Great Weekend

What a great weekend!  Saturday morning, I (Cason) worked a little bit and Colleen went to the Baby Centre to get some kids - we thought it would be fun to get them out of the orphanage for a bit, so Owiti, Precious, and Timo came over for a few hours.  It was so much fun, and neat to see the kids outside of their normal environment.  It only took them a little bit to get used to our house, but they really loved playing in the yard, making pizza, pulling everything possible off of our shelves and getting some individual attention.

For more pictures from Saturday, click HERE.

On Sunday, we went to church at Ngata AGC, which was such a wonderful experience.  They have an English service (in addition to the Swahili one), which was such a blessing and we met so many great people.  We are looking forward to partnering in ministry with that church - they have some amazing outreach programs in the surrounding communities.

After some Sunday afternoon rest, I convinced Colleen to go with me to a restaurant we had heard of to try to watch a football match - Manchester United vs Manchester City.  We were the only "Mzungus" (white people) in the packed establishment and there were people watching through the windows from outside.  The game was very intense, and much to the delight of most Kenyans, Man United won controversially right at the end - as a Liverpool fan, I was cheering for a draw.  The intensity of the match got the best of a few of the spectators, and a few had a little scuffle right by Colleen... but it was dispersed by the bouncers fairly quickly.

One of our new friends from church, Norman Ruto, met us there and he invited us to go to his house for dinner - so what we thought was just going to be an afternoon out turned into a full evening with Norman.  On our way to his house, we made multiple stops to see people - I think he is vying to be our official tour guide for our time in Kenya!

Norman's family was so nice and served us the best tea we have had in Kenya (which is saying something!) and a Kipsigis (tribe) meal.  His father talked to me all about Kenyan politics and the reason from some of the tribal hostilities, which was very interesting to hear his perspective.  Though, of course, the Kipsigis were blameless the way he told it.  :  ) 

After dinner, Norman invited us to spend the night out there (since is house is a ways from ours in Nakuru), but we politely declined... opting instead to take our lives into our hands by driving home at night.  Thank the Lord, but we made it safely.


Monday was a holiday here, the last day of Ramadan.  I worked a little bit, but we spent most of our day out at the Baby Centre - I was trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to teach some of the older kids to count and recognize "how many" blocks were in the pile.  We'll keep working with them.  Check back for pictures from our time out there sometime soon.

We went out with the Greenlees (the other young American couple here) for lunch (to a fantastic Chinese restaurant in Kenya - go figure) and they showed us the market in town with all of the merchants - you can get some amazing soap stone and wooden carvings there.  All of the vendors tried to say they were our best friends, even though they struggled to remember our names.  :  ) 

Monday night we headed to the Vanderhoofs (our field directors) for dinner where we met two men from the mission project down in the rural Maasai area.  We shared testimonies with then, learned about Maasai rituals and customs (including painful ear piercing, having to kill a lion as a right of passage, public circumcision, etc) and discussed the difficulties of ministering/evangelizing in Maasai culture.  It was an enthralling topic and really got us thinking about challenges of bringing the gospel into certain cultures, particularly such spiritualistic driven cultures like the Maasai.  

Sorry this is such a long post - we just had alot going on!  

For those people lifting us up in prayer, please pray for the following:

The Drought- there has been a terrible draught here for over a year so the crops are failing.   People and animals are starving, especially in the Maasai and rural areas that depend so heavily on agriculture for food and grazing. 

As treasurer, I got to write a check today that will feed 3,000 families for a few weeks - a humbling and exciting thing to think about!  Please pray that it can be used as a powerful ministry opportunity.

The Children- Pray for the orphans that the right families would come along to adopt them and raise them to love the Lord.  Some of the children are so anxious to be out and really struggle with behavior because of it.