Faith's birthday party.

Nov 8th was Faith's 3rd birthday and her parents, Elizabeth and Kyalo, gave her a celebration. Elizabeth and Kyalo are from Kenya and both work at the clinic. Elizabeth is a lab tech and Kyalo is our accountant.

Now a celebration is different from a party. It is a fellowship with the Lord and friends. So we had food, prayer, scripture reading and singing. They had invited 36 people and prepared all the food themselves, with a little help from the mission families. Martha Wright baked cakes, Laurie Tricarico brought Kool-aid and chopped salad, Amy and Chrissie helped with the set up and cooking of the meat,and we gave snack crackers. The menu was goat in a soup broth, roasted/fried chicken, rice, chapati, cabbage salad, kool-aid, crackers and cake and sodas.

We all sat with our chairs in a big circle, outside of their house. The oldest were given places of importance at the head of the circle, so to speak, and were fed in that order. Speeches were made by the proud father, Kyalo. The family was dressed in some of their best Kenyon clothes. Very brightly colored tie-dyed and plaid materials. They all looked very Smart!!!!

Faith was very much over whelmed with all of this. We, of course, had to Americanize her by singing Happy Birthday and having her blow out the candles on the cake, although she didn't understand why we wanted her to do this, she was happy to comply. She sat in her chair and looked at us all like we were a bit crazy, but she loved the gifts she was given. And soon after the cake was served Faith was sound asleep in her mother's arms for a short nap and then she was ready for the next round.

Faith is an amazing little girl of just 3, she can speak 3 languages, loves to dress up in fancy dresses and loves her kitten, Baby. She has also become the big sister to Lee, who is the son of our clinical officer. She takes him everywhere and watches over him like a mother.

We had a great time, and enjoyed a Kenyon style celebration.

-Kris