Sat, Oct 23rd, 2010 -- A Classroom in the Marketplace

Around 10:30 this morning we made our way to the Sibanga marketplace where we found Rose Mahindu at her spare parts shop and sat we down for a visit. I whipped out the English to Swahili book Grace Gikonyo had given me along with a pen and a notebook and started asking how to pronounce words, adding words that we are using frequently which weren’t in the book. Ellen bought a round of sodas for Rose and her friend as well as the two of us and we continued to laugh as I struggled to hear the words the way they are pronounced. We had quite a crowd gathered around us by the time we were finishing up and everyone was enjoying the outdoor classroom. In fact, several people were pitching in to help me with pronunciation as well as to add words they thought I should know. What a great morning!

After taking lunch at our old friend the Iroko Boulevard, we began walking toward the Watergate Cyber Café and met Samuel Wafula, someone who had connected with Joyce Strong in August during the AIC women’s conference. Samuel asked us to go and visit his father at the IGEM an interdenominational ministry which was just a few minutes away so we agreed, even though we had a meeting scheduled with Isaac Gikonyo just an hour from now. We took a cab to the office, spent about 15 or 20 minutes visiting and praying and were then driven in their ministry van back to Kitale. It seemed like another God appointment since we had just “bumped into” Samuel.

We returned to Iroko to take tea with Isaac who had requested a meeting with us. We thought Isaac might want to meet with us to discuss some business but it seemed all he wanted to do was wrap up our time together and thank us for all we had done. As we chatted, I finally figured out today that when Isaac calls us every day to see how our day has been, he is really checking to make sure we are safe. He doesn’t want us to take any chances with Kenyans we don’t know or be taken advantage of. How sweet! We are truly building relationships here as many of our friends do the same thing.

The word is out that I have been passing out Bibles! We found Sebastian (our taxi driver from the Kitale airport on the day of our arrival) and negotiated a price for him to take us back to the shamba. He said his friend Peter had told him I gave him and Bible and he was wondering if I had one for him! What a great way to make friends! At the entrance to the shamba, I left him with shillings for the transport and manna for his soul.