The Tripod!!! Will, Jill, and Bethany in Africa

Will's Blog

2008-04-17T20:32:00.003+03:00

Hello everyone,

This is Will.

My new blog site is: http://wecaughtstardust.blogspot.com.

I'll be writing about Africa, about life, and hopefully stories of dancing in mud puddles, climbing trees, running through fields of daisies and "contagious revolution that dances, laughs, and loves."

"But there is another movement stirring, a little revolution of sorts. Many of us are refusing to allow distorted images of our faith to define us. There are those of us who, rather than simply reject pop evangelicalism, want to spread another kind of Christianity, a faith that has as much to say about this world as it does about the next. New prophets are rising up who try to change the future, not just predict it. There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation who stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of. And this little revolution is irresistible. It is a contagious revolution that dances, laughs, and loves."

Shane Claiborne in the Irresistible Revolution.

Grace and peace to you.

lovewill

The Long Overdue Update

2008-04-02T18:37:00.003+03:00

hey everybody,

It's Will. This morning I'm writing to you from Sherman, Texas. This update is long overdue.

This Saturday I will have been home for one month. Jill and Bethany have been home a month as of today and yesterday.

I should apologize for my/(our) lack of blogs in the final days of our time in Africa. The last time we wrote was from Bujumbura, Burundi. While in Bujumbura, things began to get pretty tough for the three of us. Central Africa (Burundi and Congo) is one of the most poverty stricken places on the globe, and seeing that daily wore on us over time. Burundi is the third poorest country in the world. We spent two weeks in Bujumbura visiting refugee camps, repatriate camps, deaf/dumb schools, the beach (once or twice), war torn communities, and two of the poorest neighborhoods in Bujumbura (and therefore probably the world).

We saw things that blew our minds and tore up our hearts. Malnourished children was the norm. We saw people who were missing limbs, eyes, and any sense of hope. At this point, I still have not been able to even begin to process the things I saw in my last month in Africa. However, this morning I just wanted to record our last bit of travel and let everyone know that we are home safe.

After leaving Burundi, we traveled into Congo. We stayed with our friend Juma in a small hotel in Congo and were blown away by the hospitality of the church there. I truly felt that those people embodied the CHURCH- a community of Christ followers. While in Congo, we spoke to oprhans, women raped by remnants of the Interhamwe (genocidaires from Rwanda), and churches in the midst of extreme poverty. I thought that the slums in Nairobi were bad until I saw Bukavu, Congo, where 4 million people live in conditions worse than that of the Nairobi slums.

From Congo, we traveled to Kigali, Rwanda. As we drove into the country for the first time, I felt the darkness of the horror that befell that land 14 years ago during the genocide. We stayed with Dale, one of Bethany's friends from university.

After Rwanda came Uganda and a beautiful place called Lake Bunyonyi where we got some much needed rest. Some of my fondest memories of our time together happened at Lake Bunyonyi. We spent three days apart fasting, praying, and processing the last five months of our lives. From Bunyonyi we passed through Kampala and returned via first class seats on Kenya Airways to Nairobi. Three days later Jill and Bethany went home. I spent a final week back in Naivasha with the Hovingh's who are definitely one of the coolest families in the world.

And now we are back home safe. It has been a hard transition and I for one am by no means adjusted. However, we are trusting that God will continue to show us the way and strive daily to be a part of what he dreams for this world. The three of us are keeping in touch and I sure miss the girls.

AND THERE IS SOME GREAT NEWS!!!!!! BETHANY GOT ENGAGED LAST NIGHT... WHEEEEEE!!!! Go Steve...

So... I think that this hereby ends the blog for the Tripod in Africa, mostly because we're not in Africa anymore. However, I find solace in writing and want to do a better job of remembering and writing about the things we saw and did. Therefore, I'm going to be opening a new blog where I'll combine stories and pictures to try and process all of this and dream of a better world. If you're interested, check out that blog for stories of Burundi, Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda.

Grace and Peace...

Will

Mzungu! Give Me!

2008-02-09T06:15:00.000+03:00

Today we tried to go DR Congo, but it didn’t quite work. We couldn’t get a bus, and if we went the long way we would have to pay for a visa twice (typical). While we were waiting to find out if we could get a bus , this Burundian guy was hitting on Jill (typical) but I’d say she made the best of the situation. Long story short, she traded our e-mail addresses to him for his Quiksilver hat !

Also, we saw a woman wearing a shirt that said “ I SURVIVED THE ICE STORM!”
There are so many funny t-shirts here!

The day after visiting the deaf and dumb school, we went to visit two communities that had been affected by the war. Rubirizi was occupied by the rebels in 2004-2005 and consequently all the residents had to flee to various countries. People are being repatriated now, but the going is tough. They have no money to buy seeds to grow food. The soil has been destroyed by the grenades and bombs. There are many widows whose husbands were killed in the war, and who have no steady source of income. There isn’t adequate water supply. Many of the houses have no roofs. The health in the area is very poor, and the clinic doesn’t have electricity or water. And, as I was surprised to find out, there is no organization (NGO or other) working to alleviate the poverty of these people.

