Mimi ningependa sema na wewe!
"I would like to talk with you", friend who's reading this email. Just a bit of swahili for you there, the acquisition of which has occupied Nick and I about 10% of the time. It has been encouraging for me to see that this language learning is not as overwhelming as it has sometimes felt in the past. Also, it has been a sweet ride learning with Nick, who is even more stoked than I am to learn swahili. Speaking of Nick, he just shot all of the kids here below grade 9... with a camera! Lord willing we will be able to post more pictures on my blog this time (www.markdawsoninafrica.blogspot.com) and send some to other supporters. Our time here has been FULL! Since my last email we have...
- Riden down the side of the Rift Valley in a car.
- Stopped by IDP camps (Internally Displaced Persons, still refugees after the December 2007 elections!!)
- Riden mountain bikes across the plains with antelope, buffaloe, warthogs, and tigers (jk about the tigers).
- Visited a house-church-ish gathering in Kenya
- Met another Kenyan man who respectably runs a small orphanage
- Recovered my lost large bag (woohoo for my pepper grinder!)
- Met most of AMCC's Board members
- Heard beautiful singing by the kids at AMCC
- Met the local chief, Member of Parliament, and two other government somebodies.
- Ridden in a mutatu (which is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper than a taxi!!)
- Taken bucket showers (here at AMCC they boil the water beforehand, so it's hot. :-)
- Walked 30 min through beautifully planted and rolling hills to the mutatu stop.
- Talked with John for at least 4 hours.
- Been asked for money by strangers.
- Heard some cool stories about God's moving here.
- Put up our mosquito net.
- Joined with 40 kids in (what will become a regular) hour-long prayer meeting before bed.
- Learned more swahili
- Fed birds with worms which we held on our tongues.
- Gotten calls from dear friends abroad (congrats to David Okada, first caller).
- Felt confirmation and peace about God's leading us here.
- Eaten rice and beans (lunch), rice and beef (lunch and dinner yesterday) , and two bananas (breakfast)
- I've enjoyed chai a lot, but the caffeine and sugar doesn't go so well with Nick's body.

Praise God for all of these things! He has taken wonderful care of Nick and I, and we have been very encouraged by some of the things that we have seen here thus far (good relationships with some neighbors in the community, with government officials, and wonderful conversation with John and the other staff here at AMCC, Nancy the Teacher, "teacher Nancy").
Thank you so much for your prayers for Nick and I! Our meeting and first day here at AMCC has been very nice. And my bag has been found, ptl. Neither Nick nor I have gotten sick, and we both have been in pretty good spirits throughout our journey thusfar.

Please pray for:
- Wisdom in relationships here, between ourselves, AMCC, and others.
- Regular and healthy food for the children at AMCC.
- God to raise up Kenyan Partners for AMCC- keep praying for this! We have been very encouraged by some seeds we're seen since we arrived! May the seeds become sequioas!
- John's neck and back to be healed and not in pain anymore.
- Wisdom for all in leadership at AMCC (John, board members, teacher Nancy, Nick and myself)
- God to raise up others to visit AMCC while we are here. We have recently received news that some who were hoping/planning to come may not be able to. :-(

Thank you so much for your prayers and emails and encouragement!! They mean a whole lot to us! We're currently without running water and electricity, and it is about an hour's journey (walking and riding a mutatu) to get to the internet cafe. We've been fed plenty, though without as much variation as would be normal in an american home. We are happy and well and enjoying our time here. "Slowly by slowly" friendships will arise, our eyes will be opened, and our tongues will learn swahili- we are feeling patient. ;-)

Also in an attempt to make my emails a bit shorter, I'll be posting all of my detail-ridden stories as a PS to these emails. So you don't have to read them! Also, I'm planning on posting other stuff on my blog, which now has 5 great pictures from my time in Kenya on it!!

Most sinceriously,
Mark, on behalf of Nick and myself.

