As of late...

We are now back in the swing of things with school started. Many of the students have started attachments or will be looking for places to live soon. It always takes longer than planned to get anything done here (in Africa). For example, we took three of the catering students for interviews at a Café but then realized that two of them did not have their official IDs yet. In Kenya you cannot get a job without an ID and you can’t apply for your ID until you have turned 18 and even then the process can take a few months or longer. We also haven’t heard back from the interviews but L has helped them fill out other applications so please pray that those will work out for them.

I’ve been writing lesson plans with Ben and Victor these past two weeks. I feel a lot more for Laquita who has been doing this all year with the other staff. Ben (who does landscaping and livestock) is very experienced with taking care of the animals so he mostly just talks the whole time while I type and organize everything into bullet points and a good timeline. The process with Victor is a little different and I feel like I have to take about two days off after every time we meet.

We are still waiting on more results from KARI and have more visits planned in the next months to test the well water used in the irrigation and get prices on piping.

I thought it was a good idea to measure out the lengths of the irrigation pipes using yarn since I didn’t have a tape measure- this lead to me spending half a day untangling a massive knot then giving up and starting again the next day.

When I first came here we wrote out a plan to rotate the crops that are grown every season. I felt really good about this but soon realized that not everything is completely understood or carried out here. However, Victor has done a lot of prep to begin the new season next month so hopefully it will go as planned.

We have MANGOES!!!! Its always been a problem around here that the students will pick the fruit from the trees way way WAY too early and we end up with no produce at harvest time. But we’ve disciplined them enough (with a lot of mentions of it by Charles at chapel) and now have mangoes for everyone to eat! Also if you are thinking yuck- mangoes- just know that I don’t think you’ve ever had a real mango. Here they taste good.

This friday some of the girls and I worked on beading. We have some special beads that were donated through a friend of Hollye in the hopes of making things to sell for the ministry.

And now I’m just waiting to hear news of the arrival of my latest niece- Elliette! She should be coming any day now and I will spare you the graphic details that my sister kindly reports to me (because I like knowing all that stuff).