Highlights from this week

We got to the Hill on Saturday and we've been having an amazing time! Here are a few highlights from the past few days.

On Sunday we went to the bush for church and a baby dedication. Church was under a tree, which was really cool. It was super short for a Kenyan church service – only about two hours – and then we went back to Pastor Joseph’s home in the bush (he also has a home up on the Hill) and ate lunch. After that we just played with the neighborhood kids for a few hours. They were ADORABLE. Some of them are part of the Oasis for Orphans bush program, which is a feeding program on Saturdays. Others were just kids from the community. None of them knew English (many of them didn’t even know Swahili, only Maasai), so we couldn’t communicate with them, but the language barrier didn’t prevent us from having fun together. We played a bunch of games and took some pictures. This one little boy learned from Mallory how to ask politely for us to take his picture, so he kept coming up to me and saying “Pleeease… take… my… picha!” in his little Kenyan accent. It was so cute, I couldn’t say no. There was one little girl named Potishoi who clung to me all day. She would put her arms up for me to hold her, and when she got heavy and I tried to put her down, she would wrap her legs around me as I slid her down my legs and as soon as she touched the ground she would put her arms up again. I ended up holding her for about 2 hours. The bush kids were super sweet and I can’t wait to go see them again when we visit the bush program next Saturday.

This week we’ve been playing with the kids a lot and planning for our day camp that we’re doing next week. While we’re here we’ll also be responsible for leading devotion two to three times a week. Our first one was Tuesday night. We taught about Shadrack, Meshach & Abednego and the Fiery Furnace. I had actually just taught this story at Spotlight Camp earlier this summer so this was a fun one to start with. We acted out the story and had the kids help us act it out. We provided little costumes and even had one part where the lights went off and we used a flashlight and sheet to show the silhouettes of the people in the fire. It was a big hit with the kids! We had a lot of fun and John, the chaplain of the children's home, seemed to really love it as well. It takes a little bit of his load off to have us do devotions certain nights.

After devotion, right before we headed back down to the guesthouse, the power at the children’s home went out. It was pitch black. Immediately, someone turned on a flashlight and started waving it around, and a kid started drumming on a box, and all at once everyone started dancing. We had a little dance party in the dark for 5-10 minutes until the lights came back on. It was SO much fun. The kids were all giggling and dancing and going crazy. It was probably the highlight of my day that day. One of the things I love about this place and these kids is that they can have so much fun with the simplest things. They don’t have much in the way of material possessions, but they have so much joy. That little dance party was a perfect example – it was so simple and so joyful. I kind of wanted it to go on forever.

Yesterday we were able to join in on the women’s Bible study. The mamas from the community come up to the children’s home every Wednesday and Ann Smith leads a study. This week they were going to be reading Daniel 3, which is the same story we chose to teach on Tuesday night to the kids, so Ann had us teach the mamas. After we finished telling the story, the mamas chimed in with their own opinions and interpretations. Elizabeth, the director of the children’s home, translated. It was so cool that, even though we come from such different places and such different backgrounds and we speak different languages, we can still come together and read God’s word and learn from each other. It was a really awesome experience. After Bible study, the mamas gave Shayne and Jackie their Maasai names. (Ryan and I already had names because we've been here before.) Now all four of us can introduce ourselves by our Maasai names, which are much easier for people here to pronounce than our American names. My name is Lepishoi, Ryan is Naguran, Shayne is Nainepu and Jackie is Tipitip.

Tonight we weren't teaching but a few of us went up for devotion anyway, and I'm so glad we did! It was such a great night. The kids sang worship songs at the beginning, and I was tearing up a little bit watching them. I didn't even know what they were saying, but they were getting so into it and it just melted my heart watching these kids worship God with so much passion. And right when the last song ended, every child in the room started praying out loud. For several minutes, the room was abuzz with dozens of kids earnestly praying in Swahili and Maasai. It was one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed. I totally felt God's presence in that room. After devotion, the chaplain, John, called us into his office and we spent some time talking with him. It was great. He is so sweet and we loved getting to know him more and hear about his family and his life.

Those are only a few snippets of what we’ve done these past few days. We’ve been keeping busy and we’ve already done and experienced so much! I would have to write a novel to recount everything that’s happened. Just know that we’re all having a great time! Thanks for checking in :)

-Kara Lepishoi

 Nentaya and me the day we arrived

 Potishoi, my little friend from the bush

 kids in the bush

 our team cooking with the mamas

MOSES!

