Another sunday

Another great message today from a pastor named olly. It was a message focusing on faith and trusting God. Some of his main passages were Hebrews 11:1 and 6 and also parts of habakkuk. He also did a message for sunday school and used a great hand example which i can't remember. :(

After church we went to to an ethiopian restaurant named Habesha. I didn't really know what to expect. They served us a bunch of sauces and dips on a massive platter and we all picked up this food with a roll of fermented bread/slime which seconded as your napkin. It was actually really good. Definetly a strange experience but definetly worth it.

Bike ride

After we got back from the ostrich ranch paul took a short nap and we went bike riding behind the camp on a ranch.

It was probably the closest thing i've done to pure africa. We went on dirt roads right through the middle of packs of eland, zebra, giraffe, and wildebeast. I was maybe 70 feet from a whole pack of giraffe.

I could look for miles and not see one building. It was a truly beautiful thing. The sun was beating down, the breeze blowing through the grass and animals running around and grazing.

I'll put up some pictures later.

Maasai Ostrich farm

Slept in till 11:30 today. whoops.

once i had showered we headed to the Ostrich farm it was pretty fantastic. We ate some tasty ostrich then i got to ride one. I jumped on the beast and was pretty much dragged around by a couple kenyans.



Oh yah and i bought an ostrich skin wallet.

Old british ladies house

After the campers finally left and we chilled for a bit we headed up to a british ladie friend of pauls residence. The road was really really bad that way but it was really worth it.

We saw quite a few zebra, giraffe, and other creatures on the way and for the first time i saw the live animal of the head we have on our wall. A eland.

I didn't know what to expect at this ladies house but it was incredible. She had a grass roof with tons of animal horns, and trophys, and even a huge lion skin on the wall. We sat on their back porch and had tea and some fruitcake with her and her daughter. All of this looking out on an absoloutely incredible view of the area. Probably the best view i've seen yet.

Last day of camp for the week

Today was the last day of camp for the week.

Woke up this morning and felt a lump on my leg. pulled it off. turned out it was a tick. He was sucking my blood apparently. Kinda nasty but went right back to sleep.

It was sad saying goodbye to the kids that i'd met but i think they learned quite a bit and i'm hoping they'll retain all they learned.

I gave my number to a few kids so who knows how that'll go. The African way is to call and immediately hang up so that the richer person (aka the whitie) does the calling back and pays for the call.

Not sure what's planned for the rest of the day but i'll keep you updated.

Since i've forgotten. Swahili words to learn.

I've been slacking i promised to do a daily word and now it's time to catch up.

Hii Ni Yako - "Is this yours?"

Kimbia - "Run"

Sasa - "Hi"

Habari Yako - "How are you"

Rest of the day

The rest of the day was quite a blast. After a kids soccer tournament we played a full soccer game on the full field. I was able to get a few good runs and connected with my friend for some clean goals.

Today was the day i also finally felt the burn. my arms, neck, nose, and back of my legs are scorched. i'm slapping on sunscreen every 2 hours haha.

Had a a well thought out message tonight from our speaker ken. The highlight for me was the comparing of gargoyles who come alive at night to christians who only come alive on the Lord's day.

oh yah and i found a tree frog in the bathroom today. I wasn't sure as to the toxicity of it so i let it go. it had real mad hops though. took me a few minutes to catch the little bugger. haha.

Hopefully i'll be unburned by tommorow. Or i hope it rains. i'd love to see a hard rain here.

Mid day 3rd day

I'm being overcome with the culture. i already say "yah" after every question. maybe i'll come back to the states with an accent. that'd be fun :P

another good day so far. played some more games and stuff. I think i'm gonna be posting less often as something incredible doesn't happen each day and it's wearing on me to try and remember and type up everything that goes on.

If you guys have questions please ask and if there's enough to say on it i'll write a full blog post on it.

So lemme know.

Day 2 of camp.

Started the day waking up an hour earlier than i had too. whoops.

First order of business in the morning was breakfast which i skipped and went with andy and headed up the cabin inspection. The guys, as expected had alot to work on.

after cabin inspections we had morning service. Our speaker was a kenyan named ken. quite fitting i think. He was one of the people who took a 3 day bus from zambia. He's enrolled in bible college down there right now. The message was quite good and the main thing i took away from it was the phrase, "Our responses determine our successes" in otherwords our reactions to everyday things will determine how much success we have in the future.

