Dear Friends,

Bwena asifiwe (Praise the Lord)!

Life changing. Heart breaking. Humbling. Amazing. Those are just a few words that I can use to describe my experience in Kenya these past two weeks. I came home Friday afternoon but my heart is still in Kenya. Thousands of things I want to share with you are going through my head. However, I’ll restrain myself from sharing EVERYTHING and just list a couple highlights in this letter.

We arrived on a Friday and spent the next couple days preparing for VBS (Vacation Bible School). Our faith was soon tested when we learned that only a handful of House of Praise Deliverance Church (DC) would be there during the week to help with VBS. The expected number of children to come out was 300. The minimum number of helpers we needed to even make it happen was around 20. Our first day we had a turnout of 185 children. God is good! Gradually, this number would grow to 362 children and miraculously, God kept on providing the number of helpers each day! DC high school youth kids were given their first opportunity to serve as leaders in the church. Here is a part of an email from one of them to us before we ever even left the country:

“Every time I would pass near church memories of the wonderful times we had with GRX team kept flashing through my mind and every time this happened I would keep balancing my tears as a sign of painful fact that you were all going back to America .It hurt so bad that the time we were with for guys for the last days (when we had lunch on Sunday) I would hide my face secretly and wipe a tear of my eye but luckily nobody could notice. The same thing happened when remembered God’s favor upon my life. May God open the floodgates of Heaven and rain down His blessings upon you for wonderful service you did by planting God’s seed into the little children’s hearts.”

This same young man wants me to email him on how he can personally contribute to the Unstoppable Campaign. Giving everything they have when they have close to nothing. This and their love and reverence for God were just a few things we learned from the people of Kenya. I believe that the partnership between GrX and DC is one united by Christ and hopefully long-lasting. In preparation for next year’s team, will you please join me in collecting any children’s clothing, toys, paperback books, shoes and book bags? I don’t have anywhere to store it, so if you can just let me know that you are collecting items in your house we’ll make arrangements to pick up, pack up and send off the items next year and maybe even throughout the year.

Thank you for your support and prayers! I was definitely blessed through this trip and can't wait to share the experience more deeply with you. I will let you know as soon as the date of our debrief comes out so you can hear from the whole team what God is doing in Kenya. I would also love to share the experience with you one-on-one. If you would like to set up a time to meet up, feel free to email me at grace.kim@grx.org. Some things we'd talk about: slum visit, orphanage visit and letters from the children, kitchen crew, Pastor Wang'ombe, house visits, , the rain, sing and play stampede worship time, team unity, God's power, my family in Kenya and MORE! =)

With much appreciation and love,

Grace