Wednesday July 11th 2018 (Mud Hut Building)

          Today the team (except Dr. Brady) went to build a mud hut for a widow in a relatively near by village. We headed out around 10:30, which was about forty minutes later than scheduled due to our driver not showing up. However, we still made it on time and had a great experience.

          The mud hut that we built was organized by a program called the Tabitha Ministries. We met with the head of Tabitha Ministries on Sunday. The woman who started Tabitha Ministries, Linda, started the program about 15 years ago with one Kenyan woman named Paris. The ministry started as a Bible Study with just a small group of woman here in Tenwek led by Linda. As time went on more and more people joined and Linda organized a way to give out bibles to women in the Bible Study. Eventually they grew to a huge program with many different Bible Studies all around the area all in the same large network of Tabitha Ministries. They eventually began to build houses for single women or women whose husbands were alcoholics. That grew into a successful ministry and is now one of the main things Linda and Paris do (with the help of the other women who are very involved). 

          It was a rocky fortyish minute ride to the small village. There the villagers had about half the frame of the hut done and finished the rest of the frame as we fixed the water and dirt and applied it to  the part of the hut where the frame was done. Mud got everywhere, truly everywhere. After we completely finished it (or at least the part we were doing, because it is about a one month process), one villager prayed over the house and we went to wash off in a nearby creek. After washing we went  to another villager's house and ate lunch (rice, beans, and chai tea). The people here are so hospitable and friendly. It amazes me, one would never find this kind of hospitality in the United States. People who truly have nothing invite us in their homes and feed us a filling meal with a drink. They are so content and happy with what they have and the thought of having WiFi, TVs, and the iPhone X is so foreign to them they do not even worry about it. They do not think of dinner as a filet with a house salad and fully loaded baked potato. They are content with rice and beans.  It makes one think about the old saying - less is more. Depending on who you ask that saying very well may be true.

          After eating we prayed again in Swahili or Kipsigis so I had no idea what was going on but I felt like I was in an all Black southern church because after every phrase during the prayer all the tribal women were going "mmmmmm" in unison to show their support of what the prayer had just said. 

          We left the village and went to dinner back at Tenwek. We are beginning to pack and gather our luggage so we can leave Tenwek tomorrow and head out to the safari headquarters. We have had a great time here in Tenwek and learned a lot about medicine, culture, and more importantly, Jesus Christ and missions.

Jackson