Thank you so much for your prayers and support for our trip. The entire team made it home safe and sound without incident. Our experimental blog was a bit hampered in Kenya due to come internet connection issues. This really limited our ability to upload photos and some days prevented us from logging on at all. The speed of their connection was not much better than an old dial-up modem. However, the school is supposed to double their internet connection in September and again next year. Here is a brief overview of what our team accomplished:
- Installed more than 6,000 feet of ethernet cable including including almost 90 outlets.
- Set up and imaged a computer labe with 44 computers.
- Upgraded the network to a gigabit backbone.
- Set up managed switches.
- Installed 9 wireless routers including accesspoints and wireless bridges.
- Installed a file server, LAMP server, domain name server, and DHCP server.
- Installed a ceiling mounted projector in the chapel.
- Installed a solar powered fountain as part of the library entrance.
- Upgraded anti virus protection on many of the schools computers.
- Ran new Ethernet cabling between the administration building, faculty office building, and the library.
We anticipate another trip again next year and possibly even another container as the Lord provides.
God bless,
Todd Marshall
PS - Here are a few final pictures now that I’m home with better ability to upload photos.
Posted on July 11th, 2008 by Todd Marshall
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Just letting you all know that Dave Palmer and I arrived safe, back to our families on Saturday afternoon. The flight back seemed a lot longer but they went without incident. We left Todd, Katy, Ray, and Judy at the Kenyan airport and suspect they will be reporting in soon as well.
Posted on July 6th, 2008 by Larry Wilcox
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The big event of the day was Katy’s 15th birthday. In true Kenyan fasion, she was doused with several buckets of water by some of the Kenyan students. In the US you get swats, in Ukraine, they pull your ears, and in Kenya they douse you with water. She has made friends with several of the girl students and they even gave her a Kenyan necklace for her brithday. Tonight we celebrated and had beirthday cake at the Okessons.
I’m sorry there haven’t been more posts, but we have had some terrible internet/networking problems here. It takes about 5 min just to log into this blog to post. Uploading pictures takes much longer. Please pray with for us as we try and track down a few of these problems before we leave. Working on this network during the middles of a semester is like changing oil and sparkplugs as the car is rolling down the highway.
Thanks so much for your prayers. Our team has worked well together and accomplished quite a bit. However, we could all stay for a month and still have plenty to do.
Its about 9PM and I have other work to do so I’m signing off.
Todd
Posted on June 30th, 2008 by Todd Marshall
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Some of the team has left. Brenda left yesterday and Josh left early this morning and Charlie left this afternoon. Please pray that their trips are without incident. It’s a bit of a downer when people leave but we are eager to finish up what we can here. The lab is pretty much up and running. Network plugs are installed and the website has been installed and is being populated. Our goal this week is to transfer as much knowledge to those who work here so they can keep it all maintained.
Thank you for your prayers. Please pray that God gives us the strength needed to finish this out and leave with what needs to be done completed.
Posted on June 29th, 2008 by Larry Wilcox
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Sorry for the delay everyone! Finally here are more pictures.
-Dave
Posted on June 27th, 2008 by Dave Palmer
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Here are some pictures. They took quite awhile to upload but I will add more today.
Posted on June 23rd, 2008 by Larry Wilcox
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Dear family and friends,
Thanks for praying for us. We finally arrived in Kenya on Thursday after unanticipated delays - left Syracuse 6 hours behind schedule due to severe T-storms in Eastern NY. Therefore, we missed connecting flights, “slept” in Kennedy terminal to complete flight arrangements to London in the morning, then repeated the charming experience of an overnight terminal stay at Heathrow international airport in London. We had only one bag delayed so we praise God for getting us, the rest of the team and eventually all the baggage to Scott!
We hit the ground running and haven’t slowed down since! After orientation to the college (which is beautiful), we’ve been working on planning the routing of internet cable within several buildings and across campus. We enjoyed a worship service this morning in an urban church in Nairobi, with services both in English and Swahili, and found the congregation’s enthusiasm, warm welcome and love for the Lord contagious.
Tomorrow we start drilling holes through concrete walls and floors and running ethernet cable (which must be handled with extreme care). This will take several days. An important deadline for the college is an inspection Tuesday as the final step by the Kenyan Commission preparing to authorize Scott’s Master’s level program. The timing of our team’s arrival and the work we have already done (and will do through Monday evening) is critical for this goal to be accomplished.
We praise God for continuing safety, good health, and some significant accomplishments already in preparations for routing electrical wiring and ethernet cable. Pray for efficiency in our thinking and planning and very productive hours as we strive to get as much done as quickly as possible in our time here, as others are depending on what we have to do.
Posted on June 22nd, 2008 by Ray and Judy Cowan
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Wow… what a day. Today we went into Nairobi to a church where Greg was preaching two services. One in English and one in Swahili. I can definitely say the Spirit is alive and well. It brought me to tears. The people and music need to be experienced to be understood but we will have pictures available. I know I’ve been promising pictures but really we will get them up. We may even get a video published after we return. It would take too long to upload here.
This week we will really start diving into the work. Updates to follow.
Posted on June 22nd, 2008 by Larry Wilcox
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The last team arrived safely last night and today we had our first break from the work to go on a trip to a place where they do wood carving. Very neat experience. The mayor of the area met us there as he looks at visits like this as very important to Kenya. The people were all very gracious and it is amazing what the carvers can do with very few tools working in simple metal roof covers shelters. One of them even had the nerve to say I was old like one of the carvers he pointed out but from what I hear saying someone is old is a compliment so I will take it that way.
We then went to a restaurant near the college and are now back on campus to lay out plans for next week. Hopefully pictures will be forth coming.
If anyone has questions please send them as a comment and we will respond.
Posted on June 21st, 2008 by Larry Wilcox
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Tonight we had ugali (I’m not sure of the spelling) which is mashed corn that is cooked into a white paste, potatoes, fried fish (tilapia I think)some kind of sauce, and some greens that were something like spinach. It was all really quite good.
Several of us also took a walk around the the outside of the campus. This is a red dirt road. We went past coffee fields, fruit vendors, children from a school, and a couple of people on bicycles. We took a bunch of pictures and just enjoyed the “difference” a continent makes.
A few of us are going to hang out at our hosts house for a bit tonight and then off to the dorm. Greg and Todd just left to pick up the last team.
From Kenya, For HIM,
Larry
Posted on June 20th, 2008 by Larry Wilcox
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