Delayed Post from Day One..!

So here we are in Kenya! It’s strange.. in some ways it doesn’t seem real that we’re here. I think it hasn’t fully sunk in yet. But in other ways, it all seems so familiar from last year’s trip that I can almost feel like I never left. The days of traveling were pretty exhausting with a few delays. But I’m so thankful that we caught all of our connections and made it here safely, made it through customs without problems and got all of our luggage. Oh! And that our three guitars were able to be stored on all three flights pretty easily as carry-ons! …I was a bit worried about that. Thanks, God :)

Today we got to visit the Halfway House baby orphanage, which is always fun :) There were about eight or nine babies, and our team had a great time with them… I really love little kids, so I like orphanage visits a lot… but it’s easy to forget the very real, very hard life situations that these babies are in. Due to circumstances completely out of their control, they are unable to be with their families, at least currently. And that’s really tough.. anyway you look at it. As I was holding a baby today, I was thinking/wondering about the lives these babies will grow up to live. It seems like there is a lot of hope to get adopted or be returned to their families, but I also heard a pretty heartbreaking story about twins that we saw at the Halfway House last year. They were born premature and were super tiny when we saw them (we could only go in to look at them one person at a time). Apparently they were returned to their grandmother, but she didn’t have enough money to support them and the weaker of the babies died. That was really difficult to hear. And it makes it hard to leave the orphanage at the end of our time, knowing that these babies are still in such uncertain circumstances.

I know being in Kenya is going to force all of us to face some pretty difficult realities. And I don’t want to be unaffected by them. I also don’t want the effect they do have on me to be a feeling that lasts for these two weeks, only to fade away shortly after returning to the US. I can already tell that this trip is going to be convicting of how indifferent I’ve been able to become just in the past year of being back home, where the harsh realities of extreme poverty aren’t staring me down everyday. So I’m praying that God would show me how to take what I’m seeing here in Kenya and as a result have my life reflect how I’ve been changed by it.. so that my heart reflects God’s heart for the poor.

Thanks for reading and for praying :)

love, bekah