A Taste...more to come

Ryan and I being commissioned to Thika.
Working in Pastor's Shamba (garden)

Ryan and Pastor are cooking dinner. Men, in Kenya, usually never even enter the kitchen. So this was a big deal that our Pastor helped with household things. It was fun for us because when our mama was at work we could cook for her.

We had an avocado tree in the front yard, this avocado is almost the size of the pineapple!

First Sunday: Ryan is preaching at Kihiumwiri church.

We are home!

We safely arrived home Saturday night and are now battling with jet lag. Thank you for all of your prayers and notes of encouragement while we were gone. We will hopefully post some pictures of our trip and write some more about our trip once we get ourselves organized and adjusted to the time here.

Right now it is 5:46 pm here and 2:46 am in Kenya so we are fighting to stay awake right now.

Please be praying for our team's re-entry and adjustment back to American culture. Along with application of what we all learned from and about God this summer.

Oh and Kenya sends its greetings!

Mungu awabariki (God Bless you)

Last post until we are home: July 24ish

Hey Everyone,

This is probably the last chance we'll get to email. We have been very busy. Today we spent most the day at Huruma in a Mother Theresa orphanage and disabled children's home. The babies and disabled kids who live there were either thrown away or left on the steps of the home. There are 30 babies there and over 50 disabled children. It was a very emotionally and spiritually draining day but God's joy and goodness was among the suffering and we feel blessed to have been a part of it today. I saw a boy there who is disabled, that I saw 3 years ago and remember feeding and playing with. He has an extremely big head, and his body is just bone and the size of a 3 year old but must be at least 10 years old. I will have to write more about him later but it was good and sad to see him again. At least he is still alive but not adopted or getting better. I don't know his name but please pray for him.

We also have had a Islam day and a Hindu day which both days God kept reminding me of darkness that people live in and He is the only Light and there is an urgency that I now understand in sharing the gospel to people and helping to show them the Light of Jesus.

Tomorrow we are going back to Thika to do prison ministry...so Ryan and I get to see our pastor again! Very exciting and please be praying for the prisoners as we go that they may see the Light of Jesus. Prisoners here are the lowest of low so we took an offering and collected money to buy some simple supplies to give to them...like soap and underwear.

So much has gone on and God has been teaching us many things. We will write more when we get home and have had time to process the lessons and things we are learning and seeing.

Talk to you soon!

Back from our 3 week assignment in Thika!

Habari Zenu! We just got back from our 3 week assignment in Thika and it was so wonderful! It was hard to leave but now we are back with our team in Kasarani for our last few weeks here.

We were with a wonderful family. Pastor Patrick and Mama Clementine. Our mama works at the Del Monte pineapple factory and they live in the Del Monte housing, so we were living right next to fields of pineapples. So unlike last time both Ryan and I were in Kenya, we had electricity and a toilet this go around! This was a great blessing for us, I think we had enough squatty potties for the rest of our lives ;). And we got fresh pineapple everyday! I do not think I will be able to eat pineapple in the US after having it fresh from the shamba (farm).

We did a lot of everything. We preached at 2 churches every Sunday, in two different towns. We talked at many schools and even taught at one. We did evangelism (hut to hut home visits telling people about the love of Jesus), we prayed with and over the sick, we played with many many kids, we went home to home encouraging people and built many relationships, we had 2 open air crusades, and cooked, cleaned and rested :)

So some details about where we where. We lived at Del Monte which was in between Makongeni and Kihiumwiri. (so we were actually never in Thika, Thika was just the biggest town that was close to us). Our pastor's church was in Kihiuwmiri which was a small and very poor town. One pastor in the area said it was a slum, but I did not think it was like a slum. It was actually a very beautiful place. It was on a hill and it was so green! Everyone had their own shamba (farm) so we ate food fresh from the ground or tree. this is where we did most of our ministry. Most kids there had never seen a white person before so we attracted crowds of children where ever we went. The people of the town were Kikuyu and many knew English so we got to build many relationships while we were there. Four people got saved while we were doing Evangelism and 3 people got saved when we had an Open Air Crusade, Praise God. Oh and now I can say Praise God in 4 languages!
Swahili: Bwana Asifiwe! Masaai: Mesisi Yesu! Kikuyu: Mwanthani Arogoswo! and English: Praise God!
We also traveled to Makongeni, which is a bigger town and did ministry there. We preached at their church which had 200-300 people in it!

We became very close with our host family. Some nights we would laugh and laugh. They taught us how to cook and some nights would only talk to us in Swahili so that we could learn it faster. Ryan is so good at Swahili, it has been like being with a Kenyan. He has picked it up really fast!

Please keep praying for us as we enter the next phase of the Global Project. And please be praying for the people of Kihiumwiri and Makongeni.

Our pastor and mama send their greetings!
Love you all!

Hello everyone, we are doing very okay. (as they say in Kenya) We have our three week assignment. We will be leaving for Thika on wednesday to stay with Pastor Patrick. It is a new assignment so I am not certain of what we will be doing exactly but I know it will involve preaching, home visits, evangelism, talking at schools, and building relationships with the people we will be living around. We may or may not have internet access so it may be a while before we are able to write again. Oh and we are living by a pineapple factory...so hopefully we'll get some really good pineapple.

