One week in...

Well it's after midnight here, everyone in the house is in bed, and here I am up late blogging, I will pay for this in the morning!! Tomorrow we are going to visit the Masaii Tribe in their village, I have been looking forward to this for a while now! Well, this has been such an amazing time. It's more than I ever thought it to be. Sad to say, Africa is one place I never thought I would go, and never had a desire too, but wow has that changed. The moment I walked off the plane it felt so comfortable. Really comfortable. I'm extremely blessed, grateful and honored to have this opportunity to be here in East Africa and I pray the Lord will help me to take in everything He desires for me to.

These are pictures of "Emmanual Center." Emmanual Center was started by the FIRE International team, which is Mary's missions team here. It started with 3 boys and now has about 25. These boys are orphans, come from extremely horrible circumstances, many found on the side of the street homeless, beaten....and picked up, brought to Emmanual Center where they are loved, cared for, taught the ways of the Lord, tutored and placed in school and so much more. The girl in the green in the picture with Lesli, Gaudy, works there everyday mentoring these boys. They are all now teenagers and some of moved on and are now working and living a few houses down from the center learning to live on their own. Here is a picture our soccer game, yes "our"....Lesli and I played with them in our flip flops.....OUCH!!! :-) In the picture of myself, Gaudy, and Lesli, you will see a chicken coupe behind. They raise chickens and then kill them for food. (Really is a wake up call to how we have our food so available).

This is the Emmanual Center.

I posted a picture of these guys opening the gate because I wanted to show you that the majority of people that live here that are not Tanzanian have a guy that opens the gate each time you enter and leave, also guards to watch over your house at night.

I hope to get a video posted on this site!!! We all got out of the car, and as we started walking to our destination, we noticed that mom was already sitting and playing drums with these guys!! Haha! She knows no stranger! She was SO cute, and is so cute! I love watching her here!


As you can see I am painting...if you ever go to this restaurant in Arusha, count the 4th brick from the walkway, and that's the one I helped paint!! Haha, I was hoping to not get this guy in trouble when I asked if I could paint!! :-)

This is Rafa, he is the worship leader at the church. Noteworthy Ministry, (a ministry out of Dallas that teams up with Community Renewal International in Shreveport), sent two guitars w/me to leave here in Africa. Sunday after church we had Rafa come to the house and we gave him one....he was so grateful. His words were, (which hopefully I will post on here), were, "I have been praying for a guitar, I was going to save my money once I got a job and buy one!" He has an AMAZING voice and plays guitar beautifully, what a blessing to be able to give him one.

At church on Sunday, right when we walked to our seats, this little girl came and found mom, as if she had known her for years, and got up in her lap and stayed there for a long time. Come to find out, she's one of the girls from the orphanage here. At church we three went into kids church and sang some songs with the kids, half of the kids in there were orphans. Something really special was we taught them the song, "Hallelu Hallelu Hallelu Hallelujah...Praise Ye The Lord." What's so special is that today we went to an orphange called Kili Kids and as we stepped out of our cars, we heard about 5 sweet, beautiful kids start singing with excitement "Hallelu Hallelu Hallelu Hallelujah...Praise Ye The Lord!!!" It was so sweet, so we had a good time running around the yard singing and doing motions to that song!

We met this family at the falls, they are a sweet christian family from Tanzania!

What a beautiful waterfall....it was FREEZING COLD water, and Peter, Mary and I got in and climbed behind the falls up the rocks, it was SO much fun!

Well these are a few more pictures to let you see all that we've been blessed to do! Thank you for everyone that has been praying for our safety, health and God's purposes to be accomplished. Your prayers are so very important to this trip.


My funny, but True quote for the week:

"What's more safe, putting mascara on while driving in the US, or putting mascara on while riding as a passenger in Tanzania??!!" :-)

"MAY THE LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU, AND MAKE HIS FACE TO SHINE UPON YOU!!"