Now, as I prepare to go on my first outreach trip of this journey, I am frantically typing. In a matter of hours I will be on my way to spend the weekend serving at a children's home near Nairoi with about half of the rest of my team. I am so looking forward to discovering what this weekend will bring! I am excited for the things I am going to learn, the relationships I will be blessed to form, and all the opportunities God has awaiting me. While I will greatly miss my brothers and sisters I will leave behind at the base, I am grateful for the ones I take with me and the bonding moments we are bound to share!
This week has been a truly exciting one. I was so happy to have my brothers and sisters back with me after my quite, yet eventful weekend! It was a joy to see them return to our home away from home. Monday we started a very new and exciting teaching from the founder of our base, an Englishman, Edward Ravenhall. God has spoken so profoundly through him all week. I can’t wait until his book comes out!
It was good to spend time with him and his two friends, Dave and Dawn, he brought with him-simply sharing meals, going to see African big cats with them like I did on Monday, taking our tea break in the middle of our morning lecture with them, etc. For, as Ed would describe it, through this interaction with him, just as with other Christians, we have been glimpsing the Kingdom of God. This is an incredible revelation he has been giving us this week as we have studied the character of God. It has ben a great encouragement to us, to go out into the world and actively build up God’s Kingdom in everything we do by increasing the amount of God’s character we embody and release into the world around us. A call crying, “Waken the saints. Arouse a sleeping Church.” And this starts right here. It starts today, on a weekend outreach at a children’s home as God continues to tenderize my heart for His people.
~Chloe Anne
Friday, October 19, 2012
My third Sunday in Kenya…
October 14, 2012
My third Sunday in Kenya…Every week holds the same overall schedule during the lecture phase of DTS, so we count time with Sundays and speakers. I can tell this base is starting to feel like a second home, or at least I’m getting used to (most) everything (not the continuous presence of spiders in the pit toilet at night…), because when they changed things up on us for the weekend it began to feel foreign. Over half of our team has been on outreach for the weekend, serving at an orphanage near Nairobi. I didn’t think it could get more quiet and peaceful here than it already was. I was definitely wrong! We’ve definitely been missing some big personalities around here lately. I’m looking forward to all my brothers and sisters getting home tonight!
However, I have appreciated the chance to relax the past few days. The quiet was especially beneficial on Friday after I almost fainted from dehydration (I’m presuming) combined with the heat of the traditional African kitchen when we were cooking dinner. After some severe dizziness, I sat down outside in the refreshing breeze and then went back to my room to lie down until it was time for dinner. And with rest, some food, water, and extra electrolytes in me I felt much better, and I have ever since! (I would be honest if I was feeling anything else!) The loving prayers of my family and some long-awaited Skype sessions also helped lift my spirits significantly!
Now, I’ve grown up with brothers. I’m not too much of a “girl’s girl,” you might say…So Saturday was also very refreshing. The birds woke me to a grey, rainy African morning. Which, of course, helped me to feel right at home! It struck me as funny though that our group felt it necessary to wait out the rain before we moved on with our day-definitely not something an Oregonian is used to! But I played along and waited in the dining hall with Fred and Menzo & Tobi (the two European guys on our team) until the rain calmed to a sprinkle. Then the four of us walked about 15-20 minutes to the nearest town. We had to wait a bit for a reasonably priced (less than 50 cents) mutatu, or “van bus” as I like to call it, because they had raised the prices due to the rain and the number of people waiting (not to mention there were a few muzungus present, although we were assured that had nothing to do with it). I was especially grateful guys traveling with me when a drunken man started singing “You’re so beautiful, you’re so beautiful…” to me. I may have boarded the mutatu that had just arrived by the grace of God with a little more determination….But my brothers here really do a great job of looking out for me! We sat 4 YWAMers across the bench with me on the inside, and as we walked through our main town I was always the middle duckling that followed Fred around. I’m sure we were quite a sight! Once we’d been dropped at the bus stop, our first trip was to the ATM for the Europeans to withdraw money. We then made our way to the supermarket (it really is a supermarket!) and shared some factory packaged meat and dinner rolls to make sandwiches along with our own juice or soda (I had a bottle of Pepsi!). Then Fred went to get his shoes fixed while the three of us wandered around together doing our muzungu shopping. For me, this included: popcorn, apples, a Kit-Kat, apple juice, chips for Lisa, and laundry soap & highlighters for Emily. Finally, probably my favorite thing that we did in town was go to the traditional produce market. I so wish I had pictures of this place! But we’ve been really discouraged from taking pictures without asking, a lot of Kenyans believe muzungus take pictures to take them home and laugh with their friends, and I’m not sure I why I wanted to take a picture would have translated well even with Swahili translation. Maybe my next trip will provide a better opportunity. For now, I’m satisfied with my green oranges that taste a little more like limes! (The lady we bought them from gave me an extra than what I paid her for, I guess because I was sweet! ;) When she asked which I wanted, I asked her to pick because she knew which were best-but who knows how much of that translated.)
