I am sure that all of our church family will be delighted to read the article below from Monty (and James) who is currently in Kenya. It is a joy to read about this amazing young man and I would ask you all to keep him in your prayers. 

We have now been in Kenya for two and a half weeks and have been super busy! For the first few days we stayed in Nairobi with friends, which was brilliant because it allowed us to settle well, whilst also being great telling us what we need to know and arranged some cool trips. We visited the Giraffe Centre, a matumba (big clothes markets where it all comes from charity shops/clothes banks, we got Ralph Lauren shirts for £3!!), the Nairobi National Park where we saw lots of wildlife and went to an all you can eat buffet which served crocodile, ostrich etc...!!

We then headed out West to a village by Lake Victoria where we were volunteering teaching English and football for two weeks. It was a big culture shock!! No shower/flushing toilet and living in mud huts, but we got over that after the first night. The food was incredible, very simple, and plenty of it! We had combinations of kale, rice, potatoes, fish, meat, beans and lentils over the two weeks.

Teaching English was an awesome experience and makes you realise how lucky we are in England, and just how we take the education system in England for granted. For the students in Kenya, this is their route out of rural life, which means that they all work very hard and are eager to learn. We tried to help them eradicate basic mistakes like spelling and present/past tense, as on the whole their writing is pretty good. They have exams in three weeks, so we hope we didn’t hold them back!

We also setup a fundraiser for the school which has so far raised £735! We donated £600 worth of exercise books, story books, composition books, pens/pencils etc... we will now look to further assist the school depending on the total amount raised. It was a great feeling seeing the children so happy, it may make up for some of our dodgy teaching!

As we write this, we are on the bus back to Nairobi, where we will stay for a few days before going to the coast. We hope to then go to Tanzania/Zanzibar, then South East Asia depending on restrictions!

Monty and James