We took them to the Seed of Hope orphanage where Terry Dykes, one of our team members, used a few of them in recreational games during our VBS with the children. Phil Brinkmeyer, a Dallas Buckner employee, and Dickson Masindano, a Kenya Buckner employee, were leaving so that Dickson could show Phil around, this being Phil's first trip to Kenya. Since they were using Dickson's truck to get around, Naomi suggested to Phil that he take about half of the balls to give to other children. Phil thought this was a good idea and was more than happy to be able to distribute them to the various places they were going. Phil later joined us on our Masai Mara safari. Phil told the story about the balls and we were spellbound. Later, as we discussed the story, we said that we had to tell others. But if we told it, it would be second hand. Naomi suggested that we video Phil telling the story. We approached him and at first he wasn't sure. After much thought, he agree to be videoed. The following is his story.
Rose then introduced and thanked the Seed of Hope staff. She then personally thanked our mission team and also thanked the interns. We left knowing that these children were in good hands. We headed back to the Kitale airport and later that afternoon we were flying back to Nairobi. 
We made it to the Methodist Guest House for a well deserved night of rest. But more excitement awaited us. Tomorrow.... Safari!
Remember that old song by the Mama's and Papa's? They were not looking forward to that day. However, after Sunday, we were ready to go. The medical team knew it was going to be a extremely busy day especially after "free medical care" had been announced in church. It wasn't long before there enough people lined up to be seen for the day. There's nothing more difficult than to have to turn people away simply because the need is greater than the resources. Procedural changes had been made to make it a better environment for the team to be able to serve. The VBS team was busy, too, but had made adjustments to help out. We had translators (church pastor, house mom & dads, Rose, etc.) to help out with all but the older children who's English was pretty good. 
With communication improved, the children were better able to follow instructions. The afternoon was unstructured and a lot of fun. The kids enjoyed Naomi's safari game, having the fingernails painted (boys, too!), flying a kite (Kevin had a hard time with it, but the kids knew how to work it better.), and Sharon's Noah card matching game, not to mention some serious rope jumping. The normal sounds of children playing were great to hear, just like any children around the world. But, of course, they are like any other children.
Today being Sunday, it's appropriate to talk about the Sunday 2 weeks ago. The day before had been a very busy day for all, and now we all got up (some of us didn't get as much sleep as we wanted) and headed back to the Seed of Hope. But first we attended a church nearby the Seed of Hope, one that the children attended. It was the Ecclesia church. When we got there we were ushered to the front, to a place of prominence. We got pews that were padded and covered. The service began and the children came up front with the song leader and youth pastor and led in worship for about an hour. They sang and danced. It was tremendous. If any of us were dragging, this level of energy raised us up. Rose got up and introduced us, but let us all say our own name since a lot of ours were "too difficult to pronounce". They had a visiting pastor and he preached for quite some time. Fortunately we got to sit down for that part. He preached in English and had a translater who translated in Swahili. 
n, it rained in the late afternoon and everyone scooted inside. Terry and I were able to sit and talk with the visiting pastor for quite some time and found out that he had been quite the football player in his younger days. When the time came for us to leave, it was decided that the road was too muddy for our van and so we walked out of the Seed of Hope and up to the Ecclesia church in order to get to the van and back to the Kitale Club, our hotel. 
Saturday was a very busy day for both the VBS and medical teams. We divided the children up into age groups, each one with an intern, gave them colored bandanas to identify the group, then had each group go to a station. We soon learned that the craft was taking a lot of time while the other groups were finishing and so we had to figure out what to do with them while they waited. The interns were wonderful with this as they were able to have fun playing with them until we were ready to switch groups. We had only gotten through 2 rotations when it was "Tea Time"! This is something they do there at the Seed of Hope no matter how busy you are. We were able to finish up before lunch. After lunch, it was a much more unstructured atmosphere and then the rains came! It rained very hard for at least an hour and the football field was unplayable. Tom and Rose were worried that if the bus came down it might get stuck in the muddy road. 
In the meantime, the clinic was swamped. Word had gotten out to the community that there was free medical care and so there was a crowd. Louise and Erin had a crowd in their room making it difficult to move much less work. By mid-afternoon it was apparent that they would not be able to see everyone, so tongue depressors with numbers on them were handed out to those in line saying that they would need to come back Sunday afternoon in order to be seen. By the time we made it back to the hotel ( this time the Kitale Club ) and checked in and had supper, we all were pretty tired. But we all knew adjustments needed to be made and so the different teams talked on how they might do some things different in order for it to run more smoothly.
