We're Back!

We’re back in Nairobi after two weeks in Kisumu and the most miserable bus ride of my life. We’re all going to be posting our trip in parts, so we don’t have a whole bunch of overlap in our individual posts.
Trying to write a short blog about our time in Kisumu is like asking water to be something other than wet. In my last post, I wrote that we visited an orphanage, turns out that it wasn’t an orphanage. It was actually a Juvenile detention facility; apparently it’s easy for me to mistake a detention center for an orphanage. Anyways, We visited the Remand home again last week. The Mi2 team went in and visited about 100 teenagers in a classroom. We started by sitting amongst them on the benchs, and there was a lot of hand waving and shoving to make room for us mzungus. We sang some songs that they led us in, and they showed off a number of memory verses. Then we sang some more songs. This time during the songs, I began to record some video footage on my camera. This was made difficult because the crowd of boys around me tightened like a noose around my entire body as they were all straining to get a glimpse of the live footage on the LCD screen. In the middle of the second to last song, the LIA coordinator for the trip walked up to me and whispered in my ear “Sam, would you please give a word of hope to them when we are done singing.” (This is quite typical of my experience in Kenya, never in my life have I been put on the spot so many times to provide a devotion, sermon, or testimony). I gave a short word on how we need to make the best of the situation we’re in and that there’s always hope in Christ. After my short message, we were divided into groups. I was put in a group with 14 of the older boys. In my group were a number of runaways who had been caught on the street and were put in the Remand center, a couple of rapists and the rest were thieves. I shared the gospel with them and one of them accepted Christ as his savior! The girls were split up into groups as well, Molly Russell was with a group of girls in the home. The reasons girls end up in the remand center are very different from the reasons why boys are there. Boys generally do something to be there, the girls are usually there because they’re the victim of a terrible situation and have no where else to go. Some of their stories were heart breaking and I really have no desire to share them, they were just awful.
The rest of the team should be posting shortly. Stay tuned
-Nabii (Sam)

PS for those wondering about my health, I am back to full strength now. The day we came home from kisumu I started throwing up at 530am and was miserable achy the whole way home. Dr. Florence made a house call and treated me for malaria and typhoid though it now seems unlikely I had either. After a few days of mild symptoms I'm back to normal. Thanks for all of your prayers! Praise God!