St Martin, Nyahururu, Kenya

Margaret and Jean finally on the way to Kenya after weeks of help and work in making teaching pieces, collecting tools, making scrapbooks and toys for the children to use while in the equipment

3 trolleys and a very kind Kenya Airways that gave us a special baggage allowance

Everyone at St Martin has been so kind and welcoming. They have been preparing for the training too.

We all went to a retreat a small distance away at Tabor where we will have the training.

Margaret during our quiet time contemplating on the talk that challenged us to think about our own predjudices

 The training was followed by visits to children on the Friday - choosing those that would be good candiates. They will have something made for them during the APT training so we wanted to pre-select the items so everyone can learn as much as possible by different tyoes of chairs and a standing frame being made.

                                          Bump, rattle and bounce at times on the road or the verge.

The Retreat challenge
St Martin's runs social programme is for the community and most importantly by the community. This means that 'formation'/training for the community volunteers is necessary and ongoing; this is both training for the mind (new skills) and for the spiritual formation. So yesterday was a Retreat day and Margaret and Jean were able to take part. Father Gabriel gave the keynote address – it was a clear challenge to our maybe unclear prejudices and unconscious stigmatization of others. The challenge was based on the disciples question to Jesus when seeing a blind man; “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (Where is the fault who is to blame?)


How often we make assumptions too about all sorts of things...Jesus reply was “Neither this man nor his parents, that he was born blind...but this happened so that the work of God may be manifested in his life” Jesus went on to help the man in a way that involved the man taking an active role and then he could see. The Pharisees (maybe us..) were sceptical (Jesus did this on the wrong day too as it was the Sabbath) but the man argued cogently that they should look at the reality of the situation – he could see. Jesus pointed out that it was the Pharisees who felt they saw the situation clearly, that were blind.

We may not be able to heal a blind man but the challenge is; will we enable and assist others in their where we can looking at the hopeful and good points in them and not holding onto any prejudices or blame?