The past few months leading up to December were extremely busy. This was one of the toughest and busiest semesters we have had since working here. It's not one that we want to repeat again. In November the accreditation team from all over the world came and thoroughly reviewed the school and met with teachers and students. They gave our school a great review, especially the teaching staff. We will receive our accreditation but we are still waiting to hear for what length of time (between a five and seven year term). Eric worked around the clock this semester making sure the high school would get accredited. We were also busy getting our new Vice Principal settled and into his new role. By December the whole staff was worn out and burnt out.
We determined that our Christmas break needed to be a time of rest and recuperation for our family. We were excited to take Christmas to the Malasi family. This is the family whose house you all helped to build. It took us about two hours to drive there and we brought a Christmas tree, gifts, and food. We really enjoyed sharing a meal of yummy Kenyan food and they had fun opening their presents. Helping this family move into their own home and not live in a one room house has been the highlight of my time here in Kenya. It was a true joy to see our kids help wrap the presents for their family and then give them to them. This family continues to inspire me to persevere as really they are camping in their own home. They don't have running water or electricity. They both travel two hours each way in traffic to get to work now. We are looking into the possibility of helping them to open a small business (food shop) near their house so Priscilla doesn't have to commute so far to work. That is still a prayer in progress. The girls had fun chasing their pet chicken around the house and after lunch we went on a walk to see the animals in the fields nearby. Truly this day blessed us as a family and it was good for the girls to give of themselves a little as well.

Christmas Day since we didn't have family here, we made family. We invited some of the teachers to our house for Christmas brunch and then went to another missionary friend's house for an actual Christmas dinner. Homemade pies, stuffing, and turkey. The day after Christmas we went to the nearby game park. We had fun searching for animals. The exciting part of our trip was when we came upon a group of Buffalo and one of the males decided to chase after our car. The girls had fun making faces at him in the back of the car as we sped off so our car wouldn't get dented by a buffalo. These are the moments when I still can't believe we live in Kenya, unreal sometimes. We also went camping about two hours north of the city to Lake Naivasha. We were setting up our campsite when a few of our high school students called out hello. They were camping nearby and we had a fun time of connecting with them over the campfire and making s'mores. We were able to go on a boat ride on the lake and saw many hippos in the water. The guide also threw fish up in the air and nearby Eagles swooped down to eat. It was fun seeing hippos in their natural habitat for the first time.
The first week of January found us in Turtle Bay, a family friendly and affordable beach resort. We hung out with lots of missionary families at the beach for five days. It was nice to get out of the city and back to the beach which I miss. The girls had fun swimming, feeding the eels in the reefs, and taking a boat out on the ocean.

We feel like our time refreshed us enough to finish the school year but we still feel a bit burnt out. Our plans are to come back this summer and visit family, friends, and supporters. We need to raise about $1,000 a month again in order to return in August and then we will come back to Kenya for our high school's senior year. We are excited that we will see 15 students graduate in May 2010. It's our plan after graduation to possibly come back for an extended furlough to really recuperate. I can't believe that this year marks four years for us in Kenya. God has provided abundantly through you and we are getting excited to reconnect with you all.