On a different note. I got to see my pastor from 2007! He is sadly not hosting students this year because he has other missionaries staying with him but he came up to the pastor's training to see me :) Praise God for the blessing of sitting and talking with him. He is a great man of God and very inspirational and has a big servants heart.

Sorry I do not have much to say this time around. But I must tell you that it is so great being here. I feel so comfortable here and God's presence is beautiful and intense. And it has been great to come as staff. I lead a small group, and it has been a blessing to watch them grow just in the one week we have been here. God is already showing them, beyond what they already knew, on how great and deep His love is for us. We serve and have a very good God, who is faithful and so intimate. When you take yourself out of your comfort zone and out of what you are used too, it seems you can see God more clearly and really listen to Him. It is easier to give Him your attention because everyday distractions are gone. It is so so good. I encourage you, to take some time today and just be with our Lord.

Please be praying for us as we enter our assignments. For strength and boldness as we share God's word, love, hope, forgiveness, and peace. Also please be praying for the Kenyan people. ALong with the 1 million + orphanes that are here in this country.

Nakupenda!

Bwana Asifiwe!

I will try not to overlap in what Ryan has already said, but we are here and it is so wonderful! My heart has been running over with joy to be back in the place I fell in love with 3 years ago.

It started when we got off the plane and I got my first smell of Kenya, oh my, how wonderful and sweet. Kenya has a smell that I am not sure how to describe, but it welcomed me home to Kenya.

We have been very busy. Our first day we took the students into Ngong town, their first time using Swahili and buying things. It was great to be among the people and talk to them. They are very warm and friendly. They speak British English so I found myself picking up my accent from 3 years ago so that they could better understand me. And I love using my Swahili, at first it was awkward but now it flows out without me thinking, so Praise God!

We went to Mathare Slum yesterday along with a children's home Sanctuary of Hope 1 and 2. SOH 1 and 2 was founded by the directors of our trip, Brian and Debbie, they have rescued 21 children from the slums and we got to see and play with them.

Three years ago there was only the one home and I met one of the boys there. His name is David and I got to see this again yesterday and he is SO big! His story, however, is heart breaking. As a small child his mom could not feed him and she was an alcoholic. So she would give brew to her son so that he'd pass out and she could go to the bars. When he would awake he'd go find food in the dumps and sewage. He was rescued and brought to the home in 07, very scared and quite. But now seeing him 3 years later, he is a changed child. He is very good at soccer and still is a bit shy. Thank you Jesus for him and for saving him.

Please be praying for our team as we continue to learn about Kenyan culture and please pray for the staff team, we begin to match people for assignments tonight.

Love you all! And miss you.

Leave Tomorrow

Our big adventure starts early tomorrow morning (June 4th) at 4:20 am as we drive to the airport to leave for KENYA!

We Leave for Kenya in 6 DAYS!!!

Hey Everyone,

Ryan and I leave for Kenya in less than a week and I honestly cannot wait until June 4th and to be in Kenya! We have everything we need suitcase wise. We are now working on preparing some sermons, our testimonies, and some Bible Studies, along with some odds and ends. For example: right now Ryan is trying to reinforce his guitar case so it can make it to Kenya and back in relatively one piece :)

We are also all moved into Lakewood, CO. For now we are living with Ryan's parents until we get back from Kenya and find jobs. So please be praying for our job hunt when we return.

Also, please be keeping our teammates in your prayers; we just found out today that 10 out of 35 of our teammates are not fully funded yet. Please pray that the money will come in within the week or the rest will come in while we are in Kenya.

One more thing, there is a really awesome chunk of scripture that I prayed over Ryan, everyday last year, while he was in Kenya and we'd love it if you could pray it over us.
It is Ephesians 1:15-19

"I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and His incomparably great power for us who believe."

Kenya Videos

Here are two links to videos of the Kenya Global Project from last year. They do a great job of explaining the trip and of giving visuals of beautiful Kenya. Ryan is in them, so be looking for him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As0SEYDJAx4 2 minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCWY9B4rjl4&feature=related 5 minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YPVSOPZfsQ Video from my (Brittni's) trip in 2007

Enjoy!

Karibuni! (Welcome!)

Thank you for checking out our blog! This is a very new thing for us to be trying out. However, we figured since we are going to Kenya for the summer and then could be anywhere after that, we thought we should start a blog to keep people updated.

So welcome to the adventures of the D-ports!

Our first adventure is graduating college together on May 8th.
Then our second adventure will be moving out of our apartment in Family/Grad Housing.
And then after that we basically head to Kenya after seeing both of our families.

We leave for New York June 4th for staff training and then leave for Kenya, with our team, on June 6th. We will be back in the States around July 24th.

We should have Internet access 3-5 times while in Kenya, and the plan is to write on our blog to keep everyone updated. If it doesn't work out, though, be looking for an email from us.

We are very excited to be going to Kenya together this summer! God has provided for us and we are now fully funded. Please be praying as we spiritually prepare to go to Kenya. Please pray that our team will go to Kenya with a learning and servant spirits. This is crucial in crossing cultures and in ministry. And please also be praying for our team as they continue to fund-raise.

Thank you for everything!

Bwana Asifiwe! (Praise God)