What happened to sleep?

I originally planned to update this every day this week. Ha! I’ve been so busy with the GCC team; I haven’t even had a chance to make it to the internet café since Sunday afternoon! Seriously, I’m barely getting enough sleep, while these jet-lagged Americans are showing up fresh and chipper! Isn’t that backwards somehow? They should be the ones dragging their feet each morning! Not me! I live here!!!

Anyway, about the week… On Sunday, the Mombasa Road team was given an awesome Kenyan welcome. They were all brought up front to the beats of a traditional Kenyan welcome song. Then, to their great surprise, several church fathers and “mamas” came up, draping Massai blankets around the guys and wrapping kangas around the girls, then prayed a blessing over each of them. The Massai blankets symbolized their nature as “spiritual warriors,” while the kangas (traditional Kenyan garments) represented the servanthood of the girls. It was so cool. The best part? They got to keep their gifts!



On Sunday afternoon, I found myself serving chai to a few members of the Waiyaki Way GCC team. It was the first time I’d ever made tea for so many people. The tea was a little strong, but I don’t think they knew any better, so it was ok! Hehe… After tea, I sent them off to enjoy their first night with host families (the GCC team has been living in houses and apartments all across Nairobi since that night!). From the conversations I’ve had with our team, living separately with families has been a great experience so far!



From this point, I have no idea how the other teams have been doing. The only GCC members I’ve seen all week have been for our church plant (Mombasa Road). We had a good time doing some team building on Monday morning. I led the team in some fun discussions and a crazy Kenyan game called “Shake.”



In the afternoon, teams of four went walking and praying through different parts of our district. This “prayer walk” was a great way for the team to see exactly what our area really looks and feels like. It was really good, but we all came back totally cooked by the sun!

Tuesday was definitely the most intense day so far. We took our team to a small prison in the industrial area completely overflowing with over 5000 inmates. We presented the gospel and played some Christian music with a group of DJ’s called “K-Krew.” It was a little overwhelming to see a sea of prison-hardened faces light up at the extremely rare entertainment we were able to provide. The stench of sewage and body odor (which I’m getting used to here) added to the surreal and shocking experience for our team.

Tomorrow we will go to Mama Ngina Children’s home to paint the walls, cut the grass, and play with the young orphans. Thursday we will be receiving training in Muslim Evangelism, then doing a community survey that will hopefully open up doors into some deeper conversations. Add that to the slum visit on Friday and Saturday’s “Crazy Olympics” outreach event, and these guys going to officially have the busiest and most culturally challenging week of their lives!

I guess I’m learning that coordinating and leading an international team in all these events is pretty exhausting! It’s just a good thing dad and mom are bringing me some Starbucks coffee when they arrive on Thursday morning! I’m going to need it!