Day 7: Thursday June 17

cia


Jambo

First, let me make sure everyone knows that the group that left for Kajaido yesterday morning did arrive safely yesterday evening and has gotten all settled in there and all are doing well. I was going to post this information last night but Scott kept having power outages and I was unable to personally speak to Mary until after I had posted the last message. Thank you to you parents who passed along the information for us in the comments. Anyway, all is going well there. Today, they were asked to help clear and prepare land for a new church the Masaii people have started just last year. I'm sure Brian and the group will have a lot of information for you when we get back together. I heard that Mary and Camille were being driven up the mountain in a land rover to speak to a women's group while the rest of the group worked in the field. I'm sure our students were probably laughing when they heard the assignment since they just left here and thought they were through shoveling and moving rocks. Apparently, the Lord is trying to teach all of us something about basic hard work this year. :) Anyway, cell reception is sketchy where they are but we are able to contact Mary frequently and will be passing along word as we hear more from them.

Also, I just wanted to clarify that if your child did not go to Kajairdo, it does NOT mean that they are sick. We had already planned a set group of people to split off to Kajairdo to begin with. It only changed slightly when a couple of people were mildly ill and we just weren't sure how they would feel on a long bus ride and out in an area with less public facilities. Most of the group who stayed here with us was supposed to stay here with us anyway and were not held back because of any sickness. Actually, everyone here now is feeling well again and have been doing just fine today. We are grateful for only mild things this year.

Okay, I can't wait to tell you about today. As if it couldn't get any better than holding orphan babies, today was even more special for me as our group just got to go and visit at the Masaku School for Disabled. This is always a highlight of our time here. Most of you probably know that Jon and I have children with disabilities. So when we found this very special school right here in Machakos, we made it a priority to come back every year and help out as much as we can. Some very generous people donated money for us to have a well put in at this school several years ago and currently we are trying to finish raising enough money for them to buy a vehicle to use. Many times, they need to take children for medical care, and have no way to get them there. We have raised half the amount needed.

Today our group arrived at the disabled school around 1:30 and we enjoyed a fun time of singing and dancing with them. This year, we did a puppet show for them. Shae read the story by Max Lucado called The Crippled Lamb - one of my favorite stories in the world for obvious reasons. I've wanted to read that to them every year, but always break out sobbing in the middle of the story so am completely useless to actually participate in any way other than planning it and taking photos.

Shae was our storyteller while Paige, Wes, and Heather were our puppeteers and I have to give them major props because the story is long anyway, but we also had a translator repeating it so the kids would understand. Sooooo....our poor puppetteers had their arms in the air for a VERY long time as the story went on, especially Paige who was the main character of the lamb. :) It's a very sweet story about a lamb who is crippled and is sad because he is never able to run and play or go to the meadow with the other lambs. His best friend, Abigail the cow, always reminds him that God has a special place for those who feel left out. In the end, because the lamb is left behind in the stable, he is honored to be there when Joseph and Mary wander in and give birth to Jesus. He is called upon to keep the new baby king warm and Mary tells him that God uses everyone for a purpose. The children loved the story and then Jon told a little about our family and gave an awesome sermon about how God uses everyone, and often uses the disabled in very powerful ways to glorify Himself.

Jon and I were also to meet with the teachers outside and pray with them and thanked them for their service to the school and these children. Because of your generosity, we were able to present each of them with a small gift. They were deeply appreciative and the headmaster told us that was the first time any group had ever stopped to recognize the teachers or thank them for their service.

We then passed out candy and left them with clothes, beanie babies, supplies and various other gifts. OH - They have a little store there where their students have been learning skills to support themselves such as sewing, leatherwork, jewelry, and other crafts and they have some things available to buy. We all went in and bought all kinds of goodies. I am so excited because I found the cutest hand sewn pajamas for both of my girls and my little niece Grace, who is staying at our house with her parents and helping take care of our kids. The clothes are darling - all the buttons are sewn on all crooked but they are so special because of who made them. I just love buying fun stuff.

We are now back at Scott and our group is out with the Scott students at nearby homes practicing their evangelizing skills. I kept getting bumped off due to power outages last night but there were some very powerful stories yesterday of opportunities that our students had while out yesterday. Apparently, Autumn Adams is quite the little power packed evangelist and had a whole crowd fired up yesterday. Kevin King also found himself surrounded by almost 100 guys on a soccer field once he started preaching and my husband Jon ended up on the other side of the field with another crowd of boys. I'm sure there will be many more stories again today when they get back here in just a few minutes.

By the way, I skipped this morning. We worked again this morning on the chapel worksite here at Scott. Our group has done an amazing job on the Scott chapel project. They now have all the land leveled around the whole chapel and will be laying the foundation for the porch tomorrow. The Scott people have told us it would have taken them several months to get that far on the project so they are extremely grateful for our help. We have just a couple more days here so are hoping to get as far along as possible on that before we have to leave.

We will be eating dinner in just a few minutes and then having our evening meeting before bed. I decide it was easier to try and post this a little earlier so I am not up so late at night in here. I know tomorrow we will be working on the chapel again, sending another small group to the orphanage, doing another VBS at a local school and hosting a movie night for some local children. I believe the Kajairdo team will still be working on the field preparing the site for the church building all day again tomorrow and then doing what we call an "open air" market night where they are going to set up to play the Jesus Film in an open area and invite people to come and listen. Mary Ndungu was able to arrange to get the Jesus film in their own native language so they will understand it and we were also able to find 15 Bible in Masaii as well.

Okay, I'm going to attach some photos and end here for the day. Thank you for your messages. I will pass them along to the students for you. Some are coming and checking messages often, and others are not. There are only 3 working computers in the lab, and very little time to use them so if your child is not responding to you it is NOT because they don't love you! It is because they are being kind enough to give others a turn and not be too imposing on the computer lab, which is technically only for the Scott students.

Thank you for your continued prayers and hope all are well at home!

Sincerely,

Jenni Millet