Home Sweet Home

We are safely back home from our trip to Kenya - a trip that was amazing and certainly life-changing in so many ways.  We all feel blessed to have the opportunity to be part of such an experience and thankful for the prayers and support of so many people. 

Because of our limited internet availability in Kenya, we didn't get to post pictures while we were in country.  So, I wanted to take some time to share some of our pictures with you as pictures often tell a story in a way words cannot. 

Please enjoy the pictures!  We will be preparing a presentation with photos and our experiences in Kenya to share with our family and friends and anticipate doing several presentations at our own church and others that may be interested in learning about our time in Kenya and the work of the Kenyan Orphan Project.

 This is a typical shower/toilet in a hotel in Kenya.  This is a picture of the one in our hotel in Nairobi.  We were very thankful we had a shower that we could use on a regular basis.  The water was not always warm, but just being able to rinse off was a blessing!

 The kids are playing in the open lot we have purchased to build an orphanage.  They are all wearing new tshirts we brought for them and tennis balls we brought along - they were so happy and so thankful!

Tanya is teaching class 3 - we are working on plurals and English.  Class 3 has kids from ages 8 - 12, depending on their testing level when they started school.  They also taught us Swahili!

 
 View of downtown Eldoret - traffic was always crazy, people everywhere and a sort of organized chaos!

 Another view of buildings in downtown Eldoret.

Kevin, Tanya and Melissa with Velgon outside her home - she was all smiles and so excited that we came to visit her home after school.  She walks over 1 hour to school each day and lives in this very small mud hut.

This is the Nursery class - they have kids in this class ranging from 2 - 6 years old!  The classrooms are very small with dirt floors and no lights.  They only light they have comes through a small window.

Two of the boys are playing and building houses at the school - they are very creative and use sticks and blocks to build with!

Driving through town one afternoon we came across the fire station and this is the firetruck the city of Minneapolis donated to the city of Eldoret (they are sister cities)!  The truck still bears the Minneapolis name along side the Eldoret name.  An ambulance was also given to Eldoret by Minneapolis!  What a fun connection!

 The church ladies are hard at work preparing meals - they worked so hard while we were there preparing porridge for the kids in the morning, our morning tea, lunch for us and the kids, afternoon tea for our troup and then often our evening meal!  Often they would cook in a very small dirt floor kitchen (behind the aqua colored door), but this afternoon they prepared the meal outside.  They are amazing women and we are SO appreciative of all they did - the lady working over the stove is named Caroline and she walked about 50 minutes home from the church after the dinner meals - it was often 8-9pm by the time she cleaned up the dinner dishes and was able to leave for hom.  And she always had the happiest heart and biggest smile! 

Some of the school kids outside the church.

We all planted fruit trees outside the school before we left - this is a typical tradition in Kenya. 

 Kevin with some of the youth group members from the church - Pastor Abu (in the black t-shirt on the left) is the youth pastor of the church.

On our very last day in Kenya we took in a game drive at Lake Nakuru National Park - this is Tanya, Amy and Melissa in our "safari hats"!  What an amazing experience that was!