Dry Tears

Friday, June 6

Dang, I had a blast today! We went to Tumaini (which is the orphanage that our team is doing most of their work at) to work just like yesterday. So I kinda did some construction (and had to carry like 100 lb blocks….very tiring) so then I helped paint this gigantic mural deal that has Jesus feeding the 5,000 (very cool). Then I left to go play with the kids because I am an awful painter. I’ve learned a few phrases of Swahili but overall it’s pretty hard to communicate with the kids so instead I just chase them around pretending to be a dinosaur (also very tiring). It really blows me away that these kids can have so much joy in the Lord despite their circumstances. In fact the first day we got here, these kids that have no parents, sang us a song that talked about Jesus being their father (I can honestly say I teared up hearing it…it was beautiful).

Oh, I just remembered something that I did yesterday. We went to visit a bunch of local churches. One of them was in the hardcore slums, I mean the highest poverty rate area in the area (does that make any sense?) Anyways, it was awful, there were trenches lining the streets that were filled with trash. There were many homes that we passed that were also burned to the ground due to the “disturbances” earlier this year. And I never wrote how the meeting went yesterday, but it was so cool. There were these two dudes that came in, one being the owner of the drilling rig business, the other was this cool surveyor. I got to see them sign the contract and do all this cool legit business that I didn’t understand. Then they talked about different stuff that was pretty beneficial. Don’t remember much of it now, but it was like on how they work and the different levels of water tables in the area and chemicals in the water and etc. (pretty cool stuff)