Marinatin'

All has become so second nature so quickly. The slow pace of the country has marinated in to the team, and we are enjoying long mornings, slow nights, and lots of hot chai with the locals. In the Kibera school I have been assisting a teacher with her third grade class, teaching English and maths. Last Wednesday around 10:30, the class bell rung, and I, as I am naturally inclined, hopped up and was immediately ready to venture off to my classroom to help students with additions (4 digits). However, my Teacher had noticed that I had only finished half a cup of tea, and told me that if I am to be Kenyan, I need to finish at least two cups before I could go to class. We had a good laugh about it, yet she still insisted that I sit and enjoy the hot drink while she sent the students in one by one for me to look over their work. We were told at Pre-Field training that in the mere two months we have in Kenya, we will only barely begin to break the surface into understanding the Kenyan way of life. How true. But all is still so exciting! We have begun work on developing a plot of land that the church has purchased out in the Ngong hills: 20 acres of green grassland that needs to be fenced in by Thursday! We have so far only dug holes—dozens and dozens of holes—for the fence posts to be set in. How fun could that be? Fun. Uberfun. Like digging holes on the set of the Lion King. And Pastor Makuku’s plans for the land only make us want to work faster: A new girls home for orphaned children, a retreat house for the children of Kibera, gardens to feed the hundreds of expected children that will come to worship and learn about the lord, a new guest house for interns like myself, and many more. Pastor knows so much about the people of Kenya, and has a remarkably heavy heart for them. I look forward to working close by him and his team for the next few weeks, watching the unusual ways the Kenyans worship my same God, listening to them pray in their native languages about thins I have never considered, and of course, marinating in slow pace of Kenya time. We have a familiar saying about Pastor, “A Pastor is never late, nor is he early…he arrives precisely when he means to.”

Kwaheri