2010

This year might be my year of visitors--already this year we've seen 6 people come and 5 people go! Monday we welcome 8 people from NMSI who will be here for a week... my dad comes the day after that team leaves... another NMSI team comes at the beginning of March... another in April... several more in May, June and July! You could say that we're going to be busy =) Our missionary team is growing, too. One couple is getting settled; another just arrived; a family of 5 and 2 other singles are on schedule to arrive in July/August; and another family will be returning in September. 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

The AfricaHope crew for our annual Christmas photo 

Education Day

Education Day--Celebration of Academic Achievements for the 16 schools of Osupuko Division

When you make a promise, you better be ready to keep it! That's what we were thinking when Tim came to us and said, "I promised Kuntai primary school that if they scored higher on their end of year exams than Elongata Enterit primary that I'd buy them new school desks for their new classrooms..." Elongata Enterit had been the number 1 school for years, but this year, Kuntai improved enough to rank first out of 16 schools in their division.  

The new desks for Kuntai Primary School--a reward for ranking #1 in their Division

Dusty, Steve, Jamie and I standing in front of the 2 new classrooms built through our school partnership program. 

Rains

I try to keep up with world news on some level and it's always a bit of a surprise to find Kenya in the headlines. Here is an article I came across today that sums up a lot of what we're experiencing--the rains have come but there's still lots of suffering around: 

Rain 'not enough' to end hunger in Kenya

I went to the bush last week for the weekend... and it turned into a week long stay! The roads were muddy, to say the least, for the 6 hour drive to Olorte, Loita. When you travel a long distance, it's normal to meet friends along the road who are looking for a lift so we were blessed to have lots of help when we did get stuck =) and we may have hit a small tree. I've heard about the neighboring division of Kenya, called Loita, being amazingly beautiful, but I'd never visited before. I have affectionately named this place 'paradise' so being stuck there was actually a much needed time of rest and refreshment. It's wonderful that God gives us what we need even when we don't know that we need it.

Several "retired" AH missionaries are here for the month of January, so again I'm feeling blessed to talk about life here with people who have gone through and experienced many of the same things that I have during my time here.