Dancing with two right feet

Hi Friends and Family,
Hello from Kisumu! This has been quite an eventful week, and we haven’t blogged yet, oh my! We don’t have internet access at our guest house, so I’m writing this from another guest house! We drove to Kisumu last Saturday. It was an entertaining and exciting 8.5 hour drive. Our friend Jakob drove us the whole way, what a champ. We saw some twigas (Giraffes) and punda milias (Zebras) and baboons on our drive out. The scenery was nothing short of spectacular. We stopped at a couple places to just to gawk at the view, and take some pictures too. The foliage is a richer green and the dirt is almost red, it’s incredible.

After we arrived, we got to meet our LIA staff, Ephantus, Oke, Mary, and Moses. They’re awesome. The following morning we split into two groups and were informed shortly before we left that we would be preaching at these churches. So Austin “Ralph Lauren” Ray (LIA international office intern) and myself preached at our respective locations. Molly “Rayray” Ray shared her testimony, and my group led the church in a summer camp song, fortunately for me, Elise, Sawyer and Rayray are all former counselors. The Kenyan church service is fun, it actually reminds me of my home church (Ft. Mckinley) in a few ways. The pastors all dance, except they have better moves than the Dave Hood Boogie, and the congregations gets nice and loud and into the worship :). Kenyan’s are quiet in person, and loud in church, Americans are loud in person and quiet in church.

We had some down time after church to settle in and rest for the hurricane of activity to come in the week. On Monday, two different teams from Southeast Christian Church arrived in Kisumu. One was a team of families from some of the leadership roles at southeast, and the other is a team of young men and women from their college ministry called the post. It’s been great having other mzungus here, especially other men. Not many men can say they’ve lived with 6 awesome women, and I am fortunate to be one of them. However, I’m still very much a man, and it’s good for my mental health to have another dude around once in a while.

On Monday, we all received an orientation to the work that LIA has been doing here in Kisumu, and afterwards we split into groups and went out to visit the community on home visits. During home visits, we go in groups of 5-9 to visit homes of community members and get to know them. We hear some heart-wrenching stories of suffering and some of the most uplifting stories of faith and joy ever told. They’re difficult to describe beyond that.

We’ve done more home visits, and yesterday had the opportunity to go out into the community to evangelize. A number of people came to Christ and my group had a change to meet Michelle Obama. Contrary to popular belief, she doesn’t reside in Washington DC, but lives in the Nyallenda slum of Kisumu, and she’s only three years old. On a more serious note, Obama’s father is from Kisumu, and there are plenty of pictures of him on the homes of the people we visited.

We also had a chance to go and speak to an orphanage and to a High school. I was pooped on by a bird (on the left side of my forehead) at the orphanage while Chad from the Post team was teaching about Jesus.

A number of Mi2’s and post team members shared our 2 minutes testimonies with the high school students and several accepted Christ, bwana asafiwe (Praise the Lord).
Today, the rest of the team is with the street children playing games while I write this (I had time sensitive medical school details to attend to). The post team will be leaving and we will miss them.

Both the post team and Mi2 teams have had interesting sounds coming from the guest houses. The post team wakes up to a “donkey dog” (whatever that is?) giving birth (so they claim) every morning. I think their reenactments of the sound are far more entertaining and traumatizing than the real thing. The Mi2 guest house is about as big and as loud as a small parade. It has been home to an Acapella group from a University in upstate New York (name intentionally left out). They’re here filming a documentary, and define the term obnoxious American, but are quite kind, just loud and rowdy at all hours of the night. They’ve provided a fair bit of chuckles to our team though. We like to talk about lions when we’re around them (long story, and this one is already long enough).

The other night, I made the mistake of leaving my windows open while I was at dinner. So my room was flooded with mosquitoes when I returned and decided the best immediate course of action was to kill as many as possible. Being a thorough and practical individual, I grabbed my shoe (not the muddy one) and began to kill as many as I could. All the mosquitoes were hanging out on my ceiling around the light bulb, and after I had inflicted a small dent in the cloud, I realized something. There was a more effective method to killing them, and it comes in a metal can. I fogged my room with killer spray and the problem was solved. Somewhere between the smashing and spraying, I noticed something: there was dirt on the bottom of my shoe, and because I had done such a good job of smacking the ceiling, it looked like there had been a redneck with two right feet square dancing on my ceiling.

Speaking of mosquitoes, we have gotten bit many times here but we remember our malaria medication. No one does a better job of bug bite prevention than Elise, who uses enough spray that you might think she’s been sponsored on this trip by OFF. She’s a champ, always the first to smile and always making everyone laugh. The world could use more people like her.

Elise and Molly Russell learned how to make Chapatti (best creation ever) on one of their home visits with one of the local pastors. They eat enough of it that they claim they’re afraid they’re going to turn into chapattis. Russell is great, always laughing and having fun, she really brings our team together as one, can’t imagine this team without her.

Sawyer is a huge inspiration to our team. She’s always the first one to engage new people and knows more Swahili than the rest of us put together. She’s a trooper, she’s battled her stomach a number of times but always keeps going and doesn’t quit until she’s literally falling over, a true missionary.

Rayray is one of the sharper individuals I’ve ever met, and always brings great thoughts to our morning devotions. Probably the best listener on the team, we could all learn a lot from her.

Commander Ponton is sweet. She’s really had an awesome week. We’ve really seen her come into the moment. It’s been awesome to see her really focus on the people at hand. She’s so good at thinking ahead, but it’s been a blessing to watch her focus all her attention on the individual she’s talking with.

Katie Lane is always on top of the situation and willing to put a positive spin on anything. No minor detail escapes her attention, which is a real blessing for our team. She brings an experienced perspective to our group from her previous trip to Kenya.

Overall, our group is blessed to have members who are strong where others are weak. We’ve been blessed with great team unity and chemistry, and our prayer is for that to continue.

We had a cultural night with the Kenyans last night. We got to sing and dance with them, what a blast. At the end of the night we were asked to share some American culture with them. So we sang a song from sister act 2 and “lean on me” which they all joined in on. Pretty cool.

There are endless more stories to tell, and I think it’s best I let them be told by others at this point.
Grace and Love from Kisumu,
Sam and Mi2 Kenya Team

Beard Update, it’s a huge hit amongst the children. Over twice as long as the hair on my head, we will be attempting to braid it once we get back to Nairobi.