Catch-Up Blogging

Dear friends and family,

I've been elected to write the team's first "catch-up blog". The last couple of days have been pretty hectic for us, and with today's time for R&R&R (rest and relaxation and reflection), I will try to fill all of our supporters in on what we've been up to.

On Thursday we found ourselves still recovering from our first attempt at a medical camp in Bissil the day before. We were all pretty drained physically and emotionally, so we slept in and started the day at Beacon's new site in the mid-morning. We had planned on spending the day preparing for Saturday's huge medical camp (the first official function at Beacon's new site!). However, when we arrived, we were instantly greeted by a missionary and four of her helpers from Elmbrook Church in Milwaukee! The five of them have been traveling to different sites in Kenya, hosting sports camps for kids. We instantly joined forces and put together a great day full of genuine smiles from the kids (and adults!) as they went through four different courses: playing with a huge parachute, rolling a gigantic blow-up ball, navigating an obstacle course, and challenging Joel in soccer. At one point, one of our team members observed that most of the children had never seen grass before, and now they were playing drip-drip-drop (much like duck-duck-goose) in Beacon's huge, grassy backyard.

On Friday, we dedicated our time to medical camp preparation. We again sorted medications and poured cough syrup for hours, and again we were blessed by great conversations that blanketed our mundane tasks. That afternoon, 7 of our team members went on our first home visit in the Kware slum. We met a woman who had only disclosed her HIV-positive status to her mother, and her mother had sought out Beacon to help them work through her daughter's diagnosis. We arrived at the home they shared and were instantly blown away by how welcoming they were - both women greeted us as if we were their closest friends. Even when we explained why were there and that we had been informed of her HIV status, the woman was still very gracious and allowed us not only into her home but also into her greatest point of vulnerability. We told her about all of the opportunities Beacon provides for HIV-affected and/or infected women, and also about the medical camp we'd be hosting the next day...

...And Saturday, we arrived at Beacon early to meet the other 85+ volunteers for the medical camp. The day was filled with great opportunities to serve the Rongai community. Lots of us learned how to direct foot traffic in Kswahili (co-cha is "come" or "follow me"), and at the warmest part of the day several team members helped by offering cups of cold, clean water to the patients in the waiting areas.

We came back to Gracia last night and had some time to process our day and our trip so far as a team. Many of us feel like we are dealing with sensory overload, and processing what we get to see every day is just too daunting. At lunch today we talked about our innate desire to record everything, to capture memories before they fade, to journal and so on, just in hopes of remembering what we've experienced. But for a lot of us, finding the words to explain the last week has not come with any sort of facility. I think we will be ruminating over our Kenya trip even still when we get back to the states, and probably in some sense for the rest of our lives.

One song that we've sang in several team times seems to be closest to sufficient for starting to articulate our Kenyan experience so far:

"I have been blessed...now I'm gonna be a blessing
I have been loved...now I'm gonna bring love

I've been invited...gonna share the invitation
I have been changed...to bring change, to bring change."

Thanks again for all of your support and prayers.

~Mandy