Long haul flights are where you finally watch the movies your friends have been recommending but the screen is so small and you're so tired you have no idea if they were any good or not. After about 28 hours of travel I arrived in Nairobi just after midnight local time last night. Pastor Tom picked me up at the airport, and we caught up on the 30 minute drive to his house. "You will see that a lot of things have changed here," he told me, smiling and shaking his head. That would have to wait a few hours of course - after the drive home I had just enough energy left to login and chat with Anneliese and Titus for a few minutes before going to bed around 2AM local time to sleep off the jet lag.
This morning I woke up feeling refreshed and ready, and headed down to the Centre with Tom for a quick tour and visit. And Tom was right - so much has changed! The building is now finished at 3 floors high, an impressive accomplishment after the setback they faced in early 2013. The first floor houses the church sanctuary and administrative offices for the school and the over-all Connect With a Child program. The second floor houses tidy classrooms where kids from K-8th grade study diligently (the school is significantly outperforming the national average), and the third has a few more classrooms as well as bunkbed-filled dorms that house about 30 of the neediest students that don't have relatives or other families able to take them in. We're planning to spend the day at the Centre tomorrow and will take pictures and videos so stay tuned!!
We spent the afternoon driving around town running errands and purchasing supplies for the kids at the Children's Village in Siaya. Driving in Nairobi is totally different today than it was on my first visit nearly 5 years ago. What was once an experience of clogged roundabouts and crawling traffic is now a much faster and less frustrating ride on a growing network of modern highways (and clearly marked road signs...what country are we even in?!). The city's Manhattan-like energy is still superseded by its developing world-style chaos, but it's modernizing quickly. And while there are still millions impoverished in Nairobi, there more and more roads (literally) to success here - a child with a good education and foundation of integrity has a chance to go much further in Kenya than was once the case.
On our shopping trip we focused on rural Kenya's everyday essentials - mosquito nets, solar-powered lights, and soccer balls - which we'll add to the gifts you all sent along with me when we head out there Friday. I can't wait to bless these children and let them know, one by one, that they are not forgotten and that God created each of them to fulfill an amazing purpose. He is so good!
This morning I woke up feeling refreshed and ready, and headed down to the Centre with Tom for a quick tour and visit. And Tom was right - so much has changed! The building is now finished at 3 floors high, an impressive accomplishment after the setback they faced in early 2013. The first floor houses the church sanctuary and administrative offices for the school and the over-all Connect With a Child program. The second floor houses tidy classrooms where kids from K-8th grade study diligently (the school is significantly outperforming the national average), and the third has a few more classrooms as well as bunkbed-filled dorms that house about 30 of the neediest students that don't have relatives or other families able to take them in. We're planning to spend the day at the Centre tomorrow and will take pictures and videos so stay tuned!!
We spent the afternoon driving around town running errands and purchasing supplies for the kids at the Children's Village in Siaya. Driving in Nairobi is totally different today than it was on my first visit nearly 5 years ago. What was once an experience of clogged roundabouts and crawling traffic is now a much faster and less frustrating ride on a growing network of modern highways (and clearly marked road signs...what country are we even in?!). The city's Manhattan-like energy is still superseded by its developing world-style chaos, but it's modernizing quickly. And while there are still millions impoverished in Nairobi, there more and more roads (literally) to success here - a child with a good education and foundation of integrity has a chance to go much further in Kenya than was once the case.
On our shopping trip we focused on rural Kenya's everyday essentials - mosquito nets, solar-powered lights, and soccer balls - which we'll add to the gifts you all sent along with me when we head out there Friday. I can't wait to bless these children and let them know, one by one, that they are not forgotten and that God created each of them to fulfill an amazing purpose. He is so good!
Wonderful, Zach - can't wait to see the pictures !!
ReplyDeleteLove from Grandpa and Grandma <3