Up and out early today, we got picked up at 6:30 so we can eat breakfast and help with chores with our families. I had a bit of a stomach issue last night and this morning (welcome to Africa).

I was at my house with my girls while they swept, scrubbed & cleaned everything (no mops). The girls had to wash their own clothes by hand in buckets on the ground, unbelievable how hard they work!! One of the girls asked if I washed my clothes with my hands and I was embarrassed to say no, I had a machine. We ate breakfast after chores. Popcorn, rolls, African tea (yum) and there was some leftover beef and cassava from dinner the night before. It looked like a feast. The popcorn here is so tasty. I taught the 2 oldest girls Monica and Loy, how to use my camera, they had fun taking photos. Seems all the kids and the adults are intrigued by our cameras. I stayed at the house until 9:45 because Heather and I had a class to teach at 10:30.

Our class was Feminine Hygiene (puberty and all that goes with it). We walked in the room and there were at least 100 girls and moms waiting for us. Good thing we had a published study to read and teach from. We had an interpreter Judith (one of the moms), she was awesome! Lord who would have thought I would be teaching on this subject let alone to a room full of African ladies. It was well received and they had lots of questions moms and girls. There were a couple of cultural questions that we couldn’t answer but Judith and Victoria Gay took over on them. After we were finished we were thanked by hand clapping and one of the teen girls Ruth stood up and said the most beautiful things to us. We felt so humbled.

After the class some of the girls hung around and brought their finished potholder projects to show us. I promised to take their pictures when they were done. We let the girls loose with a couple of our cameras. We felt like movie stars, everyone wanted their pictures taken with us. We had so much fun! We must have taken at least 100 pictures with them and some of the moms. All this, and it was just noon.




At 1:00 we went back to our houses for lunch. Victoria Gay made this awesome bread to go with our posho and beans. I brought tic tac toe, jump ropes and the peg triangle games. I also had Brent’s laptop, we looked at the photos we had taken and even had the photos the girls had taken in the morning loaded in the computer, they got a kick out of them. I almost forgot, this morning the girls sang and danced for me complete with drums made from their trash buckets and flip flops for drum sticks.

We were invited to the assistant pastor Douglas’ house for dinner. It was in the bush. WOW! Just getting there was an experience. The road was so narrow the bush was scraping both sides of the car. We passed tiny villages along the way complete with naked little boys running around. Like we were in National Geographic, so real but almost surreal. Douglas and his wife Grace have 6 children, all their names start with "D." Douglas has been at Otino-Waa since the beginning, he wears many hats, beekeeper, assistant pastor, transportation director he is an invaluable employee and a very gracious host.

Dinner was very interesting, many items I’ve never even dreamed of. I sampled everything except the meat (I didn’t eat any meat in Africa). The food was wonderful, very different. They live in a house that Douglas has built himself and all the furnishing he built. We were only in the living room. Douglas is very proud of his home. The kitchen is a hut outside Grace cooked over charcoal. Grace is a very gregarious lady very warm and welcoming. The yard is large with a nice garden and pigs, a calf and chickens running free. We were entertained by his son of about 10 or 12 years old he sang a song and so did Douglas’ 18 year old nephew he sang and danced for us.

“Lord…these people are so friendly and open to us. What a blessing to be loved by everyone you meet. This is going to be hard to leave. Maybe by Your will we can come back. You are so awesome.”
Love You Lord
Amen