Day 3 Experiences--Saturday, June 20

Well its day 12 here but I have only been able to access the internet once briefly in the last 6 or so days so I had no time to really do anything during that time and havent been on since. Since I am on now I am going to try to add a few posts with the notes I have starting where I left off, day 3. Day 3 is the day we began building the church which is what we did all day.

-Began building today. Everything here works on Africa Time. If you plan for a certain time, don’t expect people to show up until much much later than that.

-I met a man whose parents are from Hungary, was born in Zimbabwe, lived in some other African country, and now is here and also going back and forth to Hungary. He is a fascinating young man, a good Lutheran young man. He’s 23 and has a great head on his shoulders. Dad, I think you would really like him, I’m going to send you his email address and some more information about him.

-Africa is an event society, not a time society like America. In the US, an event begins when the time says it begins. In Africa, an event begins when the people all arrive. Many times this can be an hour and a half after it was supposed to “scheduled” to begin.

-A quote I like from David Reynolds today, “The church we are building here is not just the building, that is the easy part, the church we are building here is the work we are doing with the people.”

-We are not even in the very poor section of Nairobi at this point, and already we can see how little some of these people have, and yet most of them do not complain or whine about that. We still haven’t even visited the slum, a million person slum extending through Nairobi, one of, if not the world’s largest slums. Its called Kibara (don’t know about the spelling).

-There is nothing quite like trying to get 30 kids to share a football who have probably never had the chance to play with one. They all keep trying to throw it like it’s a rugby ball. It reminds me of watching kindergarten soccer with the kids just flocking around trying to get the ball.

-There is a fruit down here called Marula, and apparently it’s a very good alcohol, and apparently many animals eat it and become drunk on it which inspires some great youtube videos. I would just youtube Marula and I’m sure there will be some videos of the animals drunk off this stuff.

-I was told the reason that we are white, “God ran out of paint.” We are apparently the first Mzungos (whites) that some of these people have ever seen. We’ve been asked “where is your color?”

-We know that by being here, we are not going to change the world, or even change Nairobi. The difference we make might be hardly noticeable, but we are making a difference in a few of these peoples lives, and that is more than enough, knowing that what we are doing for a few of these people is truly making a difference in their lives, and maybe, just one more soul might be coming to know Jesus and will go to heaven when they die because of the work God is doing through us here.