CA Team - Youth Camp Time!!!

Camp is About to Begin!

“Jambo” and “Chemge” from Kipkaren! With the exception of Amie and Chris, who have suffered from stomach bugs, we are doing well. God has been teaching us many things about Kenyan culture and ourselves, as we have experience so many life-changing things.
Picking up where our last blog ended, we went on another day of home visits on Tuesday. Again, we saw the daily life of Kenyans and came away amazed at their strength and resilience in the face of obstacles, and their deep commitment to family and community. We also visited the clinic where Juli meets with patients, and heard her share her vision of developing palliative care for the dying.
One aspect of Kenyan life that impresses us is how physically fit they are. They walk or bicycle everywhere, and are so strong that a walk that makes us huff, puff and sweat hardly stresses them at all! You can see why this area of Kenya produces such great long-distance runners.
We also visited a Milk Cooling Station in Kipkaren that ELI helped found. The purpose of the station is to empower local farmers, by preparing their milk for sale on the open market. Each farmer brings in their milk, it is checked for contaminants, measured and pooled into giant coolers, which ready it for distribution to a milk processor, who pays for the milk. It is an amazing story of God’s blessing. They opened in April, to 26 farmers, who gave 178 liters of milk. In just four months, they now have over 500 farmers who come, and give an average of over 3600 liters a day! ELI is truly helping locals become self-sustaining!

Yesterday, we helped prepare for the annual Youth Camp. We built bunkbeds for campers, helped register arrivals, and met with Kenyan pastors. This is the 11th year they have had this camp, and about 300 young adults from neighboring areas, some walking over 5 miles, have assembled here, tucked in every corner imaginable. It is really quite exciting!
Our role in the camp is to lead discussion groups on various topics: Spiritual Growth, Small Business Development, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Dating, Decision-Making, HIV and AIDS awareness, etc. The campers have been divided into 9 groups of about 30 each, and they will rotate through four one-hour sessions each day. We will each have a local pastor who will translate and contextualize the message so it is most effective.
In the afternoons, we will participate in activities with the campers, such as soccer, volleyball, frisbee, tug-of-war and crafts. It will be a wonderful way for us to connect with these youth through play.
As the camp begins, we would ask you to pray for the following:
1. That we would continue to stay healthy and strong. Amie and Chris are not feeling well, so pray they would recover. For the next two days, we each lead four seminars a day, and we want be at our best, so pray we stay healthy.
2. That any Kenyan youth here who does not know Christ will come to faith. This is a generation under great stress. Pray that God would use us to reach them with the gospel.
3. That God would continue teaching us to serve others.

We are SO grateful for your support, in the form of prayers and comments on the blog. They keep us going!

The Kenya Team

p.s. Here are some photos. Enjoy!