Tie dye, Garden and Turkana

Just a few updates around here....

Keela, Anna, Taylor and Morgan took off yesterday.  Keela and Anna have spent all summer with us.  Taylor and Morgan spent the last month with us.  Keela and Anna go back to graduate college while Morgan and Taylor go back to graduate High School.  We're so thankful for the love they poured out, what servant hearts they have.  They flowed well with our team here and we're so thankful for all the help they gave!  Keela and Anna, aka Tie Dye gals, brought their colorful cheer with them and spread it amongst us all.  They tie died with all the Mattaw kids last week and made us shirts too.  Here's our family....

 Tomorrow we kick off the first class of the Garden School!  It'll be every Wednesday morning.  We are using material from The Garden Apostolic training center (our home church), to equip our leadership at Mattaw.  We will start this year with 25 students!  Then open it up to the public next year. It's a two year school.  We are all super thrilled to start this up tomorrow!  So we have a new building at Mattaw.  We have dorms being built for when teams come, so in the same area there is a building that will be for the Garden school during the school year and it will be a Dining hall during the summer for teams.  I've enjoyed doing a little interior decorating in it with the few available resources we have.  Still needing to do a lot of finishing touches but its at least usable for this week!

Ok, and some more REALLY exciting news?!  This weekend I will go with Bud and our Kenyan sons to Turkana.  AH, can't even express my excitement in words or I'd take up this whole blog with exclamation marks. :)  If you want to read the story of when they went last, CLICK HERE.

Our mzungu (white) children won't go with us this time.  Its so that I can get in a trip without them and go more prepared for the next time we take them along.  We are going to build more relationships as we start seeking out the ways the Lord would lead us into this region.  One of the biggest needs in the village we will base out of is water.  The only source of water they have access to is a river.  Many get sick from the water and a lot of children die every year from preventable water born diseases.  So we will be giving opportunity to give towards this in the near future.  So go do some research on the Turkana tribe, they're beautiful people.  We want to first build relationships though and know how to best meet a need in such a poverty stricken area.  A lot of drought, no toilets (or even holes in the ground, this should be fun!), and tribal clashes.  But one thing that we have is a whole lotta love from the Father to bring.  Super excited to bring the gospel of the Kingdom and hope to a people that only Jesus can give.  And I'm mostly thrilled to meet our sons' families (i know, sounds odd).  Really excited to meet Ian's sister who is 16 years old, and just hang out with her.  She has been through a very rough time recently.  Pray over our vehicle, travel, for open doors and open heavens over us wherever we go!

Rescue a life.  Redeem a soul.  Release the Kingdom.