New School Year

A new school year has begun and the kids, and Mom and Dad, are getting used to new surroundings.  Raelyn has taken to the sport of volleyball (Center of top photo) and she loves it.  Raelyn is in 7th grade at Maypearl MS.   Reed (in center above) is studying Film Production at South Eastern University and Riley (on right above) is pursuing a degree in Art Education at Evangel University.  Having our family spread out across the USA is a new thing for us.  It's hard to believe we are at this stage of life.

This school year will be full of travel and visits to churches all over the United States.  We will do our best to have as much family time as we can before Bryan, Kimberly and Raelyn go back to Kenya in June of 2014.  We look forward to seeing many of you during this year!

We are really happy to announce that the Kisharu Community has come together and built this brand new church!  Pastor Jackson Kodonyo on the right and Jeremiah Tanin, an elder from the community have worked together to lead the community in this building project as people sold cattle to pay for the building materials.  They are no longer meeting in the sun or under a tree and the attendance is already over 70 people every Sunday!  What an honor to be a part of this work along side our Masai brothers.  We are thankful for our support network that allows us to be a part of what God is doing in this part of East Africa.

Kisharu Assemblies of God

Yesterday was a great day for the Kisharu community.  They celebrated the opening of the first Kenya Assemblies of God church in their community.  The community sits on top of Mt. Suswa, a dormant volcano in the Rift Valley.  Kisharu is home to about 3000 people, all Masai.  For the past two years we have been working with the community doing development work mostly focused on water solutions.  The Mountain has many steam vents and we have been helping the community build steam harvesting systems that enable the people to get water from the steam vents.  Some of the systems are now producing 1000 liters per day.  Before this, water was gathered from seasonal water dams and water was fetched from the bottom of the mountain, a 2 hour walk from the village.  It was a great day with lots of celebration and worship.  More to come about the water systems in the next blog!

Its been a while since our last post....like several months. We hope your Christmas and New Year celebrations were great. Ours were a little different this year. On Nov. 26 Bryan flew to the USA for some meetings. Upon his return, Dec. 4th, he came down with meningitis. The doctors think he may have picked it up on the airplane. To make a long story short, Bryan spent 2 weeks in the hospital here in Nairobi, over the Christmas holidays. The doctors did let him out for a few hours on Christmas eve and on Christmas day to come home and celebrate with family. He is recovering and getting stronger each day. We have been told that it could take several months for him to get back to 100%. Its been hard for him to lay low and rest when so much is going on.

It was nice to have our son Reed here for Christmas. He is in his first year at Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Waxahachie Texas. It was a good visit "home" for him.

We appreciate your prayers and are thankful for your encouragement this last few months.

We are thankful for a wonderful team of volunteers from South Haven Ms. and Aledo Tx that came to help us pack food for distributions. We delivered food to several Masai communities and packed enough food for distributions among the Wataa and Somali communities as well. The team was able to visit two of the Masai communities in the Rift Valley and help with the distributions. Thank you Brad Butler and Brett Lester for bringing your church teams to work with us in East Africa! Together we will reach people with Gods love.

Somali woman receives food at one of our recent distributions.

We are currently doing assessments and putting our response plan together for the drought and famine thats taking its toll on portions of Kenya. When we go to assess we never go empty handed. We distributed food in the Pokot area of North West Kenya on Tuesday. We will continue to provide support there until the harvest in Oct. which should relieve them. More assessments to follow in North Eastern Kenya and in Turkana where the situation is critical. Will post pics as we get them. Please keep Kenya in your prayers.