Busy Week

Hey all! It's been a busy week, so I haven't posted. Ashley started school and found what 5th grade homework is like in an MK (missionary kid) school. Lots of it! She starts doing it when she gets home, takes a break for dinner, and does it until she drops into bed at 8:30. On Friday, I had to get her up early to finish! She's met a few friends, but hasn't clicked with anyone yet. Her teacher, Miss Porcieaux (Por see oh), is a young woman from Louisianna. The real delight for us is the hot lunch program. On it are things like beef curry, chapati (a type of tortilla), braised carrots and ice cream. Another is meat samosas, sweet corn, tomato/egg/cucumber salad with dressing on the side, and yogurt. All this for $2.70 a day. Good deal, eh? They eat outside in a banda (open air structure with a grass roof).

Ashley had to write a pen pal letter to someone back in the States. I'm going to copy what she's got started of it (verbatim) here to give you an idea of her perspective of Kenya.

My name is Ashley Vigil. I'm 10 years old and born in Colorado. I've lived in Kenya for about 2 weeks. I loke alot about Kenya it's not cold here all the time you see camillions alot and it's verry warm here.

Yes, we're working on spelling and run on sentences! :) Jeff & I had more orientations this week. They've been waiting to put in my work visa application in the hopes that SIM's "status" would change. SIM has been registered as a foreign business, but the visas that come through that are really expensive, so they re-applied to change to a "society", aka religious organization, and the visas through that are much less expensive. That hasn't come through yet, so they are going to file
my application next week. I can't officially work in the office until I have a business visa, so I just spent time sitting in on meetings and digging around on the server and in the accounting package trying to get my bearings. Jeff's been busy getting his
briefings on the ministry areas he's going to be involved in as well as spending a lot of time in Rosetta Stone Kiswahili. He gets lot of opportunity to practice with the nationals and they are very willing to help him. He left this morning for Malindi, a city on the coast. Here's a link to a map if you want to look.
http://www.blissites.com/kenya/map.html

He said it's really hot and humid there and the place he's staying is pretty
basic compared to Nairobi. A bus ride would have taken 12 hours, so they opted
to fly. I'm glad, since his knee has been acting up lately. I think a 12 hour
bus ride would have put him in a lot of pain. Please pray for that to settle
down and for him to get in a lot of practice with Kiswahili while he's there.
They don't speak much English in that part of Kenya, but I think the immersion
will do him good! He went with a new friend who's also involved in the same ministry. The two of them are a lot alike!

We got our new curtains up, but we still don't have our furniture. We've been sitting on someone's patio furniture that they loaned us until ours came in. We did get a call from the company making it, though. They didn't have enough fabric to do the couch..only the pillows. So, we had to pick a different color. I opted for a lighter one, but I'm really hoping that wasn't a bad choice. The dirt here is red and really hard to get out of cloths!

Here on the compound, once a month, we have a vendor who comes with fresh strawberries and English muffins, and another who comes with cheese and yogurt.
Our director buys coffee direct from Java House at a discount and resells it for
that discount. He also makes runs into town for soda. So, today I am eating gouda
cheese and strawberries and drinking coke!:) The favorite soda flavor amongst my
two is Fanta's Black Currant. It actually is really good. I made some strawberry jam with half the strawberries. Took me all day, but it turned out quite tasty. The
strawberries are smaller than at home, and more tart, but they make for good jam!

Last thing on this blow by blow, is that we hired Violet as our house help. She's a little older than I am and comes in every afternoon. She's a Christian and has raised four children. Her youngest is still in high school. She's wonderful! She made chapati and tortillas for us, prepped all the strawberries (here you have to put all your fruit and veggies in bleach water to kill the bacteria on everything), did laundry, ironed yesterdays laundry, peeled and sliced potatoes for scalloped potatoes last night and rocked with me to Third Day and some South African Gospel music! Please pray for her, however, as she's got diabetes that isn't well managed and is living with her brother and his family right now.

Sorry this is a long litany of stuff, but I wanted to catch you all up on what's happening. I'll blog again about my reflections on Kenya in another post. Kwaheri
(good bye!) for now.