Family expanded

Well, it's been longer than planned to update on here. By the time we get home from a full and busy day, either the power is out, internet out, or we're in bed as soon as possible.

It's been such a great week with the Munday team. It's been a pure joy to see them help build house four. We are so grateful.

Since it's getting late and we're getting up early to go eat breakfast with the team on their last morning here in Kitale, I'm going to just let the pictures talk....

House four almost finished

Cobie filling in the cracks on the inside walls yesterday

Taylor and Brenley painting the base coat

Juma making chapati

Today we had a school assembly at the nearest public school. Almost 500 children from kindergarten to grade 8. The team leader from Munday travels with the power team in the states. (and now with a new group called mega force) He did the assembly for the school and incorporated some of the stuff they usually do. I think the message translated so well to this culture and was very applicable. So this morning the guys went and shopped around for materials for him to break and bend. While I took the girls to buy birthday gifts for the birthday party we had this afternoon at Mattaw and to pick up their Kenyan skirts they had made.

Here's one of the teacher showing how he couldn't even budge on bending the metal...

And then Shannon bending it in no time. I think it was around 800 pounds of pressure on his head. You can see our house one dad in the background. He was the translator and did SUCH a great job.

Then he busted soda cans with his hands. The kids loved getting showered with soda. (that is not Sylvanos that busted the can although it kinda looks like it)

We then ate matoke (plantain banana's) for lunch at Mattaw. Then did some painting on house three. We are pretty much finished with house three, we just need to get furniture and kiddos moved in! We were really hoping to welcome them in with this team but looks like the next team will get to do that. Although this team isn't welcoming a house full of children, they got to be a part of a very special story the past couple of day.

I really want to sit and write this story out with as many details to give the story as much of a reality as possible. So I'm going to save it and hopefully tell it in the next few days. I will share a few pictures though. Basically I wanted to take the team to go and see some of the potential children we would be rescuing. Then they'd get a full picture of where the children at Mattaw are coming from and how they once they live at Mattaw. Yesterday we went with our social worker to visit a few children he knew about. We didn't really know exactly where they lived, just a general direction, so we set out to go into some villages. Humphrey would have us stop every so often and ask and people would point us in a direction. Humphrey nor I had any clue what kind of condition these kids were in and if we'd even find them. We ended up finding them and the situation was so very heartbreaking. We left them and all had heavy hearts. I wanted to ball my eyes out and take them immediately. I knew we needed to take a few more official steps and talk to our staff about bringing them in temporarily till house three is ready to move them in. They were thrilled to bring them in and a long story short, we got to go rescue them today! It was WON-DER-FUL. Everything else becomes so small in my mind when I get to be part of this kind of thing. It's my absolute favorite to get to go and literally rescue children from the most horrific situations. Wait, I think I said I was going to save this story so I can tell all the details. Ok, so pretty much we got to go save these two sweet girls today and bring them home to Mattaw Children's Village. Their names are Sheila and Violet. Sheila is around 7 and Violet around 5. Here they are with the grandma...

We brought them back to Mattaw and introduced them to the children. They were all excited to have two new sisters. Our children ROCK! They are so loving and welcoming. I asked who wanted to help them by showing them where to bathe and all the girls were very eager to help. Here's Jennifer and Nelima walking off to show them their home.

More to the story to come....