We had been planning a trip with a few of our co-workers to Kenya to visit a project,
Free the Children that is running programs very similar to those in Kibaale and the Timothy Centre. When the dates were finally confirmed we realized it was perfect timing to add a family vacation to the trip!
It worked best for us to go first on our vacation to the Kenya Coast and then meet up with our co-workers. On our last full day at the coast we were saddened and shocked by the news that there was a terrorist attack at Westgate Mall in Nairobi. We decided it would be best to postpone our visit to Free the Children, we hope to reschedule a few months from now when things have settled down.
We had some last minute rearranging of flights to organize and we were surprised at how easily things worked out, but of course on the day of things weren't all that smooth. It ended up taking 27 hours to get from our hotel back home to Uganda, but it was a fun adventure!!
The kids had a lot of fun exploring the beach when the tide was out. Finn tries to find his own starfish every time we're at the beach, and Joel is holding a sea urchin!
There were a lot of monkeys and baboons around the resort. The kids had fun watching the baboons, who like to keep a bit of distance from us, with their babies! The monkeys were not shy though, a couple times they grabbed food right from our hands!
Joel loved archery and once he had his lesson spent about an hour each day perfecting this skill. In the one photo he's showing off a jelly fish sting!! He said it stung a lot but only briefly!
We had always planned to take the train overnight from Mombasa to Nairobi, it's a bit longer journey, but less money than flying and the kids were really excited to try it! It should have been a 14 hour journey, so when we woke up at 7am we were expecting to be nearing Nairobi, but were told that the train was not traveling at full speed due to a complication with the locomotive and we were still 6 hours away. That would have had us 2 hours late for our flight! The manager of the train came to talk to us and said if we got out at the next stop he'd arrange a taxi for us and we should be able to drive to the airport in 3 hours. This would be cutting it really close, but Jeff's phone was dead and mine out of airtime, so we couldn't change our flight again, we thought we might as well try! We were able to check in just in time and the airport isn't near the city centre, so we felt safe the entire time!
We are now back in Uganda and are so thankful for everyone who was praying for our safe return!
