Friday May 27

Hey Faithful Followers,
I hope we find you well, safe and blessed as we are here. Today started off like every other normal day, woke up at 5 am and started my quiet time. Got in the shower at 5:20 and the power went out at 5:21. In a matter of five seconds the lights went completely out, casting me into darkness along with freezing cold water falling down on my head. After crawling on the tile for a few seconds, I located my towel and dressed myself and headed back out to the kitchen. In the morning we had more awesome training. We learned about Kenyan culture (some things not to do), and how to do short term missions without doing long-term harm. The latter created a lot of discussion and reflection on previous missions experiences.
In the afternoon, we visited one of the medical clinics in the Kibera Slum. This particular clinic that works with LIA is unique from nearly every other one because it isn’t free. The reason behind this is because they are trying to help the people of Kibera get out of the culture of “free.” There are over 1 million people living in the Kibera slum, and over 1000 NGO’s. Nearly all of the NGO’s provide handout after handout, perpetuating a cycle of poverty by providing relief from immediate needs without developing a way out of the perpetual poverty.
We came home to no power, but thankfully the internet we’ve been borrowing was up and running. I checked my email and found good news in my inbox.
Flashback to last night (Thursday).
Gus, his wife Rose, and their 5 month old son Nathaniel came over for dinner. We have begun to share our “life journeys” with each other and our country hosts, Gus and Holly. I went first and shared about the journey I’ve been on since being born, including the whirlwind that’s been the past two years. At the end of my story, I shared my calling life and my spiritual gifts. I shared that my calling was in medicine, and even though I haven’t been accepted to a school yet, I knew that’s where I was called. I know where the finish line is; I just don’t know how long it is between here and there. At the end, everyone laid hands on me and prayed.
Fast forward back to present time.
Everyone is cooking dinner in the dark. They were preparing chapatti fajitas the old fashioned way. The cheese came from the goat Katie milked in our back yard; the veggies were picked from the field across the way by Molly, the fruit from the trees off the streets, the chapatti was made from the maize meal that Elise ground up and the beef from the cow that Nicole slaughtered. Meanwhile, Austin was washing his pants on a washboard in the river and had to be signaled home for dinner by light signals from our lantern. The meal was cooked over and open fire, and we sat and ate together by lantern light.
Our power came back on after our friend Collins came and looked at it around 7:30pm. We then enjoyed watching LIA’s documentary, This Is My Normal. Everyone except me, because well, I had to share my good news with a lot of people, and thank God. And in case you’re wondering what this good news is, well, I was accepted to medical school at the University of Toledo :-D
Sam and the Mi2 team