Easter weekend

I hope each of you had a blessed Easter! For me, this Easter weekend was one of the best I’ve had yet. I definitely missed being with my family, but I feel like this was one of the first Easters where I have intentionally spent a lot of time reflecting on what it really means to serve a risen Savior.

Here in Kenya, Good Friday and Easter Monday are national holidays so I had a nice 4 day weekend :)  However, there were lots of activities going on around Tenwek so, I kept myself quite busy.

On Friday, I went out with a few people to join the youth evangelism trip that was going on from Thursday night through Sunday afternoon in a village about 1.5 hrs away from Tenwek. When I first arrived, we split into about 6 teams and dispersed to do door-to-door evangelism. However, because each house was so far from the other, we ended up walking about 4 kilometers and went to 4 or so houses. I am a bit undecided how I feel about door-to-door evangelism and its effectiveness, but at the same time it was so good to be out sharing the Gospel with people who may have not heard it before and to pray with people that wanted to give their lives to Christ. I also realized how little of that I do back home. It’s easy to forget that people around me back home may not actually know about Jesus and that I need to be more intentional about sharing what he’s done in my life and wants to do in theirs.

                                                     [sharing with one of the elders of the village]

[one of the families we visited]

[just another day in Kenya - packing 12 people inside and 5 people on top of an 8-person Land Cruiser]

[Dr. Bemm (one of the Tenwek doctors) giving the Good Friday message]

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to go to the Bomet men’s prison with a small group of people who were showing the Jesus film. It was a “medium-security” prison, but I’m pretty sure anyone wanting to break out could have easily scaled the barbed-wire fence…and I don’t think the guards had guns, just large sticks. I really had no other role than being there to watch the movie with the prisoners and then help hand out soap, toilet paper, and cokes. You could tell, though, that the prisoners were grateful that people had remembered them and they were very appreciative of our visit.

My Easter Sunday morning began at 6am with a sunrise service. It was so very cold, but so wonderful to start the day worshipping with other missionaries at Tenwek and some members from the community. We sang Easter hymns (which are some of my favorite hymns) with a trumpet and guitar and had a message about the importance of the empty tomb and concluded by attaching flowers to the cross as the sun came up over Tenwek. It was such a beautiful service and was a perfect start to Easter.

[flowers on the cross at Sunrise Service]

[the view from Motigo]

The rest of my day was filled with amazing food, great conversations, a 6-mile hike up to Motigo, and a phone call to home to remind my parents to buy the 50% off Cadbury eggs and Reece’s eggs from Kroger after they went to church :)

I hope your Easter was full of love, and family, and celebration, as well. Love and blessings!

FINALLY!

                                           [the beautiful highlands of Kenya]

Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been in Kenya for a month. So much has happened since I arrived at Tenwek…so, I will try to summarize and share as much as possible….

A few days after arriving at Tenwek, I jumped right into the Community Health and Development (TCHD) program. The first few days I spent in a training about community/capacity building, which I am really interested in, and it was so cool to share ideas and stories with people who are out in the field. For the following 2 weeks, I went out with different TCHD groups to see the work they are doing within the surrounding villages…and let me just say, there is so much good work being done here! I have primarily been going out with the water project, which focuses on the installation of biosand water filters within homes to provide clean drinking water, but have also worked with a maternal and child health clinic and met with the HIV/AIDS team. I want to go into detail about each area of TCHD so I can fully describe (and show pictures when the internet is fast enough to upload them) of the amazing projects that are in progress daily…and to provide ways that you can be specifically praying and/or supporting the work here…so look for an upcoming blog(s) about that.

Last week I had the opportunity to teach a lesson in a Community Resource Person (CRP) training. One of the primary methods that TCHD uses is to engage and empower communities to take ownership of public health initiatives so that projects will be more effective and sustainable. Specifically, they train interested people to become CRPs within the villages and provide leadership and mobilization for projects to be accepted and promoted throughout the community. Though I couldn’t speak the language (the primary language of the villages surrounding Bomet is the tribal mother tongue of Kipsigis), I gave a talk about waterborne diseases and transmission routes by way of a translator. The CRPs-in-training were so welcoming and receptive…I felt so blessed just by being there!

Then this past week I spent in Malindi at the beach J Lucky for me, I was in Kenya during the annual WGM retreat and they needed childcare workers, so I happily volunteered for the job…especially since it meant a free trip to the coast for a few hours of work each day – totally worth it. The Indian Ocean is stunning and incredibly warm and has a really great reef. After working hard for the past month, the mini-vacation of snorkeling, kayaking, swimming, and lots of sun was a welcome one.

On a more serious note, I, along with 2 other friends and our driver, was nearly carjacked last week during my travel to Malindi. We were on our way to a hospital to take care of some business for a few patients when three men appeared on the road. One man jumped out in front of our truck with his fingers pointed like a gun (though we aren’t sure if he actually did have a gun or not) and then as I looked to my right, two men with pangas (large machetes) were charging toward us. One of the men actually hit my window with a panga and I was certain that he was going to break it. However, through God’s grace and protection, the window held, the men were not able to jump into the back of the truck, and we were able to escape with no harm to any of us. I have never before experienced such violent evil, and what’s worse is that so many people live in that fear everyday. Though it was one of the scariest moments of my life, I had no doubt that God was with us and that his hand was on us.

I am currently back at Tenwek and will be diving headfirst into several research projects I have in mind for the remainder of my time here. I still don’t know all that God has for me here, but please be in prayer that I won’t miss out on anything that he’s doing, that everything I do will bring glory to him, pray for the work going on at Tenwek, and pray for the safety of us and for the safety of the people of Kenya.