And today was another, very traditional African Sunday…I was the only muzungu who went to church with this group, so I got a lot of extra attention from giggling faces peeking around their friends! It was precious. And I was told multiple times that I looked like a real Kenyan lady, my long blue dress proved I knew how to dress for African church-so that might have added to the children’s confusion. :) When we went outside to “help” with Sunday school because there wasn’t going to be a translation during the Swahili service, we discovered that we WERE Sunday school! Which at first glance isn’t a huge issue, we had a Swahili-speaking girl with us, my sister Antonia, but…not one of the younger children even spoke Swahili! There was no chance of translation or communication whatsoever. We managed to explain Duck, Duck, Goose first in English to Antonia, then in Swahili to one of the two teenagers present, then in a Kenyan tribal language to the kids; and so we played that for a good 45+ minutes. But even that turned into “Jack, Jack, Ghost!” Afterwards it was all we could do to relax with the kids and make sure they didn’t fall and crack their heads open on the giant pile of stones they were climbing on until service ended. It was quite the experience! Following the service they had prepared an exceptionally nice lunch for our base leader (because he is on staff at the church) and us, his visitors. We ate chipati (a tortilla is the only similar thing I can think of), white rice, and cabbage with other veggies and some kind of meat in it. The amount of work and preparation that had gone into our meal is quite obvious. So as the only muzungu present, I prayed that I wouldn’t get sick from anything that might have come in contact with the food during its preparation, and ate up! It was so humbling…Truly an experience I will never forget.
~Chloe Anne
My third Sunday in Kenya…Every week holds the same overall schedule during the lecture phase of DTS, so we count time with Sundays and speakers. I can tell this base is starting to feel like a second home, or at least I’m getting used to (most) everything (not the continuous presence of spiders in the pit toilet at night…), because when they changed things up on us for the weekend it began to feel foreign. Over half of our team has been on outreach for the weekend, serving at an orphanage near Nairobi. I didn’t think it could get more quiet and peaceful here than it already was. I was definitely wrong! We’ve definitely been missing some big personalities around here lately. I’m looking forward to all my brothers and sisters getting home tonight!
However, I have appreciated the chance to relax the past few days. The quiet was especially beneficial on Friday after I almost fainted from dehydration (I’m presuming) combined with the heat of the traditional African kitchen when we were cooking dinner. After some severe dizziness, I sat down outside in the refreshing breeze and then went back to my room to lie down until it was time for dinner. And with rest, some food, water, and extra electrolytes in me I felt much better, and I have ever since! (I would be honest if I was feeling anything else!) The loving prayers of my family and some long-awaited Skype sessions also helped lift my spirits significantly!
Now, I’ve grown up with brothers. I’m not too much of a “girl’s girl,” you might say…So Saturday was also very refreshing. The birds woke me to a grey, rainy African morning. Which, of course, helped me to feel right at home! It struck me as funny though that our group felt it necessary to wait out the rain before we moved on with our day-definitely not something an Oregonian is used to! But I played along and waited in the dining hall with Fred and Menzo & Tobi (the two European guys on our team) until the rain calmed to a sprinkle. Then the four of us walked about 15-20 minutes to the nearest town. We had to wait a bit for a reasonably priced (less than 50 cents) mutatu, or “van bus” as I like to call it, because they had raised the prices due to the rain and the number of people waiting (not to mention there were a few muzungus present, although we were assured that had nothing to do with it). I was especially grateful guys traveling with me when a drunken man started singing “You’re so beautiful, you’re so beautiful…” to me. I may have boarded the mutatu that had just arrived by the grace of God with a little more determination….But my brothers here really do a great job of looking out for me! We sat 4 YWAMers across the bench with me on the inside, and as we walked through our main town I was always the middle duckling that followed Fred around. I’m sure we were quite a sight! Once we’d been dropped at the bus stop, our first trip was to the ATM for the Europeans to withdraw money. We then made our way to the supermarket (it really is a supermarket!) and shared some factory packaged meat and dinner rolls to make sandwiches along with our own juice or soda (I had a bottle of Pepsi!). Then Fred went to get his shoes fixed while the three of us wandered around together doing our muzungu shopping. For me, this included: popcorn, apples, a Kit-Kat, apple juice, chips for Lisa, and laundry soap & highlighters for Emily. Finally, probably my favorite thing that we did in town was go to the traditional produce market. I so wish I had pictures of this place! But we’ve been really discouraged from taking pictures without asking, a lot of Kenyans believe muzungus take pictures to take them home and laugh with their friends, and I’m not sure I why I wanted to take a picture would have translated well even with Swahili translation. Maybe my next trip will provide a better opportunity. For now, I’m satisfied with my green oranges that taste a little more like limes! (The lady we bought them from gave me an extra than what I paid her for, I guess because I was sweet! ;) When she asked which I wanted, I asked her to pick because she knew which were best-but who knows how much of that translated.)
