at Africa Inland Mission, she happens to be serving as a photojournalist on their "On Field Media" team...does she look familiar to our New Hope friends?? Of course she's none other than the beautiful Bess Brownlee from Florence, MT. You may not know but Bess came as a student on our same trip in 2009 and got hooked to come back and served with AIM!

It's amazing the things that happen for students from a single spark of just one day or one experience from their entire seven weeks in Kenya. The last couple of weeks have been a bit crazy with endless learning, stimulation, and questioning for the students, many of whom were still trying to process what they had learned and experienced on their assignment. 

We wrapped it all up with a few days in Mombasa to prepare the team for re-entering America. I find this time incredibly essential for being able to integrate the lessons of the summer--and not just explode on their families--when they get off the plane. 

During this last leg of the trip we saw students feeling different calls from the Lord and switching majors, heard them empowering each other by speaking out the gifts they saw in one another, and witnessed so many incredible lessons pouring out of their mouths. 

There is really something about pulling these students (and us!) out of our comfort zone that opens us up to God in such a raw, dependent way that allows Him to work on deep stuff within us. It's beautiful!!! I wish you could all be here and see it firsthand! 

Now that all the logistics are out of the way, be looking for a new post full of these stories I keep talking about.  Kwaheri (goodbye) for now, your love and support is priceless to us.

Tiffany