the home stretch

hey all-
it's a beautiful tuesday morning in nakuru. life is great, and it's been another packed week. i'm getting to the end of my time here and it's just really weird to think that i'm going back to america. that i'll be leaving gerald. it would be a lot harder if i didn't know for sure that i'd be coming back. there's no way i can stay away from this place.

here's a quick rundown of the highlights from this last week. staff dominated kids in the wednesday soccer match 3-0. chad, anthony, and i scored. i love seizing every opportunity to ruin the kids self-esteem. i feel like that's why god brought me here.

i spent most of thursday and friday running around with dave getting stuff ready for the team. saturday was really cool. we started with street ministry, where we went to a couple different "bases" where street kids live and hang out and had a little church service, hung out with kids, and handed out food. it was good to see the kids in their natural environments rather than just street church. it was cool to go deliver food, rather than have them come to us. i liked the dynamic a lot.

then we went to the dump for a service. to be honest i wasn't excited about going to the dump at all. i almost didn't go. i had gone with dave a couple days earlier to talk to the people there and let them know that a team was coming on saturday and it just rocked me. we went in to the caves where they brew illegal alcohol out of the worst things you can imagine, and talked to the brewers for a while. i felt like a tourist in hell. it's hard becasue god really hit me with the depth of the desperation of poverty while i was there. i think spending most of my time at rohi kind of put me in a safe little bubble, where the kids were clean and taken care of, and i forgot that there are so many other hurting people NOT being helped by rohi. please don't read this as an indictment of rohi-there's too much need for one organization, and the last thing they should do is to get distracted from what they're called to do-it's just hard to not feel like a part of the solution. anyway the service on saturday was great. both times i went i was surprised by the genuine joy these perople have, but on saturday there were like 300 people there and everyone was happy, and we handed out a lot of food and supplies and had a lot of great conversations.

then we headed back to rohi for the rohi staff soccer match vs some other church whose name i can't remember. it was really fun. sunday was church at rohi, then the rescue center, then street church. it's been so cool to get to know then team while they've been here and they had some amazing testimonies to share with the kids. it was great.

yesterday we spent most of the day with the guardians of a couple kids at rohi. we built a couple goat sheds, and gave them goats and food and supplies, it was one of the coolest things i've done on this entire trip. the families were so great. i just loved it.

well this has been about the longest blog ever. if you've skimmed it and are just reading the end here, well congratulations, you've done exactly what i would have done. if you've read every word, well then thanks mom. i'm home saturday afternoon

pray for safety, as nakuru isn't exactly the least dangerous place on earth right now. pray for the team, as today is their last day with the kids. thanks for all your prayers, keep em comin.

love you guys,
---kev