Jacob's Blog

Habari ya asimburi! English translation – good morning. I can’t even begin to put into words how amazing this trip has been. When thinking about the trip ahead of time I knew it was going to be life changing, but I had no idea it would affect me the way it has. I’ll start with the children… Each morning they are awake at 5:15-5:30 to be bathed and get ready for the day. In the house where we are staying the walls are not very thick, so sound travels very easily. The children are bathed in a room called the veranda, which is right by my room. So needless to say I am wide awake at 5:30 in the morning. The children will laugh, scream, and cry all morning. It’s an amazing sound! Another thing about these children is they love to sing. They sing when they wake up and they are singing when they go to sleep. My uncle had told me that they would line up for hugs, and I believed him. But not to the extent that it has actually happened. When we first got here they saw us, and it took them all of 12 seconds to think that we had been best friends for life. They immediately ran to us and jumped in our arms just wanting to be loved. Another thing about the children is they love unconditionally.

The clay here is red, very red, and it gets all over anything it comes into contact with. So, needless to say, that when they come and jump on you the red clay that was on their feet and hands and clothes gets all over your clothes hand and anything else you have on. It’s wonderful!

Saturday’s are chore days. So this morning I was up at the same time and went to help Moses, a boy my age, with his chores; which happened to be milking cows. I go out sort of expecting to just watch and sort of expecting to actually do something. I did something. While milking the cow I squirted the milk on Moses and myself, and almost got kicked. But all in all in it was a great success. A couple nights ago Moses and I sat up for two hours talking and teaching each other different languages. He is fluent in English, so I taught him some Spanish and he taught me Swahili…………. a lot of Swahili. We wrote all the words down so I could study them and try to speak a little bit of their language and once we finished I had 104 words in Swahili with English translations, and I have about 7 memorized. It was a great experience!

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers! Nakupenda rafiki! English translation – I love you friends!

For Him,

Jacob