Hakuna wa kufanana naye!

Sasa wazungu! (What's up Americans/gringos/non-africans!) Eric here!

It seems like Sunday has just come and gone. Well, I guess it has. As I write this blog, it's 11PM Sunday night, and I'm pretty sure our whole team is asleep. Another day of our 11-day trip is now checked off the schedule for our team, but none of us are laying down to rest tonight as the same person who woke up this morning. We now know more Swahili; we're less jet-lagged; we're closer as a team; we're aware that Kenyan church might go on for hours :-); we feel welcomed into the Beacon of Hope family again or for the first time; we've updated each other on our health based on a simple description of our most recent bowel movements. In short - we're different, and it's good! 'How did this all happen?' you might ask. Well, let me give you a run-down of our day~

We started out by waking up in our hotel rooms which look like this:

(This is Andy's, Tony's, and my room)

We then had a nice breakfast at 8AM that consisted of toast, egg omelets, sausages, fruit, cereal and coffee or tea. We had a little time after breakfast to 'freshen up' before heading out to church at the Nairobi Chapel.

The Nairobi Chapel is a large evangelical church that meets in a giant, permanent tent:

Surprising to some of us, the musical worship was somewhat similar to what we would experience at Blackhawk, however everyone in the congregation was dancing!!! It was really fun to be able to dance along with all the Kenyans! Almost all of the worship songs were in English (along with the preaching and announcements), but one or two of the songs were sung in Swahili. In fact, the title of this post is a line from the chorus of one of these songs. 'Hakuna wa fukanana naye' means 'There is no one else like Him (Jesus)'. As we sang this song alongside hundreds of our Kenyan brothers and sisters, I couldn't help but feel caught up in something much bigger than myself...much bigger than all of us singing...something clearly from God. Even before any of you back home had woken up yet (maybe even before some of you had made it to bed), we had started worshiping God with the Church half a world away. We were able to begin this Sabbath day of worship that you guys back home, even after we have all gone to bed, are getting to continue! What an amazing picture: a day of GLOBAL worship!

After church (which like I mentioned before went on for hours - not a bad thing, but just different), we took our bus over to the Wathome's house for lunch and time to hang out and meet the Beacon of Hope Leadership. The Wathome's (Ken and Jane, and their kids Kevin, Brian, and Debbie) are the family who run Beacon of Hope and do a bunch of other awesome things in Nairobi. Since today was my first day meeting them, I hardly feel worthy of explaining to you who they are...so maybe someone else can do that in a later blog post. Nevertheless, they are extremely nice and very hospitable! We ate a wonderful catered lunch with the leadership staff of Beacon:

(Jane Wathome checking out the wonderful food before we ate)

And we got to reconnect with old friends:

(Maggie with Jane, Brian, and Debbie Wathome)

(Joel and Holly with Debbie)

As we were eating, Judy (a Beacon staff in charge of programming) started to ask the people at my table (Kelby, Anna, Craig, Erin, and me) about what our lives look like back in the States. We got to share a little bit about who we are, and we got hear about who Judy and Elizabeth (Beacon staff in charge of their school for 3-6year olds) are and what their lives are like. After we were done sharing, Judy paused and slowly looked at each of us before saying, "Wow, what a blessing it is to meet you all! Sometimes volunteers come and get right down to business working. But is is truly a blessing to know who you are!" This reminded me (and all of our team) that though we are here to work hard and do as much as we can in these medical camps, first of all we are here to form relationships - to LOVE people with God's love. We are a part of something that has been going on for years. This team is becoming part of the relationship that Blackhawk and Beacon have been forming; a relationship that allows us to bring gifts of service and support to be use by Beacon to reach their fellow Kenyans who are in need.

After lunch and a few hours of learning swahili, catching up on life, and just having a good ol' time, we headed back to our hotel. We had about an hour of relax/nap time. Then we had a team meeting to discuss what kind of things happened today and how they affected us, what our schedule looks like for the week, and specifically how we can prepare ourselves for what tomorrow and Tuesday brings (which I will get to in a moment). After the meeting we headed out to dinner at Java House (a very American Kenyan restaurant...similar, but better than a Chili's). After dinner, we were so full and tired, that once we returned to the hotel, everyone went straight to their rooms, packed for tomorrow, and went to bed (except me...so I could write this blog post which took forever because the internet speed isn't ideal for uploading all of those images above :-))

So, tomorrow we will be heading out to our first medical camp at Bissil (not pronounced like the vaccuum, but like 'bee-seal'). It will be a 2-3 hour drive from Nairobi. We will pack up medications and supplies in the morning at Beacon, and get to Bissil in the evening to set up and then get some sleep. We will wake up early on Tuesday and hopefully see nearly 1000 patients before tearing down the camp and heading back to Nairobi the same night. Since we will be up in Bissil, we won't have an internet connection to be able to update this blog until late night Tuesday, or early morning Wednesday. Please be praying for safety on our drive to and from Bissil, for EVERYTHING that relates to setting up and running a successful medical camp, and most of all that we can be a blessing to a thousand Kenyans on Tuesday!

Thanks for making it through that novel of a blog post! Please comment so that we know you are reading - it is so fun to hear from you all at home!!!

Kwa heri (Goodbye)~

Eric

oh, and just for fun, here are a few funny/interesting pictures:

(crazy team before leaving Blackhawk.
1st row: Erin, Holly, Tony, James. 2nd row: Me (Eric), Craig, Joel, Andy
Missing: Kelby and Anna (met at O'Hare) and Maggie (met in London from Haiti))

(Hoofing it through aptly-named "Club Tunnel" on our way from International terminal 5b to 5c in London's Heathrow airport because the tram decided it didn't want to work anymore. We may or may not have thrown ourselves an awesome rave party complete with beat-boxed techno beats and awesome dance moves)

(Our leader James pulling a broken-off prong out of the electrical socket for our other leader Maggie who was trying to charge her phone while we waited for 2 hours in customs upon arriving in Nairobi...shouldn't the doctor know better?!?!)

(Our model, Joel, trying to melt my camera with his blazing gaze)

(Joel once again, this time in his Tweety-Bird cage chair at the Wathome's. He tawt he taw a puddy-cat. He did, he did tee a puddy-cat!)

Ok, I'm done. And this post has officially taken me WAY too long! I hope you loved it! Talk to you in two days! And please comment! That means you too Andy's mom! My mom and sister too! And everyone else! Was that enough exclamation points?!? no? well here goes some more!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)