DAY 9 & 10:

Sunday we were able to worship with the Faders at their church.  It was a very enjoyable and meaningful service.  Kim helped Heather with teaching her Sunday School Class.   After church we went up to the pediatric ward again and handed out some toys that were sent along with us.  They were very happy to receive them.

Today we made our way over to Nairobi safely and we are staying in another missionary guest house this evening.  This morning, on the way here, we stopped at Crescent Island on Lake Naivasha.  It is about 1 hour from Nairobi.  We took a boat ride out to the island and on the way there were many hippos surfacing all around us.  On the island, we had a great picnic lunch among the animals.  Because of the island, the animals are protected from predators and are pretty tame...thus humans can safely walk among them.  We were surrounded by giraffe, zebras, gazelle, african buffalo, and many others.  It was awesome.  Here are a few pictures... we have many more that we can show you when we get home.

Tomorrow morning we will take a peak at some of the shops/markets here in Nairobi.  Then we will await to board our plane in the evening.  Please pray for safe flights for us.  We look forward to seeing you when we get back home.  We thank the Lord for an unbelievable, life-changing mission trip.

DAY 8:

Today we loaded up with about 12 people, packed our gifts, and headed about 15 minutes away to Umoja Children's Home.  It is an orphanage that has about 40 children ranging from 3 years old to 14 or so.  We showed up late morning and met with the kids in their dining hall.  We all introduced ourselves.  The children all gathered together to sing us some songs.  We sang them a song too.  The "mother" of the home took us on a tour of the property showing us the office, the dorms, and the farm.  They raise chickens and sell the eggs to help raise money for the home.  We then went out into an open field and gave them our soccer balls, coloring books with crayons and markers, and played other games with them for about 2 hours. It was so much fun.

Tomorrow we will be going to Jason & Heather's church to worship with them.  We will be making one more trip up to the pediatric ward to bring up some toys that people gave us to bring along.  Then Monday morning we will begin to make the trip back to Nairobi.  We are so excited to share our stories and pictures with all of our friends and families.

DAY 7:

Kim and Heather went for an early morning run again.  We finally got a picture of the newest fad that will be coming back to Oostburg soon.  Running in a skirt!!

Later in the morning we took all of the girls up to the pediatric ward to color with the kids.  We found a few kids outside in the sun and then went into the room by the rest of them.  They were very excited when they saw what we were there for.  It was a great time.

In the afternoon, Kim and Heather took the girls up to see how the triplets were doing.  We found out that the mother named the 2 boys and girl.... Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

And on a side note, here is a bug (or creature) that was crawling on Kalli's shirt that sent her into a tizzy.  I finally was able to get it off of her.  Had to get a picture.  I would have went crazy too if that was on me.

Thanks for your support, prayers, comments, and words of encouragement!!

DAY 6:

This morning we took care of a load of laundry as we were starting to run out of clothes.  We are good to go now!!
Kim accomplished her number #1 goal today... she got to go in the nursery and feed one of three triplets that had just been born the previous morning.  Except she found out that they feed them a bit differently here.  They have to give them breast milk out of a small cup.  Please see the pictures below.

In the afternoon, Andy and some other girls got to Jason's project.  We tackled his bookshelves in the operating room library and got all of the books cataloged on a master list and numbered.  That way the books won't walk off and never be seen again.

DAY 5:

Today was a bit more laid back of a day, which was fine as we needed to recuperate and re energize.  In the morning Andy went a tour of the new housing building that is being erected.  It was interesting to see the different methods of construction and safety procedures from what we have in the states.  There were no hard hats to be found, guys chiseling stone without safety glasses, a man welding without a mask, and the scaffolding was made of large tree branches.  But it gets the job done here and overall they were doing a pretty good job. In the pictures below you will see the non-uniform sizes of lumber that they have to deal with. Also, a picture of the welder and the building with the scaffolding.

In the early afternoon, the girls practiced their chameleon catching skills and finally got comfortable enough to hold them. 

Later in the afternoon we took all of the girls over to the pediatric ward.  They had all worked the day before on a 10' long banner that they had painted for the kids there.  We hung it on the wall in the hallway across from the ward so they could look out the windows and see the bright colors.

Kim also went for a 3 mile run with Heather and 2 other girls at 6:00 am this morning.  She was a bit worried about the altitude and hills around here, but she made it.  And Robin you will crack up at this, but Kim was informed that she needed to wear a skirt while running too.  No shorts.  We are going to try to get a picture of that when they run next time.

DAY 4:

Today we went on a community health outreach trip to a nearby village.  We took many bumpy, dirt roads to get there.  First all of the women come with their babies to the site.  They  first did prayer and devotions with them.  Then they talked to them about family planning.  Kim and I were the joke of the talk because they thought it was funny that our girls were 3 years apart.  We then broke off into different rooms.  One nurse talked more to the women one-on-one.  Another nurse was doing vaccinations in another room.  And Kim and I weighed the babies and recorded it in their book log.  Take a look below what we were weighing them on.

It was a great day.  We got to talk with the women, play a bit with the babies, and see how different our health care system is from theirs.  Everyone was so nice.
We even had some friends watching us through the window for most of the time we were there.  They were singing us songs, clapping, and Kim was practicing their counting to 10 in English.  Never can give up the teaching.

We are treated like celebrities here.  All of the children want to come up to us and shake our hands and they are always waving to us when we go past.  Our driver told us he heard some children say more than once that "I just saw a white man".  Too funny.


Thank you for your prayers.  We are having an amazing time.

DAY 3:

Today we got a full tour of the hospital.  It was way bigger than we expected.  I guess it would have to be... it is the largest mission hospital in the world.  We got up close looks at the operating rooms, the eye clinic, the pediatric ward, and of course Kim's favorite, the nursery.  Kim did get to hold a baby today and loved it, but there were none that needed feeding today so she was a little bummed.  We are going to try again later this week.  We are also going to go color and play with the older kids in the pediatric ward.

The wards where the patients stay were unbelievable.  They have about 20 people all in one room, really no privacy at all.  In the baby ward, the women come right into the nursery to feed... they pull up a stool and sit right by the incubator.  All 30-40 babies getting breast fed in one room at one time.  In the ward where women are waiting to deliver, it is so busy that two women are in the same bed.  In the large waiting room in the ER, there are benches all lined up and the people slowly make there way up to the front.  There was probably 100 people in there this morning at 10 am.  They probably will sit there for hours to get in.  And they have probably walked for 2 days to get here.  We get upset if we have to wait more than 20-30 minutes in a waiting room.  All in all, it is a great place.

In the afternoon, we took a walk to see the waterfall that generates all of the electricity for the facility and housing.  In Jan. to April, the river is usually very low and lots of times they lose power.  This year was especially bad Heather and Jason said.

Please pray for us tomorrow.  Kim and I are going by ourselves (Heather has graciously agreed to watch the girls) on a health outreach in a surrounding village or tribe.  We are going with the Tenwek Community Health Center and will be gone from 9 am to 3 pm or so.  We will be helping with vaccinations, weighing babies, and recording all the info for the Health Center where they keep all of the records. It should be a really neat day.

We had an interesting thing happen the other day.  We had some girls looking in our window.  One of them looked at me, pointed to the floor below at Kalli's sandals, and said "you give me shoes?"  I so wanted to hand them to her, but we were told not to.  If you give one of them something like that, we will have a whole crowd of them back at our window the next day.  That is something we will have to wait to do until the last day.  The kids just love the girls though.  They always come up to them and want to hold their hands and walk with us.

Thanks for your prayers.  We are having an amazing time.

Andy and Kim