We left the Grace Guest House with Tom (Kenya Buckner staff) and Julie and drove to the Wilson airport to fly out to Kitale. While we were waiting, we met up with Phil Brinkmeyer (Buckner staff from Dallas) and Dickson Masindon (we've blogged about him previously). We caught our plane which held about 35 people and headed to Kitale. At the Kitale airport we were greeted by Rose (Kenya Buckner staff in charge of foster children). Around the airport we noticed how high the corn was. The Kenyan staff proudly told us that this area pretty much fed the whole country with corn from here. We headed to the hotel, but got a second surprise of the trip. For the first night we would stay at the Mid Africa Hotel instead of the Kitale Club. We unpacked, ate, and headed to the Seed of Hope. We found out why we would be eating lunch there this week as it was pretty far out of town and out dirt/mud roads. 
This was our first time to see Kitale, and so we soaked it all in. Many noticed how many people walked along the roads and how many rode bicycles. Martin, our driver, was good in manuevering around them. When we first got to Seed of Hope, the children noticed us immediately. It took a while for each of us to warm up to each other, but whenever Shelly went down the slide, the kids immediately followed and the ice was broken. Rose gave us a tour of the houses where the children lived and medical team soon checked out the clinic, meeting the nurse and the lab technician. They made plans on what rooms they would use and how they would work their process in seeing patients. In the meantime, the VBS team checked the houses and where they could do inside activities and the outdoor grounds for outside activities. We all had a great time, but knew that tomorrow would be a busy day for both teams. We headed back to the hotel to eat supper and for rest. It having a bar, it closed late and some of us were too close to the lobby and were awakened when people left or went to their rooms. We were able to get back to sleep knowing the morning would be here soon enough.
Here's the first pictue we've been able to post. This was when we went to worship with the kids and others in the community. What an experience! We'll write more about it later. We are at the Masai Mara Game Reserve and have went out 3 times to see the animals. We even saw a rhino this morning. We plan on going to a Masai village this morning before we fly back to Nairobi.
Interns with Dickson Masindano
A long term project such as this mission trip has to begin somewhere. This one began with a vision by a pastor with a heart for missions and a heart for his church. He did not see them as two separate things, but intertwined. But he is also a man of action. At the CBF of Missouri Assembly in 2005 he heard of the call of missions to Kenya in partnership with Buckner International. He contacted Naomi and myself about going on a "Vision Tour" to Kenya with Buckner. Of all the people in church, Naomi is perhaps the only one who had ever heard of Buckner, but he did not know that. We went, we came back, we reported what we say. But it did not stop there. Bob Webb formed a Task Force for us to determine "What Now". It was determined by the team that we should go on a mission trip to Kenya in August 2008. Bob did not make the decision, did not lead the task force, did not do the planning. He knew that it had to be a church decision, not a pastor decision, in order to be successful. But he's been as supportive a pastor that anyone could ask for. He would have loved to have gone as a part of the team, but could not due to scheduling. But that did not lessen his support. Now, come Wednesday morning as we gather at church with others for prayer as we depart for the first mission trip abroad for this church, who better to lead those prayers than Bob. You see, instead of "doing", sometimes the best thing a pastor can do for his church is "seeing". It would have never gotten off the ground without that.
The Medical Team met to go over details on the medical ministry. We are grateful that Dr. James Brillhart is able to lead that team. James and his wife Louise were missionaries to Togo for 10 years and have done a number of short term medical missions. James is well trained for this and has the heart to minister to the ophans in Kitale. Please pray that the remaining planning and training goes well. Pray for God's leadership in those things that are planned and for those things that cannot be planned.
It's amazing what one can stumble upon on the internet. I did a search on "internet cafe" and Kitale and found this blog: 
And, of course, it's always good to see Scott again. This is also probably the busiest week of the year for Scott, but he took time to be with us. You see, not only was the mission's conference on Saturday, but the annual Founder's Day banquet and a quarterly trustees meeting on Friday. We got to see Dickson present at the mission's conference and see him singled out for his work in Kitale at the Founder's Day banquet. I hope to be able to show video on that later.
