August 24th, 2009

Pictures Posted

In the last article I shared briefly about our break at the coast. I've just uploaded a few pictures for those who are interested. Look in the "Time Off!" category. (This is for the benefit of those who tell us we work entirely too hard and don't get enough time away to rest...!)

Also, my (Bob's) work permit expires on Friday this week. Although there is a 2-week grace period allowed, we have decided to apply for an extension on our visas while awaiting for my new work permit to be granted. Hope and Josiah are on Dependent's Passes, which are both pegged to my work permit. We are hoping to have our visa extensions stamped in our passports before Friday.

Tonight starting at 6pm, Kenya begins it's Census exercise, which is expected to take a week. For the sake of the Census, the President has declared tomorrow to be a public holiday. This means the hospital will be working on a skeleton staff tomorrow.

Not everyone is happy about the census. There are still tens of thousands of internally-displaced people (IDPs) living in camps since the post-election violence drove them from their homes and communities. Since the census is conducted in a manner that identifies people with communities, they fear that this census will solidify that they no longer belong to their "home" communities. They fear becoming officially a people who don't belong anywhere.

For those who were praying for my AIDS lectures at St. Paul's University, your prayers were answered and everything went very well. I had been scheduled on Wednesday but due to the power outage scheduled that day I was rescheduled to Thursday. Afterward I was informed that the student comments were highly enthusiastic. Thank you for praying. I enjoy mixing with the students at St. Paul's, and feel privileged to be able to participate in preparing up-and-coming church leaders to have effective community-focused AIDS-related ministries.