Term Break

This morning the last of our girls left to go home to their country of origin until the next term begins in five weeks.  Things are eerily quiet here and we dearly miss them already.  It is like having an empty
nest all over again.  It will be a time of needed rest and refreshing for both Debbie and me however. While school is in session it is constant activity from early morning to late at night seven days a week. On Sundays we get about a two hour break when one of the staff who is not a dorm parent comes and stays at the dorm while Debbie and go to a bible study with some other couples.

It has been an interesting holiday season here.  Since Thanksgiving is only recognized in the Americas and not anywhere else, Thanksgiving is not celebrated here and there is no break in school for it. In fact final exams were taking place on Thanksgiving day. We actually celebrated Christmas with the students before the break. Debbie and I along with another dorm couple oversaw a dorm Christmas party of about sixty high school seniors; the girls from our dorm and boys from another dorm. Now that the students are gone we will be getting together with a few other couples from the States today for a Thanksgiving meal which Debbie is helping to prepare as I type. Next Thursday we will do it all over again with another couple. So you see the holidays are a little backward here.  We have had our Christmas tree ( if you can call it that) up for over a week now. By the way turkeys cost about $7/lb american here. They are not a typical Kenyan meal.

Christine, Omar and the boys will be coming out to visit us in the middle of December.  We are really looking forward to that. They will be staying until January 7th  so we will have about three weeks with them.  We plan on doing a ten day Safari to several of the game parks.  This will be a year of giving rather than receiving for them.  We don't plan to exchange gifts for Christmas.  Instead they have raised about $670 dollars at their church to buy shoes for an orphanage about ten mile from RVA. Part of that will be used to help purchase land for a new orphanage. They have also had a drive at their schools in Baltimore and have collected school supplies and toiletries and Omar's office has collected toys to bring out to the orphanage.  We will go and have the boys go the orphanage two days after arriving to present these offerings to the children there.

Since I last wrote several other things have taken place besides the normal schedule at the school. Debbie and along with a fellow co-worker at the Arcade celebrated a birthday with one of our Kenyan worker's daughter. We had a nice visit and dinner which they prepared for us at their home and them had birthday cakes. The father's name is John.  John heads up the ministry at the IDP camp and sometimes uses what little money he has to help feed the kids at the IDP camp. Please pray for him and the ministry there. I will include a few pictures below.

Debbie, John and Janet

The different class had dorm parties this month.  One class had a pig roast.  We will be doing another pig roast for the national staff next Friday.  We will be roasting two pigs and seven goats. All the full time national staff and their families will be treated to a day of food and entertainment.

Cleaning the pig

Roasting the pig

We also had a time of cooking Christmas cookies with the dorm girls and some senior boys.

  

And last but not least we had Pinewood Derby Day here at RVA

Sorry the link did not work.  The video is inserted on this blog.  It shows the the church worshiping in dance and song, much the same way I believe King David did.

This has been a busy and hard week for us.  Both of us have had an intestinal bug.  First Debbie and then me.  I am still not quite over it, but I thought I would get this blog off to keep you up to date on some prayer requests that are needed here. This past Sunday and went down to to participate in the IDP camp church.  As I mentioned before, these people are displaced people who are malnourished and living in very poor condition.  For the most part they have no means of support.  Many of them do the Lord.  Each week they hold their church service under a tree. Last Sunday it was raining, but that did not keep them from joyously coming out to worship the Lord for a service that went on for almost two hours.  I wonder how many worshipers would do that in the U.S. They danced and sang to the Lord as only they can do here in Africa.  I have included a link with a small video.  I hope you can access it.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/49944324/IDP%20Church.mp4

The sad thing was that one little 5 or 6 year old girl who sang in the childrens choir during the service was run over by a truck and killed that same day.  Please pray for the grieving family.  The funeral is to take place this Friday and the parents have no money to pay the bills for her burial.

The term will end in a few weeks and the students here become stressed and a little homesick to see their parents again. Pray that they will be able to concentrate on their school work and final exams.  Most of them are involved in many activities beside their normal school work as you can see from the photo's above.

We continue covet your prayers for support as we try to prepare for being here for a second year beginning in July.