Tomorrow is our last day in Kenya.  We are leaving the apartment tomorrow morning at 5:45 a.m. to go on a mini-safari at the Nairobi National Park.  We may also visit a giraffe house, where the giraffes come up to you to eat out of your hand and give you giraffe kisses (if you so desire), as well as the Kisuri bead factory, where beautiful glass beads are made by local artisans.  It will be an early start but a relaxing day of seeing different parts of Nairobi.  Our flight doesn’t leave until 10:35 tomorrow evening, so we will be able to enjoy dinner with our wonderful hosts before saying our good-byes and departing for the airport.

The past nine days have passed by in somewhat of a blur.  Our days have been consumed by experiencing different villages within the slum, accompanied by the amazing staff of Missions of Hope (MoHI).  I have so much respect for the social workers and other staff members who genuinely love this community of people and serve them with true servants’ hearts.  They interact so well with the parents of the students, making at least three visits to various homes each week to check up on them, to encourage them, and to pray with them.  Change starts in individual homes, where students share the knowledge they are learning in school with their parents, which in turn inspires the parents to dream bigger and work harder to keep their kids in school.  Parents see the tangible results of having their children in school, and they would do anything to keep them there.  We’ve witnessed it so many times this week.  Many times, we offered encouragement to the parents, praising them for putting their kids through school, and it was obvious in their countenances that they are very proud of their children.  Nearly every home that we visited requested prayers that they would continue to have enough household income to keep their children in school.  The parents in the slum community are invested in their children’s education in a very real sense.  The children recognize the sacrifice that their parents are making by sending them to school.  As we’ve discussed many times throughout the week, it is so different than in America.  For kids in the slum,  school is a privilege, one that they do not take for granted.

As I close my eyes each night, I see the faces of the many beautiful people that we have met and shared life with this week.  Like the sho shos (grandmothers) who live together in one tiny room (they are also sisters) with a grandchild that they are raising because one of their daughters died.  Their deeply-lined faces and determined eyes told their stories.  Or the mother we visited who has a total of six children, four who are currently in school.  Her 14-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted by a man in the community during her school holiday.  We prayed with her and encouraged her to embrace her daughter during this time of healing, trying to convey that what happened to her is not a badge of shame or a curse upon the family.  Or the single young man who just moved into the slum from the country, where he had been raised by his grandmother from a very young age.  He had just gotten a job last week, and he wants to complete his driving exam to become a driver.  So many stories.  So many strong, resilient people who are just trying to survive and perhaps make their community a little better.  As Giles says, these people are real, raw, genuine.  Even with foreign visitors (mzungus), they are welcoming, receptive, and willing to share very intimate details of their lives.  Every person we visited expressed deep gratitude for us coming to visit with them and asked us to return to their home.  They seemed honored by our presence, which was extremely humbling for us.

We are sad to depart tomorrow, but in many respects, we are ready to return home– to rest, reflect, and process all that we have experienced this week.  We have been blessed immensely in this trip.  We pray that we will be able to share these blessings with our friends back home, as well as the many lessons that we have learned.  The Kenyans we met, both staff and community members, asked us to pray for them when we return home, as well as to tell their stories in America so that more friends may pray for them.  God certainly dwells among his people here.  We will have many more stories to tell once we return.  As the Kenyans say, we look forward to greeting you all once again.