How the Seasons Change

In the South (THE south, of America) seasons change relatively slowly.  Between Winter and Summer, you get Fall and Spring.  Not so in my life.  Over the course of several flights and tired layovers this weekend, I went from the cold and snow of America to the 80-degree summertime of Kenya...it was almost surreal to wake up yesterday morning to the heat of the African sun after spending last week in the -20 degree snowstorms of Colorado! 

The moral to that story is that Jane and I are back in Kenya after an AWESOME three-week trip to the States.  I'll be taking a break from working on my tan in the next few days to give you some more details, but for now I just want to thank all of you who prayed for our trip and were an encouragement during our brief connection to family, friends, and US cellphone networks.  I think we are both feeling energized and ready to make things happen during the next four months, and I'm sure that God has some exciting things in store...

CFA Staff Retreat 2010

Wow - what a crazy and awesome weekend with all of the CFA Kenya team in Naivasha!  Since I don't have a whole lot of time right now (it's 3pm and I'm leaving for America tonight...and I haven't started to pack), I'm just going to throw a few pictures up here and give you a short look into the more interesting parts of the weekend...

This is where we stayed - the Lake Naivasha Panorama Park.  It was actually a really cool place, with lots of little cabins built into the side of a big cliff looking over beautiful Lake Naivasha.  The big building in the picture is where we had all of our meetings.

The weekend included team-building time with activities led by Cornel and Duncan.  I realized why they did this as a job for several years - they are GREAT at it!  The games were so much fun, and everyone was laughing and running around together like little kids.  In this picture, we are stretching out our hips before the games begin...

 After dinner on Friday, the official staff retreat DANCE PARTY began.  Kevin had his stereo and laptop all hooked up, and we danced around in a group for about an hour, moving in a circle around the outside of the room in the typical Kenyan way.  Then, each of us were called up in the middle of the group to dance by ourselves or with one other person to Kevin's choice of songs - hilarious!  They all absolutely LOVED seeing me dance and talked about it for the rest of the weekend...

 This is round 1 of the breakfast buffet for Kevin.  The buffets for each meal were definitely one of the highlights of the weekend for most of the staff - they ate themselves sick!  The food was actually quite good, though, and I was pretty full myself...

 On Saturday, Duncan, Cornel, and I gave a presentation about the Vision, Core Values, and Goals of CARE for AIDS.  I was a little concerned that the staff would want to stay in "play" mode, but they were super engaged and seemed to take a lot from the morning.  We got a lot of great feedback, and I was really blessed to hear many of the center workers talk about how excited they are about their jobs. 

 The hotel had a pool.  It was shaped like Africa.  It was full of our staff members and me.  AWESOME

The whole group!  Each year we are getting bigger - last year we were 13, and this year we are 26! Praise God for all that he is doing with CARE for AIDS. 

25+1

I'm off to the annual CARE for AIDS staff retreat.  That means 25 hyper Kenyans, one mzungu, lots of buffets, team building games, running around in the grass, and (hopefully) an awesome weekend!  We're going to the Lake Naivasha Panorama Park (www.lakenaivashapanoramapark.com), which looks pretty great in the pictures on their website.  We'll see if it matches up in real life!

Last year, I was unable to fully take advantage of the highlight of this weekend - the buffets.  Recovering from a little water-born parasite, my doctor limited me to eating bananas for half of the trip.  While that did let me set a new "bananas eaten in one day" personal best at 13, it didn't make for the most exciting time.  Hopefully this year will be an improvement!  Look for some good stories and crazy pictures to come...