This and That

Sorry it has been almost a week since my doozie of a post. I know many of you faithfully check our blog daily only to find I've been on hiatus. Preparing and getting a post actually "published" here can literally take hours; I do look forward to cutting that time down with our connection at home.

I'll try to give a little update with what we've been up to the past few days. Thursday, the kids and I went on a "field trip" to Nairobi with Megan and her oldest two, Claire and Ford. Our 1st stop was the Giraffe Center. We have some great pics to share from there (if you're on Facebook, you've seen some of them); if not, I apologize that you'll have to wait until we're home to see them b/c we still have quite a few action items on our To Do list before we leave.

After the giraffe encounter, we took a tour of Kazuri Beads. A company that makes beautiful decorative beads from clay. My favorite thing about the company is that they started to provide jobs for women. They now employ over 200 single moms.

We topped off our visit with lunch at a fabulous restaurant, The Rusty Nail. We ate on the terrace and the kids were able to explore the beautiful gardens and grounds before and after their meal.

Friday - Saturday was a marathon cooking stretch. I made chicken potpie (Abby helped me make the crusts), baked potato soup (John acted as head chef for that one), High Altitude Deep Dish Brownies (Super yum! We made these again Sunday), Saturday morning, 3 batches of pancakes, and Saturday night, spaghetti. Whew! Cooking is not nearly as bad as the clean-up, especially when EVERY item is handwashed (in very hot water) and your delightful family somehow uses 25 cups in one day!

Sunday morning, we were excited about the opportunity to attend AIC (African Inland Church) Kijabe. Unfortunately about 15 minutes before we left, David got a call from Casualty (ie, the ER) that a baby had come in with a temp of 107. Yeah, not good; he headed down the hill to the hospital and the kids and I went up hill to church.

Thankfully (and shocking to many of you), we arrived a few minutes early b/c the place was eventually packed out. RVA's chapel does not meet the 1st Sunday of the month, so staff and kids attend AIC. We chose the 8:30 service b/c it is English/Swahili while the 11 am is strictly swahili. We loved it (& the kids did well for the 1 hr 45 min service). Because David wasn't there, I got to stand up (from my seat) in front of 500-600 people and do our greeting: "Hello, I'm Amy Sprayberry. I'm saved. We bring greetings from Watkinsville Baptist Church in Georgia. We are here b/c..."

Yesterday (Monday) morning, the kids went to school at RVA. David had met the Titchie (lower school) principal and he had invited the kids to come for a half-day. The kids really enjoyed it and I was able to get a couple of hours work done here to jumpstart our packing. When I went to pick them up for lunch, they didn't want to leave. We ate lunch in the cafeteria and they played with some of the kids until classes started back at 1 pm.

Yesterday afternoon, we worked on some things around here, "walked" some errands, and finished decorating the rest of the name cards to take to Mercy today.

Today we will pack, I'll attend Bible Study, take the kids to see Mercy and some patients at Kijabe Hospital, pack, distribute things remaining here, "walk" the rest of our errands, go to dinner at Mama Chiku's tonight with our cousins, and pack.

At some point tomorrow (hoping to get that time soon), a Samaritan's Purse driver will come pick us up to take us to Nairobi.

Likely, the next post on this blog will be from the US. There's still a lot rattling around in my brain. I started reading and have almost finished The Hole in our Gospel by Richard Stearns. A must read and a very interesting one to work through while on African soil.

If you haven't done so, check out David's blog (see link on the right). He's finally been able to post about some of his experiences.
Please continue to pray for my sister in Liberia. Mom got a brief email saying they are doing well, but extremely busy and she doesn't expect to able to email or call again until they touch down in Atlanta Sunday.

Thank you again for your support of and prayers for us. I continually thought of all of you Sunday during the sermon about partnership in missions: pray, give, encourage. We have experienced each of those blessings.

Grace and Peace, amy