Lil' photographers...

Something is being built...

You'll soon find out..

The boys spent their "free time" during their school day just watching and "helping" Glenn and Chris build.

They were fascinated to say the least because they got to participate.

Since I wasn't doing much in the way of helping I handed over our "big camera" (yes, we actually call it by that name.) Someone blessed us it and we often allow guests or friends to use it. This time, it was they boys turn! It has a lot of fancy buttons on it that I don't even know what they do. I tried to show them basic things like how to hold and support it. How to take a picture and how to focus on something. These are some of the picture they took. I was rather impressed!

David is being so tender here to James :)

"Okay, now focus on Thuku."
Nice try.

I'm changing my name to Thuku I suppose.

Though Thuku didn't mean to- this is a cool shot.

This one of dan... is my FAVORITE!

a Sally close up! this lady cracks me up!! miss her already..

free falling?
"how much tall are you?"
i think james looks like the grench here.

I don't know about you, but I think they did a pretty good job! I think there is much potential!

Please continue to pray for these boys... they are so special to us, but they face so many difficulties.

Just a "taste"...

As you know from the previous post, it was our turn to have the boys this weekend. We had costody of them from the streets of the slums.

It was...

amazing

stupendous

fun

hilarious

taxing

dirty

and VERY tiring...

Zippy recently borrowed a book from us that looked entirely too complicated for me to read. I asked her how she was liking it and what it was about. She told me that she had just read about how we way over use the word "love". I've been thinking about that for a while and have made a pitiful effort at correcting that. I say that I "love food" or I "love a shirt". It really kills the whole meaning of "love". So... this is it. I hope to be a changed woman.

So one last time; you know just to get it out of my system.

You know what I love? I love:

Njenga's huge "thank you" bear hug for the spaghetti. Getting red sauce stained on the front of my shirt.

hearing the boys singing songs in the office with Chris

hanging laundry outside and watching Chris play frizbee with them

watching Thomas and Noah lead devotions with them at night.

...watching the tiniest boys struggle to keep there little eyes open during the devotion

sleepy eyed James coming in the kitchen with his "good morning smile" curious about what smells so good.

watching them skype for the first time

seeing them run down a massive hill at Ngong hills with smiles almost as big as the hill itself (though my heart was in my throat b/c I thought someone was going to break something important)

I really LOVE every single one of these boys- i speak for CT also.

Below is just a TASTE of our weekend. (Before I got the camera out they weren't hamming up the song quite as much)

Skyping with Rusty 2 from Thomas Thompson on Vimeo.

Hakuna mungu koma wewe from Thomas Thompson on Vimeo.

They also helped us slaughter chickens, but I didn't figure some of you would like to see the video from that. If you aren't squeamish maybe I'll put it on the adoption blog just for fun. There's no actual slaughtering on the video, just Ct cleaning one and the boys cooking intestines. Zippy said "African boys really like chicken intestines". --um, yuck. They were so excited about those intestines, feet, and even the head.

Thuku and Masai

Cooking the goodness!

Cheng and his chicken foot. Delicious?

Snuggle buddies. You'd never know they weren't actual brothers.
David LOVES Carolina... and Ms. Jenny for the blanket! There is a lot of love in that blanket, my friend!

CT giving them a chicken lesson
i just think he is the CUTEST thing!
yea- you are so tough Chengi

Hot diggity Dogs. Yum! Yea- so I thought they would eat like 2 b/c they were so big and we had french fries, cookies, and soda. NOPE- try 4!!! Praise the Lord I went out that day to get extra "just in case".

James and the giant... kevin?

The interns have been teaching the boys bible stories. They thought it would be fun to do skits. The boys LOVED it. They split them into 2 groups and one group had to teach the other group their story. We all tried as hard as we could to make them biblically sound...

so don't laugh when you don't remember a certain part of that story in the bible-

Untitled from Thomas Thompson on Vimeo.

After the skits we went back into the classroom and asked the opposite group to retell the story. The boy who retold ours said that David missed Goliath 3 times! haha!

That wasn't supposed to happen.

Tomorrow we should be getting the other groups video to upload!

Hope you enjoyed and laughed as much as I did. :)

Pull up a chair... we're doing a lot!

This is a tiny recap of the last several days since we've been slack busy.

This is James AKA: "Kamau". He is 10, but looks no older than about 8. I am pretty sure James could not love Kevin any more. I think he wishes they were siamese twins. For whatever reason James loves me too. Last week we were playing soccer and i gained at least 5 lbs on the bottom of my shoes b/c of all the mud from the crazy amount of rain here. I thought about playing barefoot, but quickly reminded myself I grew up wearing shoes most of the time and my feet weren't nearly as tough as theirs. After the game I jokingly walked back to their building with a ton of mud still on my chacos acting completely oblivious to the obscene amount of mud on my shoes. This made James and Dan laugh. When James noticed I was in no hurry to clean them up he became very concerned saying in swahili "Lindy, your shoes are dirty!!" over and over again. (He talks so fast and half the time I can't understand him, but that never stops him. He just says it over and over again- as if it helps me "know" what he's saying.) He kept trying to step with his little dirty feet on the big chunks of mud and then push me over in order for me to lift up my foot so the chunks would come off. (Guess he gave up on even an attempt to tell me to move my foot to get the mud off. Soon I was standing in line to wash off my legs and feet. I slipped my shoes off and set them aside. A few minutes later I see this:

A little boy cleaning my shoes off with his bare hands... for no reason. Humbling, huh?

Wait a second... we're ministering to them???

Thursday-

We spent some time with the St. Boys having a Super Saint Boy Birthday Celebration! It was complete with cakes for the boys and even candles to blow out! I made 2 cakes with 6 names on each cake. (Please refrain from laughing at the really ugly one that is barely leagable due to the horable icing job..) It was their first ever birthday party! We had to explain to them about blowing the candles out and all that jazz. Let me tell you.... they LOVED IT! And would you believe that those 12 boys ate every bit of their cake? We are talking 3 and 4 HUGE slices of cake. My sweet little James was trying to shove it in his pocket to save for later. That was not going to be a good situation so I caught him and we found a great hiding spot. :)

After their celebration we played soccer which is per the norm with them! Those boys LOVE to play soccer.

Untitled from Thomas Thompson on Vimeo.

Friday- Sunday

Last night we got back from spending 3 days in the bush- out in Kibwezi. It is about a 4 hour drive east of NBO. Our group of 13 (5 of us, Graig's group of 4 from Michigan, and a group of 4 from Kenya) followed our partner, Meshack and his pastor friend Dan to Kibwezi for a "Voice of One" outreach to youth. Dan did the setting up and coordinating with the boarding schools we visited. We spent our 3 days in and around kibwezi speaking to a total of about 2,000 14-18 year olds. God was truly glorified this weekend and we were all so blessed to be a part of Meshack's team. He is an incredible leader and so passionate for the lost youth of his country. I have just a VERY few pictures of the past 4 days.

This is the team in front of a boabab tree. These trees are beautiful and Dan told us that these trees were used by his ancestors who would use them as they traveled. At night they would find a tree, cut a hole out of it and make a door of thorns and sleep in it at night. I tried to talk everyone into doing this, but to my dismay- no one was interested.

I'm sure you were expecting "serving pictures" to be posted but surely you know me better than that. You know I had to post something funny. While Meshack was preaching a locust flew up on his back. Please click to enlarge. It was almost big enough to eat him!

St. Mary's school- Kibwezi

I'm not too sure if these boys like the interns much....