Praise for a fantastic vision trip!

Life around the CFA house has been drastically different the past week, as we have been hosting a CARE for AIDS vision trip from the US. It was an incredible group of people: two couples from Texas -- the Johnsons and Ryffels -- along with Justin and Lindsay Miller. Justin is the CFA Executive Director, and he and Lindsay are two of my best friends from Vanderbilt. On Friday, Duncan, Cornel, and I picked up the group from the Nairobi airport and took them to Diamond Plaza, a market-style combination of about 20 Indian restaurants. It's a slightly overwhelming but delicious meal after a long time on a plane!

Saturday morning we drove to Koinonia Baptist Church, one of our partner churches, to join with them in the final day of a Vacation Bible School. During the morning, we spent time with about 150 kids playing games, telling Bible stories, coloring, and singing -- the presence of 7 "wazungo" was a huge excitement for the kids, young and old alike, and their never-ending energy was amazing! We provided food for all of the kids to stay for lunch, so we got to share some rice, meat, and vegetables with them as they ran around playing with bouncy balls and jumpropes -- a great introduction to Africa! After lunch, the kids all went home and all of the clients from the Koinonia CFA center came to have lunch at the church and fellowship with the team. We got to hear testimonies from current and former clients about what it is like to live with HIV/AIDS in Kenya and what the CFA center and church have meant in their lives, which was really meaningful for both the team from America and for me personally. It seems like no matter how many times I hear that kind of story, each one inspires a new appreciation and praise for what God is doing here!

For church on Sunday morning, we all attended Banana Hill Baptist Church, the site of the newest CARE for AIDS center. After a rousing service with lots of singing, introductions from the whole team, and more smiling kids, we shared a cup of chai with all of the pastoral team from the church. Seeing their passion for working with HIV/AIDS-infected people from the community is so inspiring, and it makes me so thankful that God has put us in touch with partner churches like Banana Hill who truly want to come alongside CFA and reach the people who need it.

On Monday, we left in the morning to walk through the Karanjee slum to Imani Baptist church, our first CFA center. The team members got to sit in on physical and spiritual counseling sessions with our community health workers, which gave them a great picture of what actually happens in a center and an intimate look at some of our client's lives. After a quick lunch back at the house, we split into two groups and walked through the slum to visit some of our current and former clients in their homes. It is so meaningful for a Kenyan, especially one who has been ostracized due to AIDS, to have Americans come and visit them where they live, and it is humbling to see the gratitude and joy on their faces. We also got to see some of the former clients in their places of business and hear about how they are working to provide for the families, and then each group went to a client's home to make a typical Kenyan dinner. It is always an eye-opening experience to see how these people cook a meal with food fresh from the markets, no electricity, and the help of the whole family (and guests, in our case!). All of us were given jobs like peeling potatoes or cutting carrots, and its so funny how the Kenyan women laugh at our utter ineptitude compared to their practiced skill!

Finally, we traveled back to Banana Hill Baptist Church yesterday for a day of celebration with all of the clients. We helped them to cook a big lunch, and we had a sort of panel discussion in the church during the morning. Doctor Johnson, especially, was asked a lot of questions about medical care, and the clients really appreciated input from the whole team. After some singing and sharing lunch with the clients, we came together in the church to hear more testimonies and then listen to a bible study presented by Doctor Johnson. It's amazing to see how the clients respond to a genuine care and concern, both physically and spiritually, coming from people from the other side of the world. It means so much to them that this team would come and share with them, and the joy and encouragement in their faces was really exciting.

The whole trip was so exciting for me - I love any chance I get to share with other people what I am so passionate about here in Kenya and see them really understand what is going on, and having other Americans to share in that excitement is a huge blessing. The whole group was incredibly encouraging to me, both personally and CFA-wise, and for that I am extremely appreciative. Thanks to all of you for praying for this trip - I think they had a great time and truly got to see what CARE for AIDS is all about, which is exactly what I would want!

We will have several vision trips in 2010, so if you are interested in having this kind of experience (along with a lot of other exciting African things) please get in touch with me about it!