We talked with the head of the community, and with an association of widows and heard their stories. Jill explained that our purpose for visiting was to experience Africa, meet the people, and go home and tell their stories, in an effort to help bridge the gap between the rich and the poor. Although this may have seemed like a good enough reason to visit, it paled in comparison to the overwhelming need we encountered there. I felt shamed and truly sorry we had nothing more to offer. Then we prayed with them, and for them, and left.

The second community we visited, Muramvya , had also been occupied in 2005, but the residents were not allowed to leave, and so it was essentially turned into a ghetto. At some point someone intervened because it was a violation of human rights, and now they are in about the same situation as Rubirizi. We met a man there who was living with his 95 year old mother and his 10 children. He worked on a farm nearby and made hardly any money. We took him inside his house, and gave him some money to get him through the week, and after Will handed the money to him, he took it and raised his thin hands up to heaven and said “Thank-you…” over and over again, tears spilling down his cheeks. The gratitude he showed was overwhelming, and beautiful. The passage when Jesus says “ Blessed are the poor for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:3) took on new and mystical meaning. We prayed for his family before we left, and that moment for me was a moment of divine communion, a glimpse into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Yesterday we went to see the Twa Pigmy people who live not too far from Bujumbura. They were among the poorest people we’ve visited yet. There were a few government houses, but most of the families lived in mud huts. They wore dirty, ripped clothes, and most had no shoes. I doubt they had adequate water supply, or access to medical care. We brought a box of soap and some salt to distribute among the people. Each home we visited we gave six bars of soap and a bag of salt, but there was so much more that they needed. People were constantly asking us for something, using broken English, or by holding their hands out.

One of the hardest things for me to deal with here is that I am looked at as a dollar sign. People see us and will come up and say “ Mzungu, give me!” It is dehumanizing, in a sense, to be regarded as nothing more than a dollar sign. But it is nothing compared to the dehumanizing poverty they live in day after day. Nothing compared to the dehumanizing way the West turns a blind eye to their need, and nothing compared to the dehumanizing complacency that plagues the West.

I’m sorry if this blog was a little bit choppy to read, but our week has been full of ups and downs, and I wanted to include both the “ups” and the “downs” in this. Tomorrow we are going to spend two nights in the DR Congo, and then we will head to Rwanda from there, so please be in prayer about that. Take care, smile at those you love, be careful, be reckless, cry, laugh, be kind to old people and remember you are a beautiful person.

Love and peace,

Bethany

2008-02-01T20:33:00.000+03:00

This is what we did today and it made us feel like [insert appropriate emotion here].

“What we are doing may seem insignificant, but it is most important that we do it.” -Gandhi
Today I started re-reading the book that started it all for me: The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. Today, I saw a boy beaten in the market after he sold me some bread. Today we visited a school for deaf and dumb children. Today we gave a new set of clothes to a deaf and dumb boy, along with some soap and a toothbrush. Today we visited a widow who lost her son in the war and had both legs amputated last year.

This morning, I went to the market down the street with our pastor friend Jean-Baptiste to buy some clothes to take to a little boy named Joseph at the deaf and dumb school. Deep in the winding alleys of the market, a street boy (some mental retardation due to substance abuse was evident) was selling bread. As I was talking to the boy in Swahili about prices for the bags of fresh-made bread, a crowd gathered. There aren’t many white people in Burundi. Like none. As I finished buying the bread from the boy, I began to feel a bit claustrophobic in the huge crowd. I began to push my way outwards to catch up with Jean-Baptiste when I heard shouting and yelling behind me. I turned to see that same boy in the midst of a group of older boys who were beating and slapping him.

I have no idea what he did to them and why they were hitting him. However, as they beat him, they were laughing with one another so I didn’t really need an explanation. I don’t think I handled it very well. I pushed back to the middle and got really angry at them. After a few seconds, they decided it was in their best interests to leave him alone probably because shop walls aren’t that comfortable. Man, I was angry.

Street boys are called trash in Africa. They aren’t usually considered people. And so they get picked on and abused constantly. I don’t think I handle it very well.

After we finished in the market, we picked up the girls and headed up towards the foothills to the school for deaf and dumb children. When we arrived at the school, we got out of the taxi and were greeted with a different sort of reception. Normally, whenever we go somewhere, we are greeted with cries of mzungu mzungu (white person). But today, we were greeted with silence. The kids surrounded us and wildly made hand motions. Some of them are able to squeak and some are even able to laugh. The silence was deafening.

While at the school, we played lots of games of hopscotch, the always-a-success “balance game”, basketball, and acrobatics. I drew America in the dirt and drew Africa across my dirt rendition of an ocean and played like I was an airplane flying from Texas to Burundi. We gave hugs and smiles and learned a bit of sign language.

We were all standing around playing hopscotch and the balance game when some kid brings out a basketball. And off we went to their old court. So then we did alley-oops, pick-and-roll class, and played some two-on-two. And I didn’t say anything the whole time. But we laughed a ton. And we played hard. And they were the most honest basketball players I’ve ever played with.

