oh! AND!!! we went on another safari. We were able to see a total of 135 elephants!!!It was soo cool. We saw lots of zebra, water buffalo, ostrich, warthog, antelope, gazelle, impala, and jackal. Oh, we also saw monkeys and fed them. A baboon was near...and it kept getting closer to us so we had to run away because they are mean creatures and will attack you! Also, one small monkey tried to get in our van...that was really funny. When we drove to the watering hole there were lots of elephants and zebras there. Three elephants were crossing in front of our vehicle and one of the elephants acted like it was about to charge us!! it was funny/scary at the same time. ha. We did that on our way back from Mombasa.

Well, its our last night in kenya. :( We are spending it packing. we have been back from Mombasa for about two days now. We said goodbye to everyone today. The Bishop and his family came over to say goodbye, as well as another family that we have worked a lot with. It is a bitter sweet thing. We are really excited to go home,but we will
miss it a lot here. Our bags are a lot heavier than when we came, ha. We have a ton of souvenirs and gifts for people. we will go to church in the morning. We are planning on attending the Kawangware church which is located in the slum. They always serve the pastor and honored guests (us) lunch after wards...so we will be eating out there. We have learned a lot since being here. We have been able to really see how a missionary lives and works. We are thankful that we had the opportunity to travel all over kenya and not stay in one spot. Now we just have to write a paper about it all and turn it in. Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts! Thanks for following our blog. We will try to put up pictures at some point after we get settled in at home.

Well, Sorry we haven't written in a while. We have been busy doing lots of office work. The last week we have been in Mombasa, Kenay doing a childrends program and widows program. We met with 18 widows here in Mombasa. A muslim widow came to the group which was cool. Afterwards she came up to the pastor and said that she doesn't know if she should continue with Islam because clearly Jesus is the son of God and not Muhammad! The children here were lots of fun. We played lots of games with them, bubbles, crafts,singing, and a bible lesson. They did not want us to leave.
Mombasa is more heavily populated with Muslims than Nairobi or any other place we've been too. We got to visit the beach one day just to say we've stepped in the indian ocean. We went on another safari too. Its been good. We are taking a bus back to Nairobi tonight. I will write more when we get there. We head home in three days!!!!

Well, not a whole lot has gone on the past few days. Early on saturday the other three students that were with us left to go to South Africa. July 4th was a very eventful day for us....not. Well we have never been outside the USA before on Independence Day. There were no fireworks here in Kenya on the fourth of July. ha. We had a real american dinner...hamburgers and macaroni and cheese!! Loved it! Then Betsye and I went to the grocery store to get some ice cream! You HAVE to eat ice cream on the 4th of July! Betsye and I bought a few decorations to put up in the apartment. The closest thing to fireworks we could find were sparkling birthday candles. ha. So we got those. We lit the sparkling birthday candles on the balcony and sang patriotic songs! ha it was really funny! Everyone else in the aparmtent complex could hear us...not all of them are american, ha. We also purchase these confetti popper things. So we popped them in the house and confetti went everywhere, ha. This week is just full of office work. We are putting applications for children into the International Child Care program onto the computer. International Child Care is the Free Methodist child sponsorship program. Oh, church on sunday was good. We played with the children afterwards, and thats always fun. WE've watched a lot of movies too. ha..while we do our office work. We'll try to keep you updated as much as possible! Thanks for reading the blog and keeping up with our summer in africa!

Giraffe Center

Yesterday we went to the Giraffe center!! It is here in Nairobi. You go stand on a balcony thing and the giraffes come right up to you!! You can feed them and they will eat right out of your hands!!! It was awesome. You can hug a giraffe! Also, if you put the food in your mouth the giraffe will come and eat it out of your mouth so it looks like you are kissing a giraffe, ha! I did this like seven times. It was pretty funny...it was gross but not as gross as I thought. We did some of our souvenior shopping today as well. Today is the 4th of July!! Guess theres not gonna be a firework show tonight :( We'll have to figure something out.

SAFARI !!!!

