Hello Friends and Family!
Here’s another update from our home sweet home in Africa. We have had a pretty laid back week and have enjoyed our lessons and the sunny afternoons in Nairobi. On Tuesday we had our first scheduled day to be in the city, but we ended up just going to the Nairobi National Museum! The museum itself was awesome and we got to learn a lot about Kenya history, the mammals of Africa, and about the different art featured in the museum. The real adventure of that trip took place driving to and from the museum! All along we have heard about how bad traffic in Nairobi is, but we had yet to experience it first hand until that afternoon. The unpaved roads, the steep hills, the five lanes of cars on a two lane road, and the matatus who think they rule the road made for quite the adventure! Luckily we have great and reliable driver who took good care of us and made us feel safe (for the most part) and got us to our destinations in one piece. The next day was a national holiday for Kenya because they got to celebrate their independence! Most people had the day off and none of the kids were in school, so we had a morning lesson/training but had the afternoon free to do what we wanted. Since it’s a daily occurrence for us needing to run to the nearby grocery store, that’s what some of us decided to- to get the groceries for the rest of the week. But the last part of the afternoon most of us just took it easy around the apartment. Nicole and Russell decided to take a big adventure and tour Nairobi and had quite the experience to share with the rest of the group later that night; Katie did some housework for us and cleaned up the place (which we were all so grateful for because our place was getting a little too dusty), Sam hung out in the apartment, and Sawyer, Molly Ray, and I sat outside by the pool and enjoyed the African sun!
Today we spent some time in prayer and had lessons about how to immerse ourselves into a different community/culture and we took those lessons with us to another slum called Mathare. Its not quite as big as the Kibera slum, but we were still shocked by their way of life and their “normal.” We got to visit a pastor and his church and from there we went to visit a school! It was a great experience for all of us. It was a little overwhelming because we were each assigned a room to go to and were expected to interact with the kids (age ranges: 2 years-10-years-old and anywhere from 15-30 kids in a classroom). It was so fun being able to see the smiling faces and sing with them. We were told that by us just being a presence in that room and spending that little of time with those children is such an honor for them and gives them so much joy, but in return, seeing their smiles, hearing their voices and laughter brings so much joy to each of us and really impacts us all.
We have been blessed by all that we have been able to see, do, hear and learn. We are all in good health and enjoying everything Kenya and LIA have to offer us.
Tomorrow we have a full day of Swahili lessons ( Hopefully our vocabulary list will grow from just knowing how to say “thank you,” “you’re welcome,” and the vague list of words we know from the movie “The Lion King” -to us being able to carry on a conversation in Swahili!).
The weather has been great, we’ve enjoyed Chef Nicole’s cooking, and we’re excited to meet up with the teams from South East next week and to see what God has in store for us while we’re in Kisumu. We appreciate all of your love, prayers, and support. We love you all!

PS: after being in the heart of Nairobi and taking busses/matatus to and from Mathare today, we inhaled so many fumes from the vehicles driving by that we were afraid there was a layer of black guck covering our lungs. But actually, the boogers in our noses saved us and stopped a lot of it from entering. So that’s great, but the down side of that is when we came home we blew our noses and all of the mucus we blew out was charcoal black. Eww. Who knew you’d ever be so thankful of your nose/boogers??!

Love yours truly,
Elise (on behalf of the Mi2 Team )