Begining of my Africa updates

Life has been full of ups and downs lately. Today as I feel somewhat down I am looking at the ups. This brings me to finally blogging about Africa. Sorry it has taken about a month to write about it. Writing and talking about Africa is such an emotional experience. I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to go on this mission trip. We stayed at a hotel. That was nice considering what we thought we would be staying in. I shared a room with wonderful girls LaReina and Natalie. We were the young ones of the group. We arrived Late on Friday and went right to bed as our last flight was the longest flight and packed. We had to sit for 1.5 hours while waiting for those with connecting flights. On top of all that the ground AC was not working so it was super hot and there was not air circulation. We were exhausted. When sleeping you had to have a mosquito net over you, which was very claustrophobic and annoying when you had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Saturday morning we woke up had a delicious breakfast at the hotel (All the food was pretty good, by the end I was sick of eggs and rice thoughJ). After breakfast we went over to the main school Pingani that also held the main operations of Missions of Hope International. On our way to Pingani we were hit almost immediately with the sad reality of what is going on in Africa. By the side of the road was a child, maybe junior high sniffing glue. In Africa this would be there form of heroin. Many of these kids are street kids who sniff glue to try and forget the misfortune they live in. When we got to Pingani we had an orientation meeting over what missions of hope does and what they are planning in the future. After the orientation we took a walk through the pingani slum. All of the slums run along the Mathare River. It was so devastating to see. There was garbage everywhere. All the kids wanted to hold your hand and have you take their picture. They would say “How are you?” Over and over again as that was all they knew. It was a real eye-opener. The houses are so close together and most were smaller than my bedroom. We were able to go into a ladies home and talk to her. Her house was decorated with old newspaper and wrapping paper. Raphael one of the social workers who was giving the tour shared that her house was decorated because she was a Christian. They did this to show that the love Jesus and our thankful for all he has given them. There was so much to take in and it was only the first day. That afternoon when we got back we went shopping in which I totally got ripped off because I do not barder well at all. Well that was only the first day in Africa. I will try and blog again tomorrow more of what we did. I am going to try and blog each day until I am done detailing my trip. I will also add some pictures soon.