Lost Sheep?

Today we had the pleasure of a visit from Rachel, our SIM-UK mobiliser, whose joy it was to guide us through the application process and find a suitable placement for us. She is here in Nairobi along with 160 other SIM leaders from around the world for their annual conference, but thought she'd drop in and check we hadn't got lost along the way. It was lovely to see a familiar face from the UK, and we were especially grateful for the cache of goodies she brough with her: art supplies, suncream, chocolate, and the new U2 album!

We left her to sleep while we went to church (please don't be overly concerned about the calibre of our leaders - she had just arrived after an overnight flight!) Justin had volunteered to help teach the lesson in Caleb's class at Sunday school, which became something of a family event - with Bethanie's cuddly sheep making a star appearance hiding in the rafters. Reunited happily with a deighted Bethanie they gave a perfect introduction to Jesus' story of the lost sheep!

After telling the story to a noisy chorus of 'Baa's, we each made a "God loves..." personalised sheep, complete with cotton wool. We couldn't extract a name from one child, but we got round that by writing "God loves... me"! It was a brilliant chance to teach the foundational truth that God loves all of us irrespective of whether we are good or bad. And to emphasise how pleased God is when any one of us turns to him to be his friend, we had a little party at the end, as per the story. Complete with balloons, pop-corn and 25 party blowers - what a din!

On our return Bethanie was pleased to show Baa-bie to Andrew our guard, who was suitably interested, and supportive of the idea that we capture it on camera...