Day 5: We just completed another full day at
Shangilia. Here are some impressions
from the day:
Today we
were blessed to be able to attend a local church in the village. This is clearly not a traditional Minnesota
church. Think more traditional southern
Baptist and you will be closer. We were
warmly greeted as the “international visitors” and had an opportunity to
introduce ourselves. Lori and Dawn
provided their testimonies with the assistance of an interpreter. Their messages were powerful and a great
testimony of their faith walks. The
service was in both Swahili and English so we were able to understand. I have a feeling that even if the entire
service was in Swahili, we would have received the full message. You could feel that the Holy Spirit was alive
and well in this place. The structure
was not much compared to what we are accustomed to, but the message and the
praise and worship were awesome. Many of
the kids from Shangilia were there as well as people from the surrounding
community.
This area is
beautiful: many of the plants and trees
are new to us as we have not seen them before.
I had never seen how tea grows, or kale for that matter. The scenery is fantastic. The surrounding valley can be seen in the distance. In the morning it is clear, but by afternoon
the clouds and rain show up making the valley look misty. Walking
down the past after church it hit me that we were really in rural Kenya. We certainly weren’t in Kansas anymore.
The people
here are also beautiful. Smiles abound
from children and adults alike. Walking
on the roads or paths is a great time to share a smile and wish the other Jambo
(a standard greeting). Compared to what
we have materially, these people do not have much. However, in general they seem to have much
more joy than people in America. As I
said, smiles abound. This was even true
in the slums of Nairobi. It is hard to
imagine, but in front of literally a wall of garbage some 10 feet tall, small
children were playing and smiling and saying “jambo” and “how are you?”
Playing with
the kids is a blast. We have a number of
people in our group who truly are kids at heart if not in years. Today we played futbol, Frisbee, catch,
played with balloons, read books and generally had a good time. We are energized by the joy and excitement of
the kids as they play.
The kids are
also very loving. This is a very, very
large family. I suspect that some of
these “siblings” will fight and argue (we have seen no direct evidence of this),
but what we have seen is kids playing with and caring for each other. The kids love to hold our hands whenever we
walk anywhere. The smaller ones also
like to be carried which is challenging for some of our backs.
It is also
interesting to see how self sufficient they are here. They grow many of their own vegetables and
fruit, have chickens, cows, goats and sheep.
And all of this takes a lot of work.
There are no tractors, power tools of anything else to help other than
strong bodies and simple tools. Walking
in this rural community you see farms everywhere, but not one tractor. These are not the 320 acre corn farms we may
see in the Midwest, but very small family farms where everything is done by
hand. These people are not afraid to
work.
Rick
and Lori