So...on Thursday July 2nd at 530am we ventured out to the Land Crusier to go on our Safari! We were using the very Land Cruiser that Serena Williams uses when she comes to Kenya,and our driver knows Serena and has worked with her organization that builds schools in africa. So...that was a cool thing. It was way too early though. We were very pumped about this day. The park we were going to was about 2 hours away. When we got to Nakuru, we went to the national park. The cool thing about the safari Land Cruiser is that the roof pops up! So you can stand up inside and stick your head out the top to look!! Shoot...we took full advantage of that and stood up the whole time. We started driving through the park. He took us first to the lake where all the flamingos are. There were hundreds of flamingos. The lake was all pink because of them. We started running after the flamingos to make them fly off all together! The other tourists around weren't too happy with us...whoops! ha. Anyawys, there were tons of water buffalo! OF course we all had to sing the veggie tales song, water buffalo! We saw lots of zebraz, gazelle, antelope, and Impala! We drove to the top of this small mountain to the look out spot. It was very beautiful to look out over the lake and the park at all the wildlife. This lookout point was called, Baboon look out point! so of course there were tons of baboons there!! This is where we tried to get as close to one as we could...i was scared because baboons are scary and are known to attack! There were some HUGE baboons...like as big as I am! I stayed away from those ones, ha. There were lots of warthogs, or Pumbas, ha. They a lot of times are in there little family groups. You will see a mom and dad warthog with two or three baby warthogs running around. They are pretty funny when they are running around. We saw lots of rhinos too! they were pretty AWESOME! I wouldn't want to get in their way. The white rhino has an extra long tusk on the front!! the best part were the GIRAFFES that we saw out in the wild! I was the first one to spot them. There were two of them sitting down out in the field and then six more came out from the trees! it was pretty funny because they popped their heads out of the trees. They also look funny when they run. We got lots of pictures. It was really fun. There were more animals, but those are the ones that I remember the most.

Kibera School

Monday and Tuesday we went to the school the Free Methodist church has in the Kibera Slum. We would arrive at 9am. It is about a 15 minute walk into the slum to get to the school. To be honest the slum smells awful, and thats the thing i have to get used to. There are between 500,000 and 700,000 people living in this slum. When we were at the school there are about 240 kids. All ranging from 3yrs. to 16yrs old. We all taught in a classroom. Katelyn and I taught the class 6 students..which is around sixth grade in the states also. There were about 25 kids in my class. We taught math and english for two days. It was awesome! We had a lot of fun with it. Don't think i could do that all day all year...but that short time it was fun. The first english class they were learning animals and the sound the animal makes, so it was pretty funny. We made one student at a time come to the front and do the animal noises, ha. So, all of a sudden you could here a bunch of monkey sounds or lion sounds coming from our class room, ha. We did a bible school at the end of the day when school got out. Monday we did bible school for the upper primary students, class 4 - class 8. We taught them some songs, played some games, did a craft, and a lesson. Tuesday we did the same thing except the bible school was with the lower primary kids this time. Class 1 - class 3. Oh, ha, monday after bible school was over it started pouring down rain outside! If you know anyting about africa and this slum...its very dry and lots of dirt...so when it rains it gets very muddy!! So, we left real fast. Also, between 5pm-6pm it is called the Human Jam. Everyone is coming home from work, and so there are TONS of people walking through the slum. We wanted to get out too before the Human Jam happened. So we marched out of the slum in the pouring rain. We were soaked to the bone! and muddy! I thought it was awesome though! ha. Over all our time at the Kibera school was so fun. Oh, yesterday as we were about to leave my class asked Katelyn and I how old we were. I told them I was 21 and she was 22. Well, they were very suprised because they thought that kate was my mom or something...and that i looked 12. Ok, random and weird. Oh well..ha. Im not to disapointed about it, ha...ive just never been told I look 12.
Today we went with Wendy and Peter again to Carton City (another small slum) to there small feeding program. Betsye and I went with Peter to a school. We took about a 30 minute walk through this slum to a primary school. We had a little girl with us named, Mamshi. She was about 4 years old. We were going to the school to talk to the principle and find out why she hadn't been in school for about a week. Mamshi is an orphan. Her parents died and she lives with her aunt. Her aunt was giving different stories to peter why she wasn't in school...so he just wanted to get it straight. The school was very organized and nice. I was impressed, especially for this area. The head teacher at the school gave us a tour. We visited all the class rooms. We went into the Nursery class for slow learners. Nursery class is like preschool. I didn't think they looked or acted like they were slow learners. We walked into the room and all the kids just got really really excited! This one kid in the back of the room waved at us for like 10 minutes. They all wanted to show us the work they had been doing. They were betsye and I's favorite class of all time! they were so fun. Everytime we passed by the classroom after that they were all standing at the window waving at us! ha..it was so cute. Then we walked back to Carton City. I carried Mamshi the whole way. Mamshi kept asking her aunt if she could come home with me! ah :( I would LOVE to take her home with me! We went back and played with the kids, and then they ate their lunch.
There was this kid Dennis, who is 8, who comes to the feeding program. His mom died last night of HIV/Aids. He was gonna hang out with peter and wendy all day. He was crying this morning when he first came...it was very sad and heart breaking to watch. It got us thinking. We could have been born anywhere to any family in any situation...but we were born into our families for a reason. It just goes to show how big God's grace and love is. It also makes you wonder, why was I born into a great family, home, and situation...but Dennis wasn't? Why did God choose to give us this great life and Dennis such a hard one? We don't deserve it anymore than he does...anyways...thoughts...from Fink and Betsye.
We went to the movie theater last night and saw Transformes..that was cool! it was a taste of home.

Tomorrow we go on a real SAFARI!!!