Out of Kenya! ...and our parents said Yea!

In these last few days God has been so amazing to us ! There were so many things that have happened, so I will try and condense them, but I want to formally apologize for the length of this blog.

· Monday: We went sailing on Lake Naivasha. There was hardly any wind, it rained a little bit, and I was terrified a hippo would tip us over. Despite that it was pretty cool to be sailing in Africa. Jill accidentally left her iPod at the sailing club which we didn’t discover until late Monday night, but Jason found it the next morning , and for a bribe of 1000 Ksh, the iPod is now safe in Naivasha. For supper, Lisa prepared a birthday supper for Will, because his birthday is coming up on the 19th. As excited as I am to be moving on, it was hard to leave the Hovingh’s , we had an awesome time doing life with them. We packed everything we could that night ( some of our laundry was still wet) and then Jill and Beth stayed up an extra hour and half hunting the mosquitoes in our room before we could sleep peacefully.

· Tuesday: We were up early to finish packing, and we set off for Nairobi with Joel ( the director of the new orphanage in Naivasha) to renew our visas. The whole process took less time than we thought it would, and the immigration officials didn’t make a fuss that our visas had been expired for fifteen days already. We filled out forms, waited, got fingerprinted ( which was a little awkward for Will’s pinky) , got our passports stamped and at last it was legal for us to be in the country again ! After booking our bus for Tanzania, and eating lunch with Joel, we went to the Java house to take advantage of their Internet. This is where the story begins to get interesting, but for you to fully understand it I am going to backtrack a couple of weeks.


We have all been learning so much about ourselves and about God since we have been here. Sometimes we learn over long periods of time, and other times the “teachable moments” happen so fast and frequently it is…intense. This past week we have all been dealing with a lot of trust and control issues. We all want to control the things around us, like this trip, our relationships, what God does for us and the list goes on. As we were getting plans together for this East Africa loop, I was nervous about the whole situation because there was an endless number of things that could have gone wrong, and any one of those things could have delayed us enough to have been stuck in Kenya for an indefinite amount of time. At some point I realized that I just needed to trust God, and everything was going to be OK, whether it was by my definition of “OK” or by His definition of “OK”. So, as a summary, this whole week has been about us learning and needing to simply trust that God will work it out.



Alright, now lets jump back to the Java house we were at Tuesday afternoon. I went on-line and discovered that I had much less money in my accounts than expected, in fact I was pretty close to broke. This was surprising for me, and a lot of different thoughts went through my head, including maybe switching my flight to fly home that week. In the end though, I think it was another way of God saying “Do you trust me? Are you serving two masters? Serve me.” I had also received an e-mail from my home church that day, after not being in correspondence with them for months, asking how I was. Even if it was pure coincidence, it was a reminder that He has something in mind. So, either in foolishness, or faith we decided to set out on a loop of East Africa. We don’t know how the money situation will work out. Maybe it will be through the hospitality of families we meet along the way. Maybe it will be through people at home contributing to our living expenses, or service projects we do along the way. Maybe we will win the lottery. Who knows?



(side note from Jill—right after we found out the money situation at java, our bill from the drinks we ordered in order to use the internet came to the table. The bill was 420 ksh, and the only money that we had was in Will’s pocket. So he pulled it out and it was 400 ksh. And then Bethany pulled out a 20 ksh coin, her only change. We had 100 ksh left over for the 90 ksh matatu ride to the Maxwell’s. Since then we have pretty much been living off of bread, bananas, and roasted maize from the side of the road. J But we have learned that God always provides just enough, right when you need it.)



That night we stayed with the Maxwell’s, a wonderful missionary family in Nairobi, and got in contact with some pastor’s in Burundi, who we are planning on spending time with.


. Wednesday: It was raining as we set off for Nairobi to catch our bus. As we were waiting for a matatu, a Kenyan in a pick up truck pulled up and offered us a ride into the city, and took us right where we needed to go. That was a little bit of holy mischief. The bus ride was rainy, but mostly uneventful. We ended up paying $30 for transit visas instead of paying the full $100 for the Tanzanian visa, so that was a blessing (since we only had $400)
Thursday : We went to the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is happening in Arusha right now. We got visitors passes, headsets with different languages and were able to sit and observe one of the trials for about an hour. The whole experience was really interesting. Thursday night we stayed with some friends of the Hovingh’s, the Schaubroeck’s, who graciously opened up their home to us, fed us, and prayed for us. It was refreshing to be with them!
Friday : Today we are back at the Backpackers Hotel that we spent the night at Wednesday night, and tomorrow morning we are taking the 6 am bus to Dodoma. After Dodoma we will try and catch the train to Kigoma. From Kigoma we will either go by ferry, or by road to Bujumbura ( Burundi). All this travel will take a few days though. And we have a new Swedish friend who is going to do the trek to Burundi with us, and then continue on to climb some mountains in Rwanda.

This has been a crazy week! But, I discovered, it is better to trust God. Once we made the decision to keep on trekking despite financial difficulties, I felt so much more peaceful. There is a divine purpose for this trip, and that purpose will never be fulfilled if I keep trying to control everything. Until next time, make good choices, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, be kind to everyone, and remember, you are a BEAUTIFUL person.

Love and peace,

Bethany