Kibera

Today we visited St. Martha's Ministry in the Kibera Slum. It's a ministry for HIV+ women, founded by a couple named Caleb and Eunice, who live in the slum and are both HIV+. The women meet for Bible study every Thursday, so they were already there when we arrived today. They introduced themselves and shared their stories. I was so moved by their testimonies. These women are all widows, living with HIV, trying to raise their families in the largest slum in Africa. They have every reason to be angry at God and to be miserable, but they're not. They all talked about how they're "living positive," how they're thankful for every day, how they're grateful to God, and how God has sustained their families. It was convicting for me, because how many times do I tell people that I'm thankful to God for my life? How often do I acknowledge all the ways God has blessed me? Not very often. Not enough, that's for sure. And I live such a charmed life. I'm healthy, my whole family is healthy, I always have enough to eat, I live in a comfortable house where my bedroom is five times the size of the houses in Kibera, and I go to a great college. I have so much, and I take it for granted, but these women who have so little are grateful for every single day.

We walked through the slum to go on home visits. I've never seen anything like what I saw there today. There were tiny tin shacks as far as the eye can see, and the streets were full of garbage and raw sewage. It was poverty like I have never experienced before, except maybe in movies. But what stood out to me was the kids we saw. They were so full of joy. It was a stark contrast to the depressing surroundings. These kids had the hugest smiles, and when we'd walk by they'd either yell "mzungu!" (which means "white person") or chant their chorus of "how are you! how are you!" in their adorable Kenyan accents. They loved to high five us or shake our hands. They were absolutely precious and they totally made my day, but at the same time it broke my heart seeing where they live, and knowing that, most likely, they will spend their entire lives in the slum and never get out. There are over 1000 NGO's in Kibera, and they have had virtually no impact. Nothing seems to be able to break the cycle of poverty. It does make me feel grateful for people like Caleb and Eunice, who are working to make life better for HIV+ women in Kibera. And most of all, it makes me even more excited about Oasis. Because of Oasis, those 100 kids on the Hill aren't living in Kibera or someplace similar, trapped in a never-ending cycle of poverty. They have hope and a future. After today, I am filled with an even greater passion for the work Oasis is doing, and I am so humbled and grateful to be able to be a part of it over this next month.

We're here!

Just wanted to let everyone know we got here safely! We got to Nairobi late Monday night. Tuesday we had a relaxing day, went to the mall, got some froyo (anyone who knows me knows how exciting it was for me to find a froyo place in Kenya), and started our training back at the guest house.

Yesterday we went to a place called Amani Yaa Juu, which is a place where women from Kenya and other places all over Africa come and learn how to sew, make fabrics, make jewelry, etc. We took a tour, did some batiking (you stamp melted wax onto a fabric to create a pattern, and then dye it.. we each brought a t-shirt to batik) and went shopping. The women at Amani were so friendly. They sang when we came into the first room during the tour, and they all came and gave us each a huge hug. And we all LOVED this one woman named Maggie, who Mallory has known for years. She was the cutest, sweetest woman who gives the best hugs out of anyone I have ever met.

Other than that, we haven’t done too much yet this week. These few days have really been about bonding as a team. There are a total of five of us: four interns (Jackie Ader, Ryan Bradley, Shayne Carroll and myself) and our leader, Mallory. I love these girls, we all get along so well. We have WAY too much fun together and have a ton of inside jokes already, but we’ve also had some really awesome moments where we’ve been able to open up to each other and be vulnerable. There has been some crying… but rest assured that most of it has been from laughing. :)

Yesterday our assignment was to decide on a team Mission Statement for this trip. Here is what we came up with:

“We will strive to learn and form meaningful relationships by serving, loving, and listening to the kids, staff, and members of the community.

We hope to experience joy and bring joy to everyone we encounter.

We pray that we will grow in our relationships with Christ and have faith in Him

We are open to whatever God has planned for this trip and for our futures.” 

In a few minutes we are going to head to Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. We're meeting with an HIV+ ministry there called St. Martha's Ministry, which is a partner of Oasis. Oasis is hoping to build a children's home with St. Martha's in the future. I'm sure today will be an emotional day, as we will be witnessing an extreme level of poverty that none of us have ever experienced before. But it's good for us to get this experience because Kibera is where Oasis got its start. It's important for us to see where Oasis came from and also see the kind of poverty that many of the kids at the children's home would be living in if it weren't for Oasis.

Tomorrow we're going to visit another orphanage and tour a mission hospital in Kijabe. Saturday we head to the Hill! I'm so excited, I can't wait to see those kids!

You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love

“Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity” to serve. You don’t have to know the Second Theory of Thermal Dynamics in Physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.