yipee we have internet again!!!

March 16-18

Our house in Kapsowar with the green fence.

We found a way of doing some great exercise. We have discovered a great walk that takes us about 1hour if we do it very fast. This place is very hilly and on top of that it is 7500vt. above sea level. We found out that the high altitude long distance training center is between 5-10 km from Kapsowar where all the best Olympian athletes of Kenya train. We saw some runners when we drove to Kapsowar and there is also many athletes from the USA and all over the world that tried to keep up with the Kenyan athletes. Agnes took me to town on Friday and it was quite an experience. One thing that amazed me is the initiative that everybody takes  to make a living. I saw a little shack with the words communication center on it and Agnes told me that you can charge your cellphone there for a  fee. It is only then that I realized that  they have to charge their phones and  do not have electricity at their own homes. The  open market is fun and buzzing but I don’t understand how it works because they are selling the same vegetables and if you buy from one person , she would go and get change from another person who sells the exact same thing. I guess at the end of the day they get together and do some reconciliation.

The church service on Sunday was a very emotional experience for us. No other people in the world have so much natural talent to sing in different voices without training  than the children of Africa . If you combine the beauty of their voices with worshipping God you just know that this is a once in a lifetime spiritual and emotional experience -  a gift from God. Clapping hands and dancing in church are also so natural and contagious that you just can’t help but join  them. The Kapsowar church has two services on Sunday one at 9.30am that is in English and one at 11am in Swahili.The church is founded by the African Inland Curch and is involved in many Christian programs throughout this part of the Rift valley.

 Here is a summary of all the programs that the pastors of the AIC church together with Samaritan’s Purse are involved in.

-Primary   Church school for  about  220  children.

- Part of their responsibility is to be the  chaplain’s at the hospital .

- Do devotionals throughout the year every morning at the Nursing school with about 130 students..

- Do counseling plus teaching on sexuality at the  girls school of about  600 - 800  and a boys school of 250 students  and both schools have National status which means that the students come from all over Kenya and the teaching is in English. Pastor Elkanah told me that the pastors have free access to the schools and that they are teaching the sexuality programs based on Christian principles to the students. That was quite a shock to realize just how much we struggle in Canada to have Christian based teaching on sexuality in our own schools

- Providing Bibles in the hospital and also to the students .

-Samaritan’s Purse is also the main organization who find medical doctors and students to work in Kapsowar hospital.- The Kapsowar church started  a Theological school last year and currently has 3 pastors in training.

  

The river in Kapsowar and also our daily walking route.

I was begging the kids for a picture , they are very friendly but shy for pictures.

The girls were dressed in their Sunday clothes and they love to dress up.

 All the schools have their own school uniforms.

I have lots of pictures ,it just takes too long for the pictures to uplaod for now
I will load them as soon as we have better internet connections..

March 19^th.

I had a very interesting meeting today with 2 of the 3 pastors who serve the Kapsowar hospital and the AIC church that is situated right next to the hospital. They are very involved in all of the community and want me to help out in the following ministries.

-          Doing devotionals every morning at 8am at the School of nursing where they have 130 students.

-          Help with the teaching at the Nurses fellowship on Friday nights from 8 pm till 10 pm.

-          Do some preaching on Sunday mornings at the nurses church service that is at 8am.

-          Do teaching at the local schools on sexuality that is based on Christian values.

The things that I found interesting from a counselling perspective are:

-          Although this is very rural , they face the same problems what we face in America , such as  :

Relationship issues, dysfunctional families with alcoholism as main reason, divorce , adultery  and under the young people they also have peer pressure, identity and sexual promiscuity as problems.

-          They also have abortion issues but it is miniscule compare to the US or Canada. Abortions are still illegal in Kenya and in this region the pastor said that there is one older woman who performs abortions and he reckoned not more than 5 a year for the Marekwet region.

-          A problem that is new to them is teen suicide; they had 3 cases last year in this district.

-          They do not have problems with drugs but with alcoholism.

-          There is still some illegal procedures of female circumcisions but that is mostly with force by grandmothers in the very remote areas about 10km from Kapsowar. The pastor said that in the older generation the percentage of female circumcision will be 95 % of women. It is also illegal in Kenya to do this procedure.

-          Financial problems are huge, most families struggle to pay the $400 per year school fees. They do not earn money or get any support from the government. There only means of income is to sell something like eggs, fruits , vegetables ,cows, maize and some women who are good with a sewing machine make dresses for special occasions. 

-          Many families own money to the hospital , although the missionary doctors perform all the surgeries and treatment for free , the patients have to pay for their own medicine ,blood test and for their stay in the hospital where they get three meals a day.

-          The hospital and its operating rooms were built through funds provided from Samaritan’s Purse.

-          Some people come to the hospital as far as 8 hours’ drive by car from here.

-          Since we arrived we realized with a shock that there was a tragic event at the hospital every day from a young child with meningitis who died to a patient with a massive brain injury from a motorcycle accident.

The positive things that we see are:

-          They are still very family orientated and whenever a person is in need , everybody help them out with the little that they have.

-          If a person in a family go to university and end up with a job with regular pay they do not forget about their families , as a matter of fact they end up supporting the whole family even cousins .

-          Kenyan’s are very friendly and very relationship orientated. They love to visit each other and talk.

-          All the schools in this region still practise regular devotionals every morning and also an assembly with worship song, bible reading and teaching once a week. I was invited to speak at two of the schools in this region and that was truly an unforgettable experience. The girls school has 600 girls and the boys school has 250. These schools have National status which means that the standard of the schools are the highest in the country.

- Every Kenian we meet ,shakes your hand , from a 2 year old child to an 92 year old grandpa . I went to the Church primary school  during their morning Thai tea break and made the mistake of shaking the first hand and when I looked up there was this huge storm of little kids who wants to shake my hand . The teacher of the school had to come and rescued me I could not move.