There’s this thing in Kitale called ‘The Show’. It’s like a fair type of thing. I guess you can go and see a merman, and a really short man, and other odd things that you have to pay money to see. I didn’t go. But I did hear the disco that they have at night that continues all night long. All night! For four consecutive nights. You’d think people would get tired of dancing through the night, but they don’t. It was either hard to get to sleep because of the incessant thumping of the drum beat, or I was woken up at crazy hours of the morning to the incessant thumping of the drum beat. Friday, when they finally ended the disco around 5:30 in the morning, they ended with ‘How Great Thou Art’. Seriously. First time, ever, I did not want to hear that song…playing at a disco of all places.

Other than that, things are going well :) I’ve been spending more time with my Kiswahili teacher’s family. I had the opportunity to teach his kids this past Sunday morning, which was really nice. He’s taking them through the Bible, and we were on chapter 27 of Genesis. I really enjoy being a part of their Sunday morning service. It’s so sweet to hear them all singing together. It’s just great.

I also did my own laundry by hand for the first time. You’d think this would not be hard, but it actually is. I was sore the next day. Now, I jog and I do this workout video (don’t make fun of me until you try it – it’s awesome/hard), and I don’t get sore from those things. But, laundry, that makes me sore. The more I understand how Kenyans live, and especially all the hard work the women do, the more respect I have for them. In every way, life is just harder here. It takes longer to cook anything and everything. It takes longer and is harder to do anything and everything here. It’s just a different way of life than what I’m used to. But there are some really neat things about this way of life, too. The people here are still very relationship oriented. They value spending time with each other, and they do a lot of things together. Back to laundry, for an example. I was helping a woman do her laundry, but she has a ton of kids, and they wanted to help too. So, you start out with the water and soap in one bucket, and you move the clothes to several other buckets to rinse them in the non-soapy water. But they’re just buckets, so they’re small. And it’s really hard to do work with 4 hands and lots of clothes in one little bucket. But that’s just how they do it. Instead of one person at each bucket (I tried moving to a bucket without anyone else there, but someone would always end up coming over, so I gave that up), we all just did the same things in the same bucket at the same time. It was aggravating at first, but then, for some reason, I enjoyed being with them, and even enjoyed the little kids getting in the way and making the work harder. They just wanted to help and be with us too! It’s so funny how God will use little, everyday things to get your attention, to get you to be patient, and to get you to enjoy life.

The TI interns will be leaving in about 3 weeks. It has been so good to live in a community of people who are so focused on living like part of the one body that we all belong to. People have really gone out of their way to show love and to put each other above themselves. Sometimes it’s hard to live so closely with so many people, but, mostly, it’s amazing. I’m so thankful God brought me here and allowed me to be a part of what He's doing.