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I got back from Kenya yesterday afternoon around 1:3oPM after a very long day of flying. The trip was incredible, and it will be very hard for me to not type every detail about this trip, but I trust that the Lord will remind me of a few of the major things that I will never forget about this trip.

The first thing that I absolutely cannot wait to share with y’all is the fact that I am now sponsoring a child through Compassion International in Kenya. BigStuf partners with Compassion; in other words, one part of this internship is that I got to go to Kenya for this past week to live in these children’s environments in Kenya, and then this summer, I will be raising awareness to the campers at BigStuf about the children in Kenya who are living in conditions that they cannot even imagine. We have a goal for this summer to have 2,000 Kenyan children sponsored by the end of camp week 10. I have always been a little skeptical about sponsoring a child because I never knew just how much of the $32 a month went to the child, how much was being taken in by the ministry, and I never knew if I would always have the money each month to give. This trip allowed me to see just how real and passionate Compassion is about seeing change and future Christian leaders rise up in Kenya; I decided while I was over there to sponsor a child. I flipped through the packets and found an 11 year old boy named Josiah. His birthday is in February and he is around Wright’s age, so I thought it would be a neat thing to sponsor a child that I could relate to in some aspects. I chose him on Monday night, and on Tuesday we were planning on going to a Mesih (spelling?) village to spend some time with the people there. It was a village that you would think you would see pictures of the people in a  National Geographic issue. The people spoke broken up English, but mostly Swahili and their tribal language. I was out playing with the kids, and the Compassion leader who was with us asked me what my little kid’s name was. I reminded him that it was Josiah, and right when I said that he looked at me and said, “Ann, meet Josiah.” God’s perfect timing: I had my video camera and camera out so Jeff (the intern leader) filmed me and Josiah meeting for the first time!!! It was the most incredible experiences of my life. He had never been hugged before; he didn’t even know what that ment. We had to demonstrate that for him…that is how deprived he has been over his 11 years of life. He spoke broken up english, but if I explained my questions he could answer them. He has a mom and dad, and siblings as well. He stayed attached to my hip the rest of the day, which I absolutely loved. We got lots of pictures together!!

The week was amazing in general. All of us interns got really, really close; it’s so hard to believe that we have only known each other for 2 weeks now. We stayed in a hotel in Nairobi, and it was right across the street from the Israeli Embassy so we felt very safe with the guards outside 24/7.  Monday, we went to the largest slum in all of Africa called Kabira, and it was 6km by 6km (about the size of Central Park) and over 7million people live there. The things that we saw there were unbelievable. Tuesday we went to the village which was about 4 hours away from Nairobi….like I said earlier, I felt like I was in an issue of National Geographic. Wednesday we went to another village about 3 hours in another direction and helped them lay the foundation of where a future watering tank would be. While we were there, the 16 interns got to literally “be in their shoes” for the day as we performed a daily task of the women of this village: we walked about one mile to a river where they collect water every day, at least 8 times a day. Not only did we walk a mile, but once we saw the river, we had to make it down an incredible rock mountain that was about 100 yards down. We walked down, carefully placing our feet because it was so rocky and muddy (this time of the year in Kenya is it’s rainy season), filled the plastic water jugs up, and then proceeded to walk back up the hill with the 40LBS. of water on our backs which was connected  to a piece of rope that was wrapped around our foreheads. The women of the village did this 8 times a day because the water was for the animals, showers, drinking water, etc. Never again will I complain about having to drink tap water instead of bottled water or water from the refrigerator!

Thursday morning we flew for about 45 minutes to a safari place and stayed there for the night. It was absolutely gorgeous and pictures will not do the place justice. The weather was perfect and we got to see so many different animals: giraffes, lions, monkeys, buffalo, hippos, rhinos…pretty much everything but leopards and cheetahs.

So I didn’t want to say many details because I know these blogs can get super long, but I just wanted to give y’all an overview of what my last week has looked like. The Lord really opened my eyes to so many things this past week, and I am so excited for what He is going to do this summer through BigStuf with the Compassion awareness mission that we all have. Lives were changed while we were there, both in the interns and in the children we got to spend time with.

Tomorrow we will start to load-up everything to head down to PanamaCity Beach! We leave early Tuesday morning and it will take us about 7 hours to get down there. Please be praying for safe travel as we all caravan down there, and also for physical strength as this next week holds a week filled with labor intensive work as we create the camp atmosphere: we have to totally transform a hotel ballroom into a place of worship and teaching for the kids. The first camp starts June 1st!

Me and Josiah right after we met!

Josiah and I holding hands

all the girl interns!

Love you all and thank you all so much for y’all’s continued prayers and support!

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~ by abynum on May 25, 2009.