Kenya: Week 5... Still Going Strong!

The team & I with Pastor Elijah at Recovery Community Centre.

We traveled 90 km northwest of Nairobi to a town called Naivasha. Naivasha is situated on the shores of Lake Naivasha which is a fresh water lake in the Great Rift Valley. The main economic activity in Naivasha is tourism and horticulture with Naivasha alone accounting for about 50% of fresh flowers in European markets.

Wildlife is one of the biggest attractions to tourist in Naivasha . Wild animals go about their business uninterrupted by the curious groups of tourists interfering with their natural habitat.

It is here at the Community Recovery Centre that the team spent the 5^th week. The centre was started 5 years ago by an Africa Inland Church (AIC) pastor called Elijah to cater to the orphans in the area and empower the local people through community based programs. The centre has 30 orphans and all are attending local primary schools. Community recovery centre is also running a very successful program of giving out sheep to the very poor people and after the sheep gives birth to the first and second born they return the two to the centre and own the sheep. The young ones are passed to other need people and so the cycle continues.

The first activity we took was to renovate some houses for keeping chickens. Another group had bought 300 chicks for the centre so that the children can have their own eggs and chicken meat. In order to reach out to the community, we paid visits to some of the homes where the children come from. We helped them clean the compounds, do household work, milk cows as well as giving them gifts. We also spent a day with kids of a neighboring school where the orphans also go to school. Some of the compounds were completely filled with cow dung and it was joy as we all joined in clean up exercise.

Olivia helps me present a gift.

Shera helps to milk a cow at one of the homesteads.

Among the properties donors have helped Community recovery centre get is a five acre farm and in order to improve the environment we planted 130 trees in the farm which already has some corn growing courtesy of another supporter.

Olivia, Courtney, & Elijah planting trees on the farm.

Cleaning up one of the homesteads.

After a long week at the centre the team resided for a three day vacation in one of the hotels in Naivasha. It was a time to relax and evaluate our relationship with God and at the end I fed the team spiritually with some powerful verses from the book of Micah. We also spent a whole day watching wildlife at Lake Nakuru national park which is another 80 kms from Naivasha. It was a great moment for some of the team members to see a lion three metres away in their natural habitats.

Please continue praying for us.

God bless you.

Eugenio