I'm in my last week here...

Dear Friends and Family,

This is a bit late but I know that you’ll all forgive me. It really has been a full week with tons of opportunities for God to help me grow into the man that He designed me to be. I’ve had to really battle some of the things inside of me that are not of Him or the real me and I know that it’s just the start. Sometimes you see things that just don’t seem right to you but if you really sit down and take a moment to think about them you know that those things aren’t really coming from that person but instead from a hurt or a place that they haven’t let God into yet. I know that many of you don’t share the same passion for the same God as me and I’m glad that you continue to read these and I hope that you get something from these anyways. These battles that I deal with make me fight within myself between the bad habits that I formed for many years and the true Love that God continues to fill me with. Some 2009 years ago or so there was this carpenter that changed the world. He loved in ways that hadn’t been seen before with a depth that is unprecedented. I simply want to be more like Him. Even before I asked God to take over my life I knew about this man and had such a high respect for him and what he did for the world. Even then I knew that if I could be more like him I would leave this world a better place because I was a part of it. It’s so hard for me though!!! My dear friends please pray for me to become more like that carpenter. If you’re not a praying person will you just give it a try for me, I could really use it!!!

On with my week now. Last Monday, the 9th, Bridget and Elle left us for the states. They left early in morning with a missionary couple from Tanzania that I would love to spend some time with. I really enjoyed all of the time that I spent with them. They were a blast!!! I even got to practice my restraints on Elle one night when she whacked me with a wet dish towel. It was like having a bratty little sister around, it was a blast! It was such an honor to share life with these two ladies. We really did get to dig into some of the depths of each other and share in both struggles and joy. What a great thing it is to share life with others. I really do feel so honored to be able to be a part of this and share in this beautiful life that God has given us. I still get to share it with Laura Nell and our newest addition, Kenia. Laura Nell continues to be a guiding light and I will miss her (and her cooking) dearly after I leave. Kenia and Laura Nell have taken such great care of me, I’m really not sure what I’ll do with out them….

With the girls gone my time got freed up again to tend to my other projects. The house and the business development of Noah’s blocks being the priorities. The house is looking great! They’ve finished putting all of the mortar up for the trim and it looks great! The roof will be finished today and they’ll start plastering the interior tomorrow. That should be almost done by the time that I leave for Nairobi. George (the contractor) and I took a trip to Nyeri on Friday to look for roofing but the cost was far to high and they didn’t have what was requested so we went to Nairobi on Monday. If you have been following all of these you’ll know that Nairobi isn’t exactly my favorite place on earth. It’s a city and the only city that I’ve ever even liked to spend more than an afternoon in is San Fran.. So George, his cousin Ken and I left around 7am in his old diesel Land Cruiser pick-up that I love. It’s beat up and held together with all kinds of miscellaneous pieces. It’s 2.5 to 3 hours each way and it’s nothing like a US highway. There are no lines in the road but there are bicyclists, cows, sheep, donkeys, pedestrians, car parts, speed bumps, and a lot of crazy drivers. You have to be so hyper-vigilant in your driving. So I have a bar in a very uncomfortable place that I’m resituating myself on every 60 seconds or so for the whole ride. I think I bruised my tail bone. We made it there with very few incidents and dropped off my faithful motorcycle. That part was rough. We then went to a restaurant that Georges uncle manages called Carnivore. Let me tell you, Carnivore is fantastic!!! Georges uncle got us this lunch that was incredible for free. Have you ever had ostrich? If not then you should try it. After lunch we hobbled out to the truck moaning and groaning from all of the food that we ate. We then took off to the industrial district to track down the correct roofing. After a bit of driving around we found a place that had it and they had it for 25,000 shillings less than anybody else. That’s a savings of around $325. So we ordered it up wrote out the check and went to pick it up. As they were loading it we noticed that it was the correct gauge but the wrong pattern. After a phone call to the boss man we let them load it up and hit the road again. We got back home sometime around 7pm. We spent 12 hours to get the right roofing and they didn’t even have it. I do have to say that the roof does look good and it’ll keep the water out just fine. It’s good to see it coming along so well.

I spent last weekend at the orphanage as a very last minute thing. George and I finished up our business a bit early so I just loaded up my stuff, told Laura Nell that I was leaving for the weekend and took off for Naibor. It was so good to be back with the kids. I really missed them. It’ll be hard to be away from them for so long. I keep on wondering if they’ll remember me or what they’ll look like the next time that I see them, if I ever get to see them again. They taught me more than any thing else here, I hope that I got to return at least a little bit of what they gave me. All of the kids were home from school so the place was full and so full of life. I helped cook the chipate for dinner much to the amusement of many of the kids especially the older girls who’ve rarely see a man cooking in the kitchen. They were having a youth conference for the weekend so there were people from around the area staying there. One of them was the youth director from Timau who slept on the bunk above mine. At sometime before 5am he thought that he really wanted to listen to music on the radio so he started going through all of the stations with the radio blaring. Remember that part where I wanted to be like that carpenter? I wasn’t having thoughts that would lead to me to actions like the carpenter. I asked him to turn it down so he did a little bit but just turned it back up a little bit later. So I decided to get up and go water the plants. I hopped out of bed and went into the dark night of early morning. I got ready to start watering and the ground moved right by me. There are some pretty big animals out here that can be not so nice when disturbed so my heart leaped into my throat. I quickly realized that it was a cow and went back to “watering”.

Speaking of wildlife, George and I took two people out to beautiful El Kaarama to see some of the structures. One of the people is building at least 5 structures from Noah’s blocks and wanted to see some creative structures and El Kaarama had some to offer. On the way we saw a number of elephants and giraffe amongst the usual animals. It was great because there were so many baby’s. It really was a great time.

Well, it’s time for me to wrap this up and get back to work. This is my last week so there will most likely only be one more of these. I look forward to it and looking back on this great adventure that I’ve been able to be apart of. It took nothing grand on my part to do, just follow the path put in front of me. I hope that this finds all of you well. I hope that there are some smiles looking at this right now. Maybe even someone got moved and will step out into an uncomfortable place that they’ve never been before and find an incredible thing waiting for them like I have. I miss you all and look forward to sitting down and sharing life with you in the very near future. Keep on smiling, you never know who’s day you could be making better with that smile.

Peace and Love
Caleb