P.S. Cool story so far...
Our first day at AMCC was AWESOME. Nick and I share a room at the orphanage with the director, John Muhika. Nick sleeps in a bed, John sleeps in a mattress on the floor because it's better for his back, and I sleep under Nick's bed. It's pretty tight (i.e. I can't roll over on my side without a bit of maneuvering).
Anyway, my day started when I was woken up by a bunch of kids... singing... at 4:45 a.m.
The kids at AMCC all gather for a time of singing and prayer twice a day. Waaaay early in the morning (since a lot of them have to be at school at 6:30) and before dinner for about an hour. It's pretty inspiring and cool, especially to see them all dancing and singing, and 40 year old John gingerly dancing right with them.
Since Nick and I were feeling like it, we slept in quite a bit. By the time we woke up all the kids were gone to school, so we had breakfast (2 bananas and a cup of delicious chai!), took warm bucket baths, and got dressed to go meet our local member of parliament! John told us to make sure that we weren't late, but we left about 5 minutes late anyway (c'mon, it's the 2/3'rds world!) and started our beautiful walk. It goes past the local private secondary school (where 13 kids now go to school thanks to money that people donated!) and the public primary school (which has teacher student ratios such as 1:60), past a bunch of coffee plans, down a beautiful hillside, across a sweet bridge which has more gap than planks, and then up the deep red dirt hillside to the local butchery- were we charge our cell phones!
So there's no electricity at AMCC, or running water. All of the water the kids get out of a bore hole that a gracious local woman allows us access to (I think for free, which is really nice), and everything gets cooked over a fire. Everyone in Kenya (probably the whole of Africa) has a cell phone now, whether or not they have electricity. Since they're so vital to life though, people get creative. AMCC's solution for what to do is pretty cool: they have an extra cell phone or two, and they always keep one charging with their friend at the butchery 25 minutes away. So when one gets low they just go to the butchery, grab the newly charged one, switch out the sim card (which is home to the specific phone number and contact list, etc...) and leave the dead phone for charging- pretty cool! I've already gotten to take advantage of this cool system, though I must admit that I'm partial to the phone I bought in Zambia (mostly because my sweet girlfriend put a little personal message on it when it turns on. :-)
So we go to the butchery, I switch out my sim card, and then walk to the road to board a matatu which will take us to the M.P. For those of you who haven't yet chilled in East Africa, a matatu is the main form of public transportation around here. They're cheap, plentiful, and all shaped like the 80's style toyota vans that my family got when I was in elementary school (the cockroach, it was affectionately called ). I like matatu's a lot. They're slower than taking my own car, and 95% of the time there's at least one more person in it than would be legal in the states, but they're just so cheap and fun and I just love 'em! They've got the same set up in Ukraine and Russia, which is where I first fell in love with public transport. We get in the matatu and ride to the local gov't office. Upon arrival we get told that we're late (which we were, but I figured it wouldn't be a big deal), and subsequently join the crowd of waiters outside, where various people try to strike up conversation (about half of them would like us to give them some money for something... we declined)
The M.P. was a big shot dude. Really nice though, so that was pretty cool. John does seem to have good relationships with a lot of people in local gov't, which is good I think? After meeting Mr. Peter Kenneth (shout out to my brother Ken, the only other person I know with the name Kenneth) we went across the parking lot and met another high-up dude, who was wearing a sweet purple shirt and assured us, like everyone else that we met in the gov't, that we were most welcome in Kenya. The M.P. told us that if anybody gave us trouble then we should call him. So I will. I've got his number.
After those meetings we rode back with another Board member from AMCC (who thankfully got Nick and I some clean water!) and spent the rest of the afternoon talking with John. Conversations with him have been really nice. In his words he seems to be so honest and real. He says that he often encounters people in the gov't who want bribes, but since he doesn't give them stuff goes a lot slower for him. That makes me frustrated and also very happy at the same time. Talking with John can be really inspiring for me, especially when I consider the reality that he has been scraping out life for these kids for a few years now.
Nick took new pictures of all of the kids at AMCC, which we'll be post, Lord willing, sometime in the next month. Our internet is slower than I anticipated, so sending pics might take a while. I took some nice pics of outside, journaled some, and learned some more swahili. Oh, and the rope (which holds the bucket that gets water) broke in the afternoon, so we were kinda low on water. Oh, Lord help us all.
After the evening prayer/singing session (which I really enjoy!!) we "took" rice and beans for dinner- then we started study time! All the kids got out a book to read from school and we just read in silence for about an hour. Nick and I joined in, reading swahili stuff. John said that he's going to assign two of the kids to help teach us swahili when we get back, which we're both stoked about!!
After dinner I brushed my teeth and enjoyed the views of the night sky from the courtyard. The nights there are so nice!! It's cool, with a slight breeze blowing through the banana trees in the farm just outside our back door, and the stars are so bright!! If there's no clouds I can see the milky way every night, and from this place on the globe there are news stars to see!

So that was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. My apologies. I'm tired and out of practice. I vow to make these better in time ;-)