After the message me, paul, frances, and on of their guards headed to town to buy some supplies. Paul went his own way the guard another and me and frances went to buy maize and green beans. The market was a bunch of wooden poles with old tarps strewn accross the top. It seemed like one of the lowest points in africa. It smelled, there was rotten food all over the place, but it was a strangely enjoyable experience.

As me and frances went around buying no english was spoken and everytime frances tried to buy something they would point at me and use me as the excuse for why they were overcharging. After all i'm a whitie i must be rich. Eventually we got our goods and headed back to camp.

i'm gonna skip ahead as not much exciting happened between then and the next activity.

Finally right before dinner we had a gaming event. In one game we lined up three intertubes and a bench. The goal of this game was to take a cup full of water through this obstacle course and dump it into a bucket at the end of the course. Here's the catch though. The whole team the opposing team is on either side throwing dodgeballs at you trying to knock the cup out of your hand. Needless to say it was pure chaos. people flying around, people faceplanting, it was incredibly hilarious.

I'm about to head to our second message today. The camp has been very enjoyable so far and i look forward to what tommorow brings.

First day of camp

Camp starts at 3 so i was able to sleep til 10. That was nice. I think i've finally gotten used to the different time zone. 11 hour difference is still much more extreme than i thought it would be.

went down to camp and met a few new people. we talked about all sorts of stuff it was really nice to just jump in and have casual conversation with them. i even put a beetle in my mouth. not sure what kind it was, but afterwards they said it was a dung beetle. I hope not. It did taste funny.

i've got names coming out my ears so i dont know what i'm going to do. i'm gonna say them here just so i can keep track. we have claire, ken, joe, zach, ricky, justice, more as i remember lol.

camp has been great so far. it's now about 8 pm and it's been a full day. campers arrived and me and paul, well paul mostly, climbed up on top of the bus, tossed down some bags while everyone else carried them to the meeting house.

after we got the bags down we had team meetings, then got the kids to their cabins and then played a rousing game of Big ball volleyball.

For this game you had teams of about 80 on each side and would just try and get the ball over the rope. every 15 seconds the whistle would blow and whatever side had the ball got a point. The team with the most points loses. There was screaming and hollering and chanting. It was amazingly fun.

After that we had a delicious dinner with rice and stew. Man it was good. Earlier in the day we had some collared greens and rice meal or something. not quite as good haha.

About to leave for service so hopefully tommorow i'll get some pictures of the camp and get more up as i didn't have my camera with me all day.

Thanks for the comments guys, keep asking questions i'll be happy to answer.

also, please excuse bad english. i'm really just trying to pour out my thoughts as they come :P

Day 2

Started off the day well. First night and only woke up once. definetly happy about that.

Headed to to church and heard a sermon from a indian man named sukesh. It was a really good sermon. He used the testimony of paul as the lesson and talked about repentance, faith, and the difference between belief in God and believing God. He used some examples from jonah for repentance and i was really happy to see that he was not afraid to preach about how God was not just a happy, loving, never angry God. Nice to know that the gospel is not getting dumbed down like it is in the states.

Met some really fun people named, claire, gordon, and vincentm and another kid from rwanda whose name escapes me. They came up and talked to me so that was a nice gesture :)

After church played soccer with some of the kids. That was really fun. A couple of the boys were quite good and there celebrations were hilarious.

After the service we went to pick up some vegetables a lady named pam buys for paul at the market, then went to pick up some mail and eat.

We got indian food and it tasted great but made me feel slightly queasy. I had some amazing passion fruit juice though and some actually quite terrible mint pineapple. yuck.

Headed home after that but not without alot of traffic coming the other way because there was a rally car race. It was cool to see a buncha nice cars but strange to see them in this country where there are so many poor.

First day in Kenya

Arrived in kenya and it took forever to get a visa. there were two lines and you guessed it i chose the real real slow one. I eventually got through the line and it was around 8:20 am and my bags were right there waiting for me.

Got out and found paul right away and headed to town to get some supplies and eat. the city is amazing it's very slummy but very beautiful. We did alot in my opinion but according to paul we did nothing.

First thing when we left the airport we were harassed by a policeman. Then paul pulled out the big guns and scared him off.

This is gonna be kinda sporatic fyi i'm trying to pull memories from all day. haha.

O yah they have a dog named turbo. it has to be the best name over. After going through highschool saying woah there turbo so much it's hilarious to know an animal with that name.