And today was another, very traditional African Sunday…I was the only muzungu who went to church with this group, so I got a lot of extra attention from giggling faces peeking around their friends! It was precious. And I was told multiple times that I looked like a real Kenyan lady, my long blue dress proved I knew how to dress for African church-so that might have added to the children’s confusion. :) When we went outside to “help” with Sunday school because there wasn’t going to be a translation during the Swahili service, we discovered that we WERE Sunday school! Which at first glance isn’t a huge issue, we had a Swahili-speaking girl with us, my sister Antonia, but…not one of the younger children even spoke Swahili! There was no chance of translation or communication whatsoever. We managed to explain Duck, Duck, Goose first in English to Antonia, then in Swahili to one of the two teenagers present, then in a Kenyan tribal language to the kids; and so we played that for a good 45+ minutes. But even that turned into “Jack, Jack, Ghost!” Afterwards it was all we could do to relax with the kids and make sure they didn’t fall and crack their heads open on the giant pile of stones they were climbing on until service ended. It was quite the experience! Following the service they had prepared an exceptionally nice lunch for our base leader (because he is on staff at the church) and us, his visitors. We ate chipati (a tortilla is the only similar thing I can think of), white rice, and cabbage with other veggies and some kind of meat in it. The amount of work and preparation that had gone into our meal is quite obvious. So as the only muzungu present, I prayed that I wouldn’t get sick from anything that might have come in contact with the food during its preparation, and ate up! It was so humbling…Truly an experience I will never forget.
~Chloe Anne
Sunday, October 14, 2012
The Beauty of Grace
October 7, 2012
On Sunday, I walked this road (and a good number of others!) to the most precious little church I’ve ever seen. We walked through the African bush (which was hosting zebras on our way home), along rock-scattered dirt roads, across the highway, up a small dirt hill path, and through fields-yet even once we reached the church I didn’t see it…
On the far side of a small mud hut is a thin opening for a door that has never been, and likely will never be, installed. Ducking inside, you will find 7 rows of plastic chairs where the small congregation of 15 people patiently waits to welcome any visitor who has also come to gather in the presence of The Lord. This humble and passionate group is made up of the pastor, his wife and child, 4 mothers and their babies, 2 other women, an elderly man, and the two younger men on staff at our YWAM base that my fellow muzungu friend Lisa and I accompanied.
Needless to say, these two tall, fair-skinned, freckled, young women caused quite the ruckus! Scared babies crying, you know, the whole shebang! Fred, one of the staff members was called outside by the pastor to discuss something (something along the lines of asking what we westerners were prepared to share sing or preach………) in Swahili…TIA! And so following some Swahili praise, worship, and preaching (to which they very graciously added some English in the form of hymns and translation from Fred) we were openly welcomed and asked (fully expected) to come to the front of the church (room) beside the preacher and introduce ourselves. And after introducing ourselves you could probably predict which of the 3 previously listed options we then chose to continue with when we had Fred, the worship leader at our YWAM base, standing next to us. I don’t remember how many songs we sang, only that as we did I prayed our voices would not simply pour out into the small room surrounded by mud, but much more into the hearts of these women. Because without God, there is no way our shaky, out of key, poorly timed English words might have reached these Swahili-speaking women! But there is no doubt these women spoke to me instantly, from the very moment I entered in on their normal Sunday routine.
In this small room, in these women, I saw much more than mud walls and a filthy dirt floor and second-hand Sunday-best dresses. I saw hope, I saw determination, I saw inspiration! These women carried their children, wrapped across their backs with an ordinary piece of cloth, who knows how far to come bring themselves before The Lord, their God in the purest way imaginable. They came to give a precious offering to the work God is doing in their community through a humble, ambitious pastor. They came to demonstrate to their young children what it is to love and serve the Lord! The purity of these women, the humility and gratitude of their hearts is more than I could ever hope to possess. And in this my heart rejoices; leaps for joy at the reassurance that in God’s eyes I am the same as these humble women: as blameless as Jesus. That, right there, is the beauty of grace.
