Day 13 - Last Day of Classes

Good morning everyone! Well our day today began with an amazing devotion in chapel by Cliff. This man sure has a way with words and he is so good at relating scripture in the bible to our lives. Such an inspiring person! In his devotion he shared with us the very well known verse ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open or if he were talking to his computer class he would say ask, seek, click. He’s inspiring and funny! The students and faculty enjoyed his devotion very much and he truly did a great job. We all also got a kick out of the worship they did before the devotion. They sang a worship song about spreading God’s word through all the nations (or tribes) and then the lead singer would call out different tribes. Like I said before, the worship here is always exciting and in this particular song each tribe has a different “dance” move for the chorus. So as he said each individual tribe the students would dance to the song the way their people would. This was so fun! So of course when he said Muzungu (white person) Ken would do the disco. This was a great way for the students to relax because exam phobia had kicked in already and you could feel the tension in the air. After chapel Melanie and Art taught their morning classes which mainly consisted of reviewing with the students for the exams. Mel also took her class to the computer lab to begin research for the term paper they must right by October 15th. I accompanied the class and I was glad I did, because unfortunately 85% of the class had no idea how to research online! Yet here they are expected to write 4 of these term papers, one for each class, by October 15th and they are so confused. I helped as much as I could and I think they are feeling a little bit better now. Of course they have our emails and they can contact us any time and we will gladly help them! Being in the lab with my students gave me a glimpse of what Cliff, Brett, and James face every day with the students in their computer class. The afternoon classes were similar with all of the teachers basically reviewing in their own way with the students. Cliff went the extra mile and his class left around 6pm for dinner, and then he met them back at the computer lab at 8pm to keep helping them so that they would be ready for their exam. If there is one teacher here that went the extra mile it is Cliff. All of our teachers did so great with their classes and the relationships built will last for quite some time. Between morning and afternoon classes we were honored to join the Vice Chancellor and a few other members of the faculty for a private lunch in one of their conference rooms. It was so neat listening to them speak about their visions for ANU with us. They want to continue to partner with us and our teachers to help build their school and curriculum, I got the since that this helped pave the way for a long relationship with ANU and I am so excited! After afternoon classes we had a wonderful dinner prepared by the lovely chef, Fred, and we were joined by the other two teams that are here working at ANU. And to my surprise I was spoiled again! Ken walked around the counter to “whisper” with Chef and I could tell by his goofy smile they were up to something. Then they came out from behind the counter and everyone started singing happy birthday. Chef had made a beautiful light green cake in the shape of a heart with cream writing and decoration saying Happy Birthday Ashley with the number 21. He is such a sweet person I will never forget him. (Here in Kenya celebrating birthdays isn’t something they really do, and making cake is abnormal so this made me feel so special, again!) I thanked him and my group for all of the birthday celebrations and we shared the cake with everyone in the room. We then had devotion which Brett had lead. He chose to share 1 John 215: 15. He expressed how it meant that we should not love the world but love our God. We thought that this fit perfectly with our trip, which is what this is all about, loving our God and sharing his love with everyone. It was a great ending to our day; of course we followed it up with some scoop scum and then headed to bed. That night I know that our students were in our minds, we had all prayed for them that the Lord would be with them and that they would feel at ease. We also heard a little bit from the group in South Africa, they are doing well and all is going great. Thank you for your continued prayers and for following along with our journey!