A lighter day.

Today was a day for shifting gears and a fun day (as if there is any other kind!) We started off with a 5:45 am breakfast so the team could get an early start to the Lake Nakuru National Park for a game drive. They got to witness God's amazing creation in the breadth of wildlife in this awesome country. Among many other animals, they got to see rhinos and giraffes up close as well as mating lions. Amazing! I have been on this game drive the last two years so I took the opportunity to work with our Kenyan team members to drill, set up and prepare 310 buckets with water filters for the three distributions planned this next week.   

We'll be doing the first of these tomorrow at a new camp across from Gituamba, where we did all of our construction work last year. We'll also get a chance tomorrow to visit Gituamba, see our friends there again, and see the progress on the school we worked on. 

Church superstructure is up!

Another day of church construction with an extra helping of the Lord's blessing. Unfortunately, today was a day of not a whole lot of work to go around for everyone, as a smaller group was required to fabricate trusses. A portion of the group visited a local ECD school and spent some time with the children. When it came time to set the trusses on top of the frame, everyone joined in. Fortunately, when the trusses were set upright and braced and secured, many had moved outside the building, for two of them flipped and came swinging and crashing down among a rush of manpower to get out of the way. The Lord protected anyone from getting hurt in what could have been really bad. And we also learned that for an old guy, Bill Coble can move quickly when his bacon is in the fire!! We did get the broken trusses fixed and reinstalled so the lathe can be installed tomorrow in preparation for the steel roof sheets on Monday. 

Construction!

We had another great day! After an early breakfast, we left on a 40 minute drive to Rongai, where we began the framing of a church that will be pastored by Pastor Joseph Ndugu.

The foundation had been constructed last week, and we started from that foundation this morning. We were working with wet lumber, Blue Gum, which is easy to work with now but will harden within a month to the point you couldn't drive a nail into it.

By the end of the day, we had the walls framed, and tomorrow we will construct trusses of the same material, raise them, and begin putting the corrugated iron sheets on for the walls and roof. 

Some of the team had fun as well playing with some of the local 

A great day was had by all. On the way back, we stopped at a favorite, the Java House, at the Nakumat in Nakuru. Kenyan coffee is great, and it was super to get my espresso fix!

First full day on the ground

We had an awesome first full day on the ground. After breakfast and a team meeting, we headed in our vans (with our fantastic drivers and friends of 3 years Rufus and Happy James) to a shop that sells local crafts produced by women in challenging circumstances. Their sales help to provide an income for the women to support their families and provide resources for the AIC (African Inland Church) to fund their feeding and education program in the Deep Sea Slum for primary school children. From there we went into the church in the slum

to interact with the children and assist in feeding them lunch, the only meal a lot of them will get for the day. Over the three years we have been going there, we have noticed the improvement the efforts of SWOK (the ministry we partner with)

made in the healthiness of the children. 

From their, we traveled to a store if Amani Ya Juu, another women's empowerment center to have lunch and purchase more locally produced items to support them and to bring back and sell to raise funds for our next trip then it was on for the 4+ hour drive to Nakuru to Tumaini Cottages and Conference Center, where we will stay till next week. We got our rooms and had a team meeting before turning in at 10:30. Tomorrow will be our first day of construction on the church at Rongai. 

We made it!

We finally arrived in Nairobi after leaving JFK 21 hours before. Our flights might have been long but they were uneventful, with no security issues, missed flights, etc. And for the third year in a row, not one piece of luggage failed to arrive on time! We did get twisted a little by the corruption in customs and had to pay an additional 30+% of value to get one gift through, but it could have been worse.

Everyone arrived in good spirits, and we got to our accommodations for tonight at the Presbyterian Guest House in Nairobi and settled by midnight local time. In the morning, we'll be up for an early breakfast and off by 9:00 to head for Deep Sea Slum. For security reasons, we won't be able to take pictures there except inside the church where we will be ministering to the young children. If you want to get an idea what it's like, just Google "deep sea slum" images and you'll get a pretty good feel for what it's like. Looking forward to seeing what the Lord has in store for us!

We're off!

The big day is here, and we're on our way to JFK! We met at the church and our team was prayed for at our early service. We are looking forward to the Lord doing great things in and through us in Kenya. Surprisingly, all our luggage fit in the bus from Eagle Limousine, and we're headed to New York for our first leg of the trip, a thirteen hour flight to Dubai. Following a 3&1/2 hour layover, it's a five hour flight on to Nairobi. It's good to finally be on our way and looking for the Lord to do great things!

Countdown to departure

Once again this year, Bethlehem United Methodist in Thornton, PA, and Hope Community Church in Ridley Park, PA, have partnered together to send a team to Kenya to work with the ministry of SWOK, Start with One Kenya.  This will be the third year that we have partnered with SWOK to help with local construction projects, ministry at orphanages, hygiene training and distribution of and training with personal water purification systems. Whereas prior teams were composed of 27-29 individuals, our team this year is 14 members. We have been meeting together for training and team-building for the last two months. We are now down to less than a week till we leave on Sunday, July 26 out of JFK. We fly first to Dubai with a 13 hour flight, then have a 3.5 hour layover before continuing on with a 5 hour flight to Nairobi. We'll spend one night in Nairobi and the next day visit the Deep Sea Slum to minister to the children at the Methodist Church there. We then travel to Nakuru where we'll spend most of our time until we return on August 8. We will be building a basketball court at the Springs of Hope orphanage, constructing a church building, and doing hygiene training and distributing the new UZima water filters.
Last year, Internet access was poor to non-existent, so trying to post routinely was a challenge. Hopefully the situation will be improved this year since we will be setting up our own hotspot on Safari-com, which should greatly improve our consistent access.  I hope to put up a new post daily with photos of our activities. My first post in-country should hopefully be on July 28. See you then!

This is our 2015 team! From left, Emily Cross, Zach Eger, Brindy Gibbs, Kelby
Gibbs, Ang Warren, Dale Plummer, Cindy Wolff, Josh Schaeffer, Tom Wolff,
Laura Plummer, Jim Hall, Debbie Plummer, Andi Hall & Steve Trandahl.