First day of construction at Gituamba

We arrived at our home base for the next 9 days, Tumaini Conference Center in Nakuru after a four hour ride from Nairobi, arriving after dark but in time to get our room assignments and have a late dinner. We followed up with a team meeting to give us an opportunity to share and decompress from a day of mixed emotions. The experience of Deep Sea slum is one you always wrestle with, I think, no matter how often you go there. I always come away realizing how blessed I am and not really understanding how and why God chose to bless me so. I realize how much of an obligation comes with that blessing. "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

Luke 12:48 NIV. This trip to Kenya each summer is a way for me to re-center my focus on what's important in life and how I can in some small way give back to show my appreciation. 

Today, Wednesday, we went to the IDP community of Gituamba where we've spent so much time prior years doing construction. What a blessing it was to see the success of the Jeanette Keyton Conely Memorial Primary School. We were first there in 2013, when we worked on other projects in the community and used the old barn as a meeting place and haven from the rain. The school was barely a vision then is the plans of SWOK. We constructed footers and walls in the barn in 2014, getting the classrooms roughed in. The school was designed for 120 students but opened in January 2016 with 540!  I'll post a mix of pictures from today as well as photos from our earlier teams working there. Today, we did steel framing for pouring concrete floors on a new building that will be a dining hall. The steel frame structure as erected by a previous team. A portion of our group spent a lot of time with the children in their school activities and playing with kids, making balloons for them, playing guitar and singing with them, etc. Others painted lots of steel window and door frames in preparation for them to have plexiglass installed.  Others unloaded three giant truckloads and moved tons and tons of stone as the base for the new concrete. Late in the day, we were able to get the first section of concrete placed and finished smooth. It was a long tiring day. It's 7:00 now and we're part way through our long drive back. I think everyone will sleep well tonight!