Day Seven

Everyone in the team is weary.  The hot sun, constant dust and the sheer magnitude of the number of children swarming all over us wanting to touch or stroke us seem overwhelming but having said all of that we have continued with the home visits in our teams.

One of these was to prepare for the makeover of the home lived in by a family with 3 children on Monday. The family have only recently been found by Doxa and the three children are now going to school, all sponsored by us. They were delighted to show us their school books, and thrilled to receive some little colouring books and a tub of bubbles.  On Monday half term ends, and the children will go back to school, giving us the ideal time to get hard at work in the mudbuilt house whilst they are away.  The father is a very gentle, single Dad who does his best to feed them but the home is one of the poorest that we have ever been into.

On another visit, we were amazed to open the compound gate to be greeted with a clean and tidy yard, a very unusual sight.  In this case, not only was the Dad still involved with the family, he was sober and working, and the house was as pristine inside as the yard outside.  This is a place where we rarely see extremes such as this, more often it is just poverty, and worse poverty.

Dewy has been on his bike again today; he had his hat blown off along the motorway, but this was retrieved by Victor his Kenyan friend.  On arrival at the plot, he spent another day of hard labour.  In addition to the gazebo built over the past few days, he has now reinforced the gate, made a duck pen, made a dog kennel and made a proper African cooking area for Victor.  He has also manufactured a gutter for the house using some left over iron, which he cut with the kitchen scissors.

We were able to attend the weekly fellowship meeting which is held in the office.  There was a good crowd in, and David preached to them.  It was very warm in there, and when we finally opened the door, it was a relief to get back outside.

We have also found over the past few days, that we have a technical wizard in our midst.  Emily has become our IT guru and has sorted out many issues for us, burning the candle late into the night to resolve some of these. It could be the fact that she is the youngest in our team and is used to these things, but we are all so very grateful to her and wonder where we would be without her.  Not only this, but she is also our official photographer.

Apart from Dewy, who was otherwise engaged in his labours, the rest of the team met up with the pastor at Kim’s church and had lunch with him and his wife.