Tired but happy...

This is from Anna's post on Friday:

Friday, March 4

Today we stopped by to drop off Reagan’s gifts for his family. They were so kind and invited us in for tea; but we had already set a time to meet Goeffrey so we declined. We did commit to a cup of tea tomorrow morning and are looking forward to it.

We went from there to begin our painting project at LCC. Patrick had asked us to repaint the mom’s bedrooms; retouch the girls dorms and repaint the kitchen. We were pretty gung ho when we arrived - but through the process we quickly realized (as many of you could have told us) that painting in Africa is simply not the same as painting in America! It is sort of like digging post holes with a sharp stick!!

We attempted to clean and scrape the walls - which led to a huge mess on the floor....there was no water in the tanks (a block in the line somewhere) so every drop of water used to clean was like pouring out precious gold! There was not a ladder; we got to step on a little plastic table (veeeery carefully) to reach the higher spots. There were no rags! We ended up taking off our extra layers and tearing them up for cleaning. Karen said she hoped we didn’t get down to having to tear up our underwear - but with the mess we were making it seemed pretty imminent! We had to use oil based paint in these small rooms. Kimberly was pretty sure we left there with a loss of about 15 IQ points

Our scraping and cleaning left quite a mess on the floor which we then tracked all over the place. The LCC had rollers (Thanks, Zach!) but no pans to roll them in so we just had to put the roller into the can and try not to drip all over the place. Try is the operative word there. After getting one coat on each room we went down to clean the kitchen walls...this time we did not scrape - but even the most energetic of us quickly realized that we could not paint the kitchen this trip.

Returning to put on the second coat we found the walls still completely wet - so we went to work trying to clean up the floors. The final solution (after many ineffective efforts) was to scrub with mineral spirits, scrape paint chips and buff with a dry rag. At this point, mom Susan came up, complemented our paint job and looking curiously at us on our hands and knees; scrubbing, scraping, buffing....said kindly - “well, maybe next time you would like to put some newspaper down before you begin working....” Speechless.

Unfortunately we only had one dry rag and the option of ripping up our underwear so we decided to go back to Limuru to get some rags...and two new rugs!!

We came back to the house feeling a bit overwhelmed and guilty for not being able to accomplish more - but Kate had the great news of 22 African Impact volunteers who were more than able to paint the kitchen. Praise the Lord!

Kate and Grace had stayed back at Brackenhurst with John Kahera (Kate’s godchild) and we held them in high esteem for their choice! They also had the dinner catered and house set for our dinner guests this evening...Mom Susan and Mom Jennifer joined us and we had a wonderful time of fellowship and prayer. It is such a blessing to be able to get to know the staff of LCC outside of the context of work.

Tomorrow we are planning the day at LCC. Painting, cleaning/covering up our mess and playing with the kids. Wish you were here!!

Now from my point of view... I picked John up early Friday morning (my first time driving this trip... did well except for one stall at a speed bump). He and Grace watched movies whie I read, cooked pancakes, and did housework. Then, we walked to the coffee shop for lunch (boy can that kid eat!!). We stayed in the coffee shop to talk and color while we waited for Lauren to wake up (we're nine hours ahead here). Then, we were excited to be able to Skype her and catch up a little. We had a great day together, and I feel so lucky to be able to have spent some time with him (especially after hearing how the rest of the team spent their day!)

Sorry I'm not writing more... it is a quick trip and there is so much to do. We often have guests in the evenings and it just doesn't leave much time for internet. Do know that we are having a wonderful time... the weather is absolutely beautiful (75-80 and full sunshine).