Our First Day in Kenya

Yes praise God, we did get to Mombasa safely Wednesday night. This is the first time we've been able to get on internet. We didn't think our internet still worked because we canceled it before we left but Dennis turned on his computer a little while ago and and somehow we have a little (but very, very, extremely slow) connection. Go figure...hope we aren't being charged....its a little after 3am in the morning and yes i'm still awake...jet lag is really bad this time..so i'll just write until i fall asleep...hope you enjoy our adventures...wish yall were here:)

Our flight was long but pretty uneventful which was good....and all of our 7 bags got here amazingly. (2 of them were ripped open but so far we aren't missing anything that we know of)....This is a huge praise. Thanks Phyllis for personally praying that for us!. Our adventures continued at the VISA counter in Nairobi when I went through the citizen line with Dennis (thats what we were told last time to do) thinking i wouldn't get charged for a VISA cause we are applying for a dependent pass for me. But guess what...it didn't happen the way they said...go figure...and I had to go all the way back in the long VISA line to get a $50 VISA...and surprise suprise...we didn't have any US cash on us....so Dennis went to the ATM down at baggage while I stood there and he came back with Kenyan shillings of course...and then the guys at the counter REFUSED to take Kenyan money so Dennis had to go to the exchange desk cash the shillings in for US dollars. hmm....Kenyans won't receive their own money in their own country. All we could do was laugh and say Welcome Home to Kenya!!! and the famous...T.I.A (for those of you who have lived in Africa...ya know what that means:)

I was a little nervous about driving in the dark (a neighbor picked us up) from airport to home with 7 big bags just laying in the back of a pickup but I prayed the whole way and God truly protected us...

Of course our adventures continued on as we got home to to find nothing working(not really a super surprise though. Made for some more good laughs)....the water pump was broken so we took good cool basin baths, the fridge is broken and still doesn't work after calling several electricians today,(that was a story in itself watching them with a torch lamp near our gas stove trying to weld something behind the fridge), the light in the bathroom refuses to work even with a new bulb, the toilet wont' flush, and the car's battery is completely dead with 4, yes i said 4 flat tires!! and I think i'll stop there.....I can't help but laugh again......and praise God He has graciously given us good attitudes through it all!! We are very blessed and having a blast.

So needless to say my wonderful husband spent most of his day tending to these chores to get things fixed while i tried to filter a bunch of drinking water, put a few things away, and very tiredly but joyfully (thank you God for your grace in that) welcomed Dennis' Mom, another friend, and his little 6 month old niece Angela Grace in our home, as well as several other people who came by to pay us a welcome visit.

It reached 6:30pm and we don't have any food in the house yet and its not like we can order something from fast food so i had to just get some chopped beef from a shop close by and some onions, garlic , tomato and green pepper from the little veggie stand on our road, and made some ground meat for dinner along with a few potatoes...it wasn't half bad for a throw together meal....and i even used my pampered chef potato peeler thingy to make the potatoes stringy. Betty, my sweet friend came over just around dinner time so she helped in the kitchen as well and had a nice dinner with us. it was so good to spend some time catching up.

Then as we were getting ready for bed our adventures for the day continued...We thought we were going to be waking up our neighbor to borrow his car to head to the hospital for some stitches...at midnight. A bunch of our frames and a mirror broke in our luggage and somehow some of the pieces got on the floor and we didn't know it...until my foot found it tonight and it a big chunk went straight in. I looked down in pain and there was blood squirting out the bottom of my foot....and it hurtlike junk. What was so bad was my feet were awfully dirty from walking around the house barefooted all day. I managed to sit down and Dennis just jerked the piece of glass out. I held pressure for a long time, then just let go to rinse it out with "clean" (ha ha) water from the tap...Then finally i was able to stick some antibiotic cream and some steri strip and bandaid on it. I think its ok for now...but will watch and pray it doesn't get infected!!

So how was that for a Great Welcome to Kenya day!! And I have to say, as many know, Mombasa is really hot and humid, but graciously allowed us to get here during the "cooler" season so its not as hot as when we left in December...only in the 80s and praise God the power has been on all day and our fans are working!!!!

Hope yall enjoyed my long but fun blog post...sorry if its just a lot of blabbering...it is now 3:40 in the morning and i must make myself go to sleep.-----Allison