This may be the longest I've been away from an Internet connection since its existence, and it's killing me!

I'll be brief with a few updates:

We just returned from Masii visiting with children and the staff for a few days. A few highlights:

1) It was a true blessing to be able to see my daughter, Mwende, she has grown and it doing very well, I love that girl like she were my own.

2) We went to another school where they had the best basketball facilities I've seen in rural Kenya. I talked to the coach, told him I also coached, and asked if the five of us (two guys, three girls) would take on his team. He agreed, we played, they scored the first four points and I was scared! We came back to take the lead and it was tied at the end, we prevailed by four points. One of the girls was really good, I wanted to recuit her but she is already a senior. One thing I'd like to do in the future is come here to do two or three day camps at some of the high schools, I think they would like that.

3) One cannot explain the roads, it's that bad.

4) We went into the nearby city, Machakos, to watch one of the Tumaini boys run in a track meet. He ran a few events, he ran the 400 meter, and won. He performed this morning in Nairobi at a competition to quality for some meet in Poland. He took third and I have not been told yet if that allowed him to quality. This guy is fast, he ran the 400 meter in 47 seconds, I'm still checking to see how that would stand in our state track meet.

5) The best times I found here are when we take the last evening and fellowship with dinner and prayer and words with the Kenyan staff. What a great group of people who give their lives tirelessly to the children, love them and cherish them and bring them up in a loving environment. I am humbled by their care and love, I couldn't be happier with this group of people.

We then returned early this morning to Nairobi to join HEART and visit the Community Transformers and Weep projects in Mathare. For those of you not familiar, Mathare is a slum of around 700,000, much worse than what I've seen of Kibera, and is where much of the strife occurred in post-election violence earlier this year. A few thoughts:

1) I like to look for solutions for the poverty, I cannot think of one right now to help this place.

2) It is thought that over 60% of the girls are abused sexually in this area. I was asked to pray at the end and prayed especially for the girls, that God intervenes and protects them. With two young dauthers I just can't fathom this and am angered by it!

We are now at HEART waiting to go eat at Carnivore, I will have more thoughts later.