Update #1

hello again to everyone!
I finally made it safely to my destination late on Sunday night. I was welcomed by almost the entire staff who were having a goodbye ceremony for a team that had been there for about a month. As soon as I walked in the door, they all shouted "Kabari" which means welcome. I think that is the word that I have heard the most since I have been here. Everyone is so nice and have really made me feel at home here. I was introduced to the family that I will be working with the entire time I am here. They are called the Lucas family, or Mama and Baba Chiri.
My first few days were just spend orientating me to my new surroundings. The children's home is divided into two wings, the East and West wing and there are two families per wing. I am in the West wing with the Lucas family like I said and they have 25 children in total including one biological child, Chiri, who is only 5 years old. they have their own house which is quite small, only a few rooms, and then the children's rooms, and the dinning/common area. All of these are their own separate buildings. The children are at school for most of the day so I just kind of hang around with the parents, and do whatever they are doing or whatever they need me to do. So far this week, i have milked a cow, done lots of laundry by hand, weeding in the garden with a machete, feed the chickens, and many other outdoor activities. Some of the children have asked me if I had ever seen a cow before, and I just laughed and said yes, I have definitely seen a cow before in Bakersfield!
Pretty much all of their food can be found on their property, so they grow it themselves. It is mostly vegitables, and beans, and rice, and wheat, and maize (which is like corn). They even have some fruits here that i was not expecting like mangos, passionfruit, watermelon, and tomatoe tree. For breakfast every morning there is chai, and for dinner at night there is ugali, which is a mixture of flour corn and water. The children love it and I am sure I will get sick of it but it is alright for now. A few times this week I had been invited, along with the other girls who are here, Nikole who is just visiting, and Daniela who is interning also, to have dinner at different houses twice this week. All of the families are very welcoming and encouraging to us. They constantly speak the Word to us and pray for us as we are here, serving.
Aside from the children's home, there is a training fascility here that does a lot of devolpment work that helps to train people in agricutlre so that they can live on their own. They have more resources there like a nursey where they harvest different plants to sell and use on the grounds. They have thier own chickens, goats, rabbits, cows, and fish there as well. Right now there is a group of recovering alcohlics on the base that can be seen around doing many various of these activities. They graduate tomorrow, and one is even being baptized because he became a believer during his stay here, so I am very excited to see all of that.
I just think it amazing how much they get out of everything they have here; like the plants and flowers and animals. Everything has a purpose and is used to its capacity. The crops have been sturggling lately because there has been a drought here for a couple of weeks, so please pray that is will rain enough so that we can sustain the crops! This is just another way that they are truely dependant on God for everything. Whenever there is a problem, they pray and ask God for help because their resources are limited, but who needs them when you have God, right!?!
Oh yes, thank you for your prayers, my luggage finally came on Tuesday, so i was just shy of one week without it. The bag was pretty beat up but everything on the inside was in tact. The team that i mentioned before gave me some clothes that they were going leave here so I had some when they heard that my luggage was lost. It was very nice to have a change of clothes!
I feel like I haven't said much about what I have been doing but everything just moves a little slower here and is more simple than in America. As you can probably tell from all of the people I have mentioned, this is a very person oriented culture, where the relationships made with people are the most important thing. I have learned all of the names of the children in my family, and some other basic words in Swahili that I will use often. We saw off Nikole today; she was visiting Ilula before she has to return to her home. She had interned with them in the past and just finished up serving for a year in another city. It was good to have her around because she helped make me settle in and gave me a little "heads up" on certain things that I should be aware of while here.
Please pray that I can continually transformed by this experience and that I can relate more with the children. I am looking forward to spending more time with them this weekend because they are on a short holiday from school so they will be around more.
I hope to be able to send you some pictures next week in my update when I am in town.
More to come...
Becky