Archive for August, 2007
international preacher – pastor robert
well yesterday i preached my first 2 sermons. In a small remote village in the middle of the bush. we where in a mud hut church. It was good. I think i did ok but who knows. Luckily its not all down to me.
today we are back in kitale about to head off to another town to do more stuff.
having a goodish times, there are moments of ‘i want to go home’ but then there is good moments too.
wearing suits all the time sucks bad. and we went almost 2 days without coke!
anyway i must dash, hopefully tom writes more than me and you can just read his blog
the last few days
Tom and I arrived in Kenya on friday night. We where greeted at teh airport by pastor albert and pastor David. They took us to the ymca for the night.
the next day we spent 12 hours travvelling 400 km in cramped packed out vans along the dodgiest roads ever. We eventually arrived in Kitale where tom and I where taken to the mid africa hotel.
A lovey little hotel where we had to share a double bed. Not just any bed but a bed with a matress thta was too big for it and a very uncomfortable sleep was had by all. Tom is no jenny.
yesterdxay we went to Pastor Alberts church and enjoyed the service although the preaching was very very loud and not all that bibilically sound. It seems most of the congregation didnt enjoy the preaching either but they have to respect their pastor.
after church we went to lunch in Alberts house, i spent the whole time worrying that the food was going to kill me. I did feel a bit dodgy afterwards but not too bad. I got to use the dirtiest pit latrine i have ever seen. When i was in Uganda in 01 i used a few pit latrines but they where really clean and well maintained even in remote villages. this one was gross there was poo and wee everywhere and thousands of flies on the walls.
after that we went back to the church for a ‘musical extravoganza’ it was fun lots of singing and dancing all put through the PA and a ridiculous noise level.
There is quite a hirachy in kenya churches the pastors and elders sit in the front row and have a table in front of them that has lots of different soft drinks on it. So every where we go tom and i are given coke and fanta. its a little uncomfortable its like we are sitting in a corporate box at a sporting event. It makes it a bit hard to relate to people aswell there doesnt seem to be a lot of relationship building between church leaders and the congregation its all about preaching the word.
after 3 nights of not very good sleep i’m feeling quite weary, today we are travelling to some village about an hour away from Kitale, we will be spending a few days there preaching at a youth conference, open air meetings and revival meetings. As far as we can tell i’m not doing any preaching until tomorrow.
Africa is a funny place when it comes to time, we are spending several hours each day just sitting around either waiting for something like transport or a person or we are waiting for someone to make a descision. Tom and i are finding it a bit of a struggle not having much time to ourselves just to relax and unpack the day a bit. But you get that.
Kenyan people are very very hospitable and its very hard to make it look like you are trying all the food you are given. I’m being quite cautios as ?Africa has not been kind to my insides in the past. Tom is more relaxed about what he eats.
If you are the praying type maybe here are some things you could pray for.
continued safety as we travel,
health that we can stay strong and healthy
energy as we are both quite weary.
That God will speak through us as we share with people during our talks
that we will be able to engage with people
that peoples hearts will be open to recieve the word.
All in all everything is going well, apart from the feeling of seedyness and homesickness and many conversations between tom and i which go a little something like this “what the hell are we doing here” “I dont know”.
its a very pretty country kenya. hopefully i can put some photos up in the next few days but i dont think internet access will be available.
i miss my wife.
bye bye dubai
Sitting in an internet cafe in dubai airport.
They love there lines in dubia you have to line up for everything.
soonish we will head to our gate and fly away to Kenya. Thats a bit weird we are going to kenya.
Dubai was a lot of fun, I’d really like to come back and spend more time here. I reckon 2 weeks would be good tom said he’s get bored, but hes just a boring person and i wouldnt invite him anyway.
this could be my last blog post for a while depending on internet availability in Kitale Kenya.
hopefuly there is internet.
Wild
Turns out the water that was leaking all over the kitchen was some air conditioning overflow thing.
This morning housekeeping came in and cleaned our room from top to bottom. I think we managed to amuse the two ladies quite a lot. Tom also left his shower curtain on the floor for some reason i think that puzzled them a little.
We headed to ‘wil wadi’ today. A water park kind of like wet and wild only different. It has uphill waterslides. I had a lot of fun, it was nice to chill out in water. there was a mixture of crap sections of slides and good slides.
We would have taken lots of photos but it was so humid their that even having my camera in a backpack the lens was fogged up.
here is us outside the water park.
and here is the burj al arab, the fancy shmancy 7 star hotel. you cant get close to it, lots of security.
then after spending most of the day at the water park we headed to ‘the mall of the emirates’ its the worlds 23rd biggest shopping mall.
It was massive, it even has a 400m indoor ski slope inside it.
we walked around, spent some money in an arcade game place. We dorve the coolest car racing simulater ever.ate some food.
Yesterday we went to the biggest supermarket we had ever seen. well today we found a new one that was even bigger. It had 90 Isles!!! plus a home entertainment section, a clothes section, and different fresh foos sections all not included in the 90 isles.
we bought toilet paper.
now we are back in the apartment, tired and weak. tomorrow we have the morning ti fill in then its off on another plane, kenya bound.
Amen
dub day 2
its 7 am and i’m up and ready for another dubai day.
I heard a dripping noise coming from our kitchen so i went to turn the tap off tighter but as i entered the kitchen the tap was off. The dripping noise is coming from the ceiling in the kitchen, maybe the person upstairs is hosing down his rug in the his lounge room.
think i might go tell reception.
64 reasons to live in dubai
A buddy is $2(UED) which is 64cents (AU)
yeah baby.
Dubai, what a hottie!
After 14 hours of sitting on a plane we arrived in Dubai airport just after 5am local time.
We went through customs, got our bags and then got ripped off by a dodgy taxi service. Ohwell we didnt mind all that much.
Our apartment is a bit of a way out of the city but thats ok. It has 2 bedrroms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room.
this is the view from my balcony
We had a quick nap well mine turned into 2 hours then headed into ‘city central’ shopping centre and straight to the foodcourt.
Becasue we are overseas we wanted to take in a bit of the culture and do things we couldnt do at home. So it was foodcourt followed by a movie (Die Hard 4.0). It was an ok film I didnt think it was amazing. 4/7
after the movie we wandered around then went to the biggest supermarket i have ever seen. It was amazing, they even had tim tams imported from aus.
Now we are back at the apartment, tom exploded out his rear and i’m on the internet.
good on us.
