Saturday was a blur of activity from final community visits to connecting with sponsored kids, and a final 3 Little Pigs show (which over 1000 students ended up seeing this week). We met back at the school for lunch and the kids had a wonderful show prepared for us. Even the goats from the community wanted to get a peek (as well as a duck and of course kids from around the area). There were touching speeches, thoughtful gifts, singing, reciting memory verses (Bible Verses), drums, and dancing (including all of us!) Very nice way to end our week with genuine appreciation shown and expressed from both groups to each other.
One interesting thing about this celebration was the cake. It was a normal sheet cake...the kind you would buy at a store for a kids birthday cake. Yet somehow that little cake fed about 250 people. It was like a little miracle right in front of us....'the feeding of the 250!'
We spent the evening at an Ethiopian Restaurant and I think the overall feedback was 'nice cultural experience' (some loved the food, others were so so on it). We did learn that it is not a great idea to order Ethiopian coffee at the end of a meal. It literally took about an hour to cook and we ended up with about a shot glass worth of java at the end of it. But the company was great and the stories were flowing.
Because we got back so late, guess what sermon we got to hear Sunday morning from Pastor Ron? You guessed it! Ephesians 3:20 Immeasurably More! We were all just praying the other day to be able to hear it again (NOT!) Ron says he had something from Luke 14 prepared (cough, cough....) but he felt a prompting to do the Immeasurably More sermon again because it fits this group of people better.
Ok, we gave him a break tonight after much razzing. We had been joking about it before service and when he started in with Ephesians 3:20, we all seriously thought he was just pulling a fast one on us and would head off in a different direction after a minute or two. Nope. We all knew he was serious when we heard about Stacy telling the kids to exceed expectations....and how homework assignments, book reports, etc needed to exceed expectations. And off he went (with us reciting the sermon word for word along with him). Who would have thought THAT?
We have a new hand signal for pastor. Make an 'ok' sign with both of your hands. With your right hand hold it parallel to the ground, over your right breast. Spread your fingers and imagine that you are looking at yourself....those 3 fingers look like and 'E' (as in Ephesians). The left hand just have a regular 'ok' sign with the 3 fingers pointing up near the left breast and that is the '3' (as in Ephesians 3) It's a cool little sign and we hope to see you all with the new 'pastor salute' when the bus rolls into the parking lot Thursday.
Church was wonderful this morning. The Kenyan pastor had us all get up and mix together so no one was sitting next to someone they knew. Great thing to do and we experienced a high energy, singing, and dancing service. The kids from our school had our costumes and performed the 3 Little Pigs skit as a part of the service (really cute) and one of the head teachers read Matthew 7:24 just as our team had done and talked about building our lives upon the rock of Jesus Christ (see second video from a couple of days ago)
There were some touching moments as a girl who was a favorite from a previous Crossway trip showed up at church this morning and one of the sponsored kids was at the church after service. He was so excited to see his sponsors one last time. I have to wonder if he heard that our group was going to be there this morning and purposefully came or if it really was just a lucky coincidence. Either way, it was a wonderful moment for child and sponsors.
We spent the afternoon at the market and relaxing. We also started an exercise where we listed our 10 favorite moments from the trip and 10 not so favorite / challenging moments. This exercise formed the basis of our team meeting tonight. I think we all enjoyed hearing about each other's favorite moments. Perhaps in a later note some of those stories will be shared (some were relayed throughout the week in this blog).
This will be the last post until we are back in the States. We are heading out to our safari early Monday morning. We will be out until Wednesday morning and then head back to Mary and Wallace Kamau's home Wednesday early evening before heading to the airport for our 1145pm flight. We will be home Thursday late afternoon.
Please continue to pray for our health and well being.
God Bless,
The 2011 Kenya Team
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