A Typical Day at the School

This is three of the class rooms out of the four. The school has grades one through four and will grow and build up to grade eight. Primary school has grades one though eight and then the children go to secondary school which is grades nine through twelve. Karbururi is growing towards this!

A day at the school would start with as arriving and start working on the living fence when it was the coolest part of the day. The school has a barbed wire fence around the school and we weaved in this plant called Euphorbia (I think that's how it was spelled) that grows great in Kenya. It's pretty amazing stuff, they cut pieces off of ones they find, we stick it in the ground and it grows! It will grow in really thick once it rains and this will keep the animals out of the school compound making the school safer place for the children.

We would then have tea! Chai- black tea with camel milk. It was yummy and a great time to visit with team members and with the school staff. In the right of this photo- this is Andrew, FH feild staff that works here with the school. He helps with getting children sponsored, translating letters to these children, etc. He is amazing with the kids and a great spiritual light the the community. Sitting next to me is Greg from the team.

We than had time to visit and play with the kids! My favorite time! We brought soccer (footballs) ball, Frisbees, jump ropes, and bubbles for the kids. The boys love the football! They were running all over the compound chasing the ball. Soon they organized teams. I'm hoping that they will develop rules soon to! I liked through the Frisbee around with some of the girls. It was also a good time to talk to them and learns some words and see if they would open up enough to speak English. Great time to build relationships!

We then had VBS (vocational bible study) with the kids. Kaitlyn would begin by teaching them a song-'Lord I Lift Your Name On High' One verse a day and be the end of the week they knew the song! It was fun watching them get into it- they like to sing.

Then a bible story would be read to the children. It is an amazing place to read the Bible- it really comes alive there. Like with the parable Jesus told about the man with sheep and one was missing. He would go looking for the lost sheep until he found it. These kids know exactly what this means and it is good for them to know that God is looking for them in the same way! That they each mean that much to God. At the end of the story, they would learn a new memory verse out of the Bible. The all would say it together several times to make sure that they got it!

While some of the team went on home visits- were you get to go meet your sponsored child's family and see where they live, others would work on the nursery. this is a plan to grow shade trees, mango trees, and veggies that the children will be able to eat. This is also a way to teach the children to grow food at home- called kitchen gardens- to supplement their diets. We saved all our drinking bottles to create a dripper system for the baby plants.

Some us on the team used this time to spend with the kids. It was nice because class was over for them. I ofter sat on the school stoop and would sing songs with them and let them play with my hair! This was a great way to reach out to the older girls and build a relationship with them. It is a challenge to come up with ways to bond and reach out to the children not using language. It uses a different part of your brain! It is also amazing how many universal languages there are though!