Last memory before i call it for the day is the driving. You have to be a madman swerving in and out of traffic, playing chicken, if you don't drive aggresive you get left in the dust. my kinda town :D

Alright well i'll talk to you guys tommorow if not sooner. Thanks to God that i made it safe and thanks to paul for having me.

Landing in Nairobi

Well this is it. The last 20 minutes of the flight. Culture shock here we come. I can't wait to see everything and get settled it's going to be great. Talk to you all again when i reach the camp.

Another Late Night

I'm finally on the plan in flight to nairobi. I'm flying on Virgin Atlantic. I'm not sure if any of you guys saw the terrible music video called "flying the flag" i think it was. The crew kindof reminds me of the crew in the video haha. Dinner is about to come around. I hope it's a little different than last time but who knows.

I'm sitting next to a spanish man who is going to nairobi to do some translation for what appears to be interpol. He's a pretty interesting guy his english is fairly limited as far as speaking although i think he can read it well.

Its alot different from last flight in that so far we haven't crossed any water and we seem to be flying quite a bit lower so i'm seeing all the cities below. Pretty neat.

Around 6-7 hours till i land. According to my clock it's 2:22 pm washington time, 10:20 pm England time and i'll be landing in nairobi at 7 am. I'm so out of wack. I managed some sleep though, light sleep, before we took off.

I got a little extra sleep to because we had to actually redock and refuel cause someone had an allergic reaction on the plane. I'm not really sure how much this is gonna throw of my flight time. I'm hoping not too much. It's unfortunate i dont have a way to get ahold of paul who's picking me up

Talk to you all again on the ground.

edit: the battery life on my new apple is brilliant. I think i can get around 6 hours on a charge..mmmm

Heathrow

Well this is fairly dismal. Still no internet and now no power either. Grrr. No phone for that matter either.

On a lighter/stranger note the first lady i talked to in the airport was an indian lady. She looked at my ticket and saw zachariah and she was like "O like zach from high school musical".....YAY..... Also saw a lady walking the opposite way on those flat escelators. Maybe she wanted a workout as she was rather large.

Hopefully i'll get some internet and power so i can get these blogs up....

update: Woo hhoooo found power. Still can't get internet tho >.> Had to buy a 30 dollar converter to plug in. Good thing it works in 150 different countries. It's actually pretty nifty.

2 Hours Til London

Well, i don't think i slept. Landing in a couple hours i think and then i'll have a good 7 hours to nap in heathrow. You can take the airplane blankets right? I'll take your silence as a yes.

Hahaha wow i just saw one of the flight attendants try and flirt with another one by blocking the aisle with his cart. Amusing.

I wonder what it's gonna be like in the airport at nairobi. I guess i'll know in about 15 hours.

Flight Night

Well i'm in flight now. Decided to write something up even though i wont be able to post it till i land. Just bought a new laptop before the trip and it took me all of two hours to finally find the text document program.

Flight is good so far. a few bumps but i like the bumps. It makes the whole experience feel like a roller coaster. I guess if i could have my way the whole flight would be loaded with turbulence. I guess i'm just weird like that.

The flight attendants all seem pretty nice except for one anal dude that didn't like me taking a whole row despite their being only 66 people on the flight. haha.

Just ate dinner it was teriyaki chicken....doh. good but i have it all the time. THIS IS CROSS CONTINENT I WANT EXOTIC!

I think there's about 7 and a half hours left on the flight. I'm gonna watch some Wall-E then catch some Z's. Talk to you again on the ground.

Requesting prayer

Already complications have arisen. The two camp leaders Paul and Mary Ann Weaver are not going to be there for the camp as Mary Ann has been diagnosed with Trigeminal Neuralgia. So they'll have to do brain surgery to separate the blood vessel that is pressing on that nerve and causing on the pain.

So I'll be there with their son Paul doing the camp. So prayer for Mary Ann and us leading the camp would be appreciated. Especially for Mary Ann.

I leave tomorrow. Hopefully the flight will go smoothly. I'll be in the air for around 18 hours so it's gonna be a long one.

Thanks for the support i'll see you when i return.

2 days to go

2 days till departure. Wow, i'm nervous. Got shots out of the way today. 2 in the right to in the left. Yellow fever, Hepatitis A, and polio. Dad insisted i didn't need this one but i insisted "Dude, I don't wanna be paralyzed"

So much left to do. Better get on it.