You have probably read accounts already of our trip over but here is some of my personal experiences. 36 hour flight, 4 hours of sleep, a whirl wind tour of London mostly the tube, two flight delays and yet all 18 of us and 37 pieces of luggage arrived safely.

Had a soft landing in that for the first two days in that we went orphanages and played with cute litle children livingin poor but for Kenya reasonable conditions. The last two days we visited slum schools, toured slums, fed hungry kids and "experienced the slums". Can't help but be touched by what you see. Filth running thru the streets, kids playing in a garbage dump, droping their drawers right where they are to poop or pee while waving at the bus as it goes by. A family of 6 living in one room 15x15 with one small window and a door for light, yet they do all they can to keep it clean and decorate it.

The teens have been great, stepping up to help and do what ever they are asked. I think they releive their stress by being goofy on the bus but who can blame them. It is clear that many of them have been deeply affected by what they see.

I still struggle with the time change, finally sleeping 7 hours last night but usually getting only three or four. The food and the service here at Heart have been great but it is a little hard to get use only having running water at certain hours because of the long drought and occasional brown outs.

Traffic here is like driving in a real life Mario Cart game. Seriously. Lines on the road mean nothing. The sides of the road mean nothing. Driving on the left or right side of the road means little. A tewo lane road has 4 cars driving side bt side. What speed limit?

Lost my passport for a time last night. Panic set in for a little while as I thought I might have lost in at the Masedo school. You don't just call or hop in the car and run back over there to look for it. But our devotions that morning were to be joyful always, pray ceaslessly and give thanks in everything. Following our debriefing last night and a group prayer I went back to the room and found it in 2 minutes. It was black same as my suitcase and had fallen behind it. Gotta understand that it also contained my drivers lisence, money, credit card, and insurance card.

Fianally as I close because Nicole wants to post a blog and I type so slow I will close with these two things. I have probably high fived and shook 200 snotty, flithy germ ridden hands these past couple of days and I could not be happier to do so. To see the smiles on their faces and to know the joy and hope we brought to them if even just for a little while is worth it all. Second, as we were walked out of the slum on Wed by one of the teachers who I had been walking and talking with his parting words to me were, " when you leave here don't forget us." There is no way this will ever leave my memory but what he was really asking for was action. My challenge will be how can I continue to help these people?

Bob