Day 9 - Kijabe

Today we headed up the mountain to Kijabe to visit with the Mendonsas and take a tour of Rift Valley Academy, a missionary school that serves missionaries’ children from all over Africa.

First of all, it was drizzling the entire day, so the roads were slick. Remember, where we were the roads were dirt the whole way. This turned into mud. This was some of the most harrowing driving I experienced in Kenya. We weren’t going fast, but the road conditions and the steep drop offs made up for it. We had to completely trust John and Elisha, our drivers. At one point, we reached a hill that was just too steep to go up in a straight line. I’m convinced what happened next was intentional. John started off traveling up the incline at an angle, made a sharp turn to the right and broke the rear tires loose. Then he made a sharp turn to the left to swing the rear end around to the right, all while moving forward and up the hill. Then he did it one more time. He put the van into a controlled fish tail to get up the hill. I felt pretty comfortable in the van after that. We were with a pro.

We arrived at the Mendonsas around 11:00 and hung out for a couple hours waiting for the weather to let up a bit. We got to spend time talking about Naomi’s Village and some of the children’s stories. I had completely forgotten during the course of the week that these kids come from pasts more horrible than I can imagine. Seriously. If you think you’ve had a tough shake in life, listen to some of their stories and talk to me. You’ve had it easy in comparison. The point is, despite what they’ve been through, they’re normal kids. They laugh and cry and play just like any other kid. They obey and disobey, succeed and struggle like any other student I’ve had. I’m sure behind the scenes there’s a lot of junk they’re working through with care staff and counselors. But in my interactions with them, there isn’t a huge difference between them and any other American kid I know. The one difference I noticed was they were generally more grateful.

One of the things that left the biggest impact on me was just listening to Bob and Julie talk about Naomi’s Village. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone as passionate as these two. Surely, they’ve given these spiels to countless others, but when they were talking to us it was like we were the first people they were telling. Conversations with them were some of the most convicting times. The general challenge was this: If you feel the Lord pressing on your heart to do something, do it. Don’t pray for the Lord to send someone else to work out his calling for your life. Speaking specifically to the situation in Kenya, they said if we feel called to do something we can’t just throw money at it and hope it changes. We need to do the leg work ourselves. I don’t know if the Lord has specifically called me to Kenya (but who knows?), however hearing this convicted me of a lot of laziness in my own life and a general unwillingness to step out of what’s comfortable.

We headed up to Rift Valley Academy (RVA) to tour the grounds. I wish I could move here. It was the most beautiful location for a school that I’ve seen. Everything was maintained so well and the facilities were incredible. I won’t waste much time describing it here, but it was awesome. And the cornerstone for the original school building was laid by Teddy Roosevelt!

After touring the school, we did a little shopping. Then we headed back down the mountain.

TOMORROW: One of the best, longest lunches I've ever had