Safari Njema! (A Great Trip!)

After much anticipation, this past Monday evening the Harbour Team arrived. It has been such a blessing having them here and serving along side them. here is a picture from just before we left for Safari with the team and some other good friends of ours.

From left to right (top) - Muthiri, Eddie, Kathy, Njenga, Jeff, Jackson and Frank. (bottom) Dave, Ryan and Cam. (missing) Taryn - she was taking the picture ... as usual!

On Tuesday morning we began our journey to Masaai Mara (the Serengeti) for a safari. It was a seven hour drive to the National Park through beautiful and diverse landscapes that ranged from lush mountains to dry plains. We stayed at a camp outside the reserve since all the lodges inside are priced for Bill Gates and Donald Trump. But, we had a lovely camp site fitted with industrial tents, comfortable beds and great meals. On the first night, we went out for a sunset safari where we saw gazels, warthogs, and a rare Black Rhino! The next day we were in the park for the entire day and saw an amazing amount of animals - herds of giraffes (some of which were fighting), lions, a herd of elephants, dueling gazels, buffalo, hippos, alligators and tons of birds. Some of the team saw a lion during our walk to see the alligators - the (armed) guide said they were very lucky to see that! Between the 8 of us, we have lots of pictures ... we will post more later if we can. One thing of note: that lion below was nearly right beside us!!








One highlight of the trip was the Masaai women who tried to sell us souvenieres through our bus windows .. poor Frank fell victim a number of times (above), but we made sure he bartered a good deal :-)

Since we've been back to PACE, the team has been quite busy. We held a youth retreat (Jeff, Kathy, Cam, Eddie, Taryn and Ryan) starting Friday night and all day Saturday while Frank and dave worked on helping to build a new chicken coupe (which they finished up in under two days!). On Friday, Cam and Eddie ran a 2-hour gym class for the lower grades of the academy, and they also got the chance to accompany Irungu on a water run ... which turned into three or four water runs. All in all, to fill the PACE water tanks took slightly over three hours. It will be an amazing blessing once PACE has a well to draw water from instead of these trips to the river.

On Sunday the team will be preaching at 6 different churches and then will be helping with a family day event at the AIC church in town. Still ahead this coming week is time at pace, visits to orphanages, and possibly another trip to Maralal - we'll keep you posted :)

Well, this will about do it for this post - sorry for the brevity. We're pretty tired after a few long and busy days, but we promise to write more and post more pictures soon.