Time Is Like A Storm In Montana...It's Gone As Quickly As It Comes

So here I am again! Today is our last day in Nairobi; tomorrow we head to Mombasa!!! Yay!!!

Our time here at Little Sisters has been so great. The time flew by so fast, I don't really know where it went. Reconnecting with the team has been so nice, though an interesting process. I developed a cold soon after I got back, so I was really tired and stuffed up for a couple of days. Due to that I definitely didn't have all of the energy that the rest of the team had, so that was really difficult and made me feel a bit ostrasized, but now I'm back and doing really well! I'm going to miss this team a lot when this is all done and over with :(

So I won't bore you all with the nitty gritty details of our time here (if you want to know I can tell you about it when I see you in the states), but I will do a little overview. We got to go to a place called Mother Teresa Orphanage, where we worked with mentally and physically disabled children and women. I was part of the "Trubidor Team", which basically just went around to all of the different wards and sang for the people there. That was a crazy experience. I wasn't expecting the people there, especially the children, to be as physically deformed and crippled as they really were. I was taken aback at first, and it was a little difficult to communicate with them since most of them don't take and just stare off into space. Some of the kids really responded to the music though, which was really cool.

We also went back to Mathare Valley where we split off into groups of 3-4 and walked around the slum, walked up to people, and asked if there was anything they wanted us to pray for. If they said yes, we would pray, and if they said no, then we would move on. Just like last time, the slums didn't really affect me at all. I didn't hate walking around and praying for people, but I didn't love it either. It was just another day I guess.

We leared about two different religions for two of the days, Hinduism and Islam. We went on a prayer walk through two different Hindu temples, where a priest talked about the religion and gave us a tour. Basically the temple hold statues that look like dolls of all different sizes, and people go in there and worship and pray to them. Apparently there are around 330 million different Hindu gods and goddesses!!! So crazy, especially compared to Islam where there is strictly only one, Allah. So for Islam day, we got to learn about the Islam religion in the morning and then we went to a mosque and kind of had a Q&A with the leader of the mosque. That was very interesting. I felt sorry for the guy, how when we asked questions he didn't know how to answer the question. You could see how he was struggling to explain things, and half of the time he never really finished his thoughts. You can tell that they lie and manipulate the religion to appeal to a western audience, like trying to tell us that women feel prettier wearing the head scarf...I think not!!! Anyway, I got to learn a lot about both of those religions, which was pretty cool.

On Sunday after church we got to go to a Masai market and buy all of our souveniers and such. That gets frusterating after awhile. At first I was really excited because I love shopping and had been waiting for this trip for weeks. I had a fun time bargaining with the natives and looking around, but you can only handle so much of people trying to make you pay too much for merchandise. After walking away from a couple people because of that, I got tired and starting paying a little bit more for things that I knew weren't worth that much just so I could get my stuff and leave. Overall it was really fun though. There are still some stuff that I wanted to get that I didn't have time for that day, but we get to go back to the City Market on our last day in Kenya, so I will try and get them then.

Tuesday was our "tourist day", so we went on a safari around Nacuru Lake. It was different from what I expected, but still fun. We saw gazelles, antelope, rhinoes, zebras, giraffes, waterbuffalo, baboons, and some other animal I don't remember the name of. Watching two people get their lunches snatched by baboons was very entertaining :)

Wednesday we went to the Focus Center, which in Kenya's version of InterVarsity. We met the staff, learned about Focus and what they do, took a tour of the compound, and then went to their Christian bookstore where we could purchase books. All of you who know me knows what that means...! All of their books were for super cheap, so obviously I couldn't help myself and bought seven books. Don't know how I am going to get them back to the states. I figure if God wants me to read these books, he will provide a way :)

Yesterday we got to visit a youth prison, which was really just a place that they stay for 4 months, no more no less. Very lax security and structure...it almost seemed like a boarding school. The youth are there for smaller crimes such as theft. We all sat mixed together for an assembly type thing, where we listened to people from the prison and our team give testimonies. There was also some singing, we performed a skit, and then we ate lunch. That was a little bit awkward since both of the inmates I was sitting next to spoke very little english. After lunch we got to go outside and play soccer and volleyball. I played volleyball, which was really fun. We were losing most of the time, but we finally won the last game we played. It was nice to see the inmates loosen up and have some fun.

Finally, today we went to AIM AIR, which is a Christian organization that flies missionaries and supplies to remote locations all around Africa. We got a tour of the hangers and offices, and then got to have a forum with a pilot, physician, media technician, and an administrator to learn more about the organization and the mission field. Overall it was pretty interesting.

Soooo...what else do I have to say? I could write about what God is teaching me, but I really want to be able to talk about that in person; it's so much better that way. What a will say is that he has taught me a lot about myself and my own character. There are also a lot of lessons that haven't been revealed to me yet, but I'm excited to discover them!!!

So tomorrow, off to Mombasa. Breakfast at 5:00am and on the bus by 6:00-6:30, then a 11-13 hour bus ride!!! Sweet!!! Can you hear the sarcasim dripping off the page right now?? Haha, but it will be fun, as long as the road stays smooth enough for me to read. We shall see!!!