~Chloe Anne
Friday, October 5, 2012
I Finally Have Internet (TIA!!)
September 30, 2012
One of my least favorite questions in the midst of my preparations for and arrival to Kenya has been, “What are your expectations?” Honestly, that has to be one of the broadest, most unspecific questions. Five months ago this whole trip was unexpected; I was sitting at a desk, enduring my last few days stuck in a high school classroom, wondering which country I was going to be in during the year which, by all expectations, would be my freshman year of college. But I could sense that was not what God had planned for me at this point in my life. And so, through a long series of events, I now find myself sitting in the shade of a foreign tree, surrounded by rough grass and orange dirt paths, and the longer I sit here the prettiest birds I have ever seen and a toucan-like thingy venture closer and closer to me. By no means did I expect any of this. (Well, except for the orange dirt, I was looking forward to that.) Nor did I expect to spend my entire first day in Kenya walking the streets of Nairobi in flip-flops for a trip to buy laundry soap (Africa Time!!!) or staying behind from a 4 hour long church service with my fellow North-Westerner friend, Lisa (who has already threatened cannibalism, which isn’t a completely insane idea for us to come up with at this point, actually…), for a chance for some quiet and to finally start to process all this CRAZINESS!! But, here I am. The truth is: I have very little expectation. (I will get moderately sick at some point and I will meet some very incredible people, but I will never completely conquer all of these language barriers-unless I feel like learning: German, Swiss-German, Norwegian, Canadian-English, Swahili, Ugandan, Dutch, and a handful of tribal languages. But honestly, that’s about it!) And that is exactly what makes this moment so perfectly beautiful! I never could have dreamt of a moment so incredible, yet here I am! I do not have expectations of this trip, or of God; He has expectations of me. He is in the process of doing a great work in me over the next few months! And while that is incredibly exciting, it’s a little scary at the same time. Bob Goff’s words could not have come at a more perfect time (total God thing!) last Sunday, “God wants to blow your mind, so be not afraid!” No matter what these next five months have in store, I know they are from God and are a part of His plan for my life. I am therefore choosing to embrace every part of the work God is doing in me, without expectation or prejudice. Because through it He is going to blow my mind in big ways!! SAWA-SAWA!
~Chloe Anne
One of my least favorite questions in the midst of my preparations for and arrival to Kenya has been, “What are your expectations?” Honestly, that has to be one of the broadest, most unspecific questions. Five months ago this whole trip was unexpected; I was sitting at a desk, enduring my last few days stuck in a high school classroom, wondering which country I was going to be in during the year which, by all expectations, would be my freshman year of college. But I could sense that was not what God had planned for me at this point in my life. And so, through a long series of events, I now find myself sitting in the shade of a foreign tree, surrounded by rough grass and orange dirt paths, and the longer I sit here the prettiest birds I have ever seen and a toucan-like thingy venture closer and closer to me. By no means did I expect any of this. (Well, except for the orange dirt, I was looking forward to that.) Nor did I expect to spend my entire first day in Kenya walking the streets of Nairobi in flip-flops for a trip to buy laundry soap (Africa Time!!!) or staying behind from a 4 hour long church service with my fellow North-Westerner friend, Lisa (who has already threatened cannibalism, which isn’t a completely insane idea for us to come up with at this point, actually…), for a chance for some quiet and to finally start to process all this CRAZINESS!! But, here I am. The truth is: I have very little expectation. (I will get moderately sick at some point and I will meet some very incredible people, but I will never completely conquer all of these language barriers-unless I feel like learning: German, Swiss-German, Norwegian, Canadian-English, Swahili, Ugandan, Dutch, and a handful of tribal languages. But honestly, that’s about it!) And that is exactly what makes this moment so perfectly beautiful! I never could have dreamt of a moment so incredible, yet here I am! I do not have expectations of this trip, or of God; He has expectations of me. He is in the process of doing a great work in me over the next few months! And while that is incredibly exciting, it’s a little scary at the same time. Bob Goff’s words could not have come at a more perfect time (total God thing!) last Sunday, “God wants to blow your mind, so be not afraid!” No matter what these next five months have in store, I know they are from God and are a part of His plan for my life. I am therefore choosing to embrace every part of the work God is doing in me, without expectation or prejudice. Because through it He is going to blow my mind in big ways!! SAWA-SAWA!
~Chloe Anne
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