As I sit here trying to think about how I would describe the experiences today, the only word that comes to my mind is beautiful. And that’s infinitely inadequate. Beautiful faces. Beautiful people. These are the kids that no one really cares about. We turn away from them because we think that they can’t offer us anything because they can’t hear us or speak to us. Therefore, they are worthless to society. What a lie! Or maybe we just look at them and think how sad it is and then go back to our lives.

In reality, if we would only take the time to notice, maybe we would see that children like these have more to offer society than words can express. Maybe we would learn a little bit about life and love from children such as these. Jesus talked a lot about the little children and I think maybe I saw a little bit of the why today. What joy! What peace! What hope! What love!

Jesus said, “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.” Maybe if we would take more time to look into the eyes of the “least of these,” we would see God. I think that I would learn more about the things that God wants us to know about himself and our place in the world with those kids than I would ever learn in some university somewhere. And it would be a lot cheaper.

I hope we can go back soon.

After the school for the deaf and dumb, we went to visit a friend of Juma and Jean-Baptiste (our pastor friends; we are staying with Jean). Mary Louise. Juma described her as a woman of God. She used to be a teacher and worship leader around East Africa until she lost her legs. They were amputated last year due to complications from diabetes. She is a widow and her son was killed in the civil war in 1995. She lives very frugally in the material sense but I think she is one of the richest people in the world. You walk into her presence and feel encouraged by the shine that emanates from her person. She has hardly anything, but she gave each of us a soda. We sat and talked to her and answered questions and as we were leaving, she offered a beautiful word of advice to us. We prayed for her and left her with a small gift of love.

Days like today and yesterday require me to reexamine my thoughts on God and the world and my place in it. Mostly I just wanted to relate the beauty in people I saw today. When we go to these places of destitution and extreme poverty, it seems that I feel more connected to God. I’m sorry I can’t really explain it, but sometimes I feel like I’m looking into Jesus’ eyes as I stare into the eyes of people who have nothing but hope and joy. And I know that because it’s not right for people to live like this, I must come back someday.

Today, I’d encourage you to let God tap you into the big picture. Get involved. Do something radical. Speak out against an injustice you see. Head down to the local homeless shelter. Take lunch to a homeless man and spend the afternoon talking. Be Jesus to someone and look for him in their eyes. Ok, I’m out for tonight.

Peace be with you.

willyoulove

May we continue to feed each other hope as we dance God’s revolution together. -Shane Claiborne

2008-01-31T12:43:00.000+03:00

This will be the first installment of a series called “ This is what we did today and it made us feel like [insert appropriate emotion]”

Today we went to two different places, both of them poverty-stricken and intensely affected by the civil-war that has torn Burundi apart for decades, and is still not over.
The first area we went to was a community about 10 km from Bujumbura that used to be thriving with many families and houses, but early in the 2000’s one of the rebel groups took over the area, made it into one of their stronghold’s, destroyed all the houses and forced everyone to flee. There were remnants of houses everywhere we looked, and it was eerie knowing that we were walking on land where people had been killed for no reason other than their race. We talked with a cousin of Jean-Baptiste’s who spoke French, and he told us of how the community was thriving before the battle there, but afterwards people had lost friends, children and family members. It broke my heart listening to him.

The second place we visited was a repatriation camp funded by the government of Burundi, where refugees came to live if they had no family and no land to go back to. A lot of the people there had been displaced in the 1968 or 1972 conflicts, or were born in refugee camps in Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania. There was so much poverty and suffering present in that place, it is hard to describe.

After seeing the things we saw, I was overwhelmed by how much we have… we have so many material objects, but more importantly we have so much opportunity. I won the birth lottery being born in North America where we have so much, and much of what we have has been gotten at the expense of others. As a group we decided that we need to be giving more freely. We have had our moments of worrying about money, about how we may or may not have enough to see us through the rest of this trip, but today was a reminder that everything we have has been given to us, and therefore we must give freely. I am coming to a point where I don’t want to have money leftover when I return home, because I return home to an opportunity, and opportunity to work and make money. But the people here are trapped in a cycle of poverty. So we will choose to give and trust that God will provide for us what we really need to keep going.

Another thing I was reminded of was a quotation I read in a Geez magazine not too long ago. It challenges me to re-examine my motivations for being here, and I hope it will challenge you to re-examine you motivations in reading our blog, and looking at the pictures of the poverty we post on the internet.

“Anti-racist theorist Sherene Razack observes that the white, privileged and respectable identity builds itself by being able to enter places of degeneracy and come out unscathed, willing and ready to tell the tale” Razack goes on to describe the “telling of the tale” as “consumption of media images and stories”

Are we here to simply bring images back home for people to consume and say “Oh, that is so sad !” and then go on with our “white, privileged and respectable” lives ? I pray that these experiences with extreme poverty would not become another way we reinforce our identity as the “privileged” but instead would help destroy that distinction. I pray that instead of coming out “unscathed” we would be profoundly changed, and moved to action. My prayer is the same for you.

Love,

Bethany

Ps: That quotation can be found in the Fall 2007 issue of Geez magazine, in an article entitled “In the wake of Katrina, what lesson, inspiration or insight can we take from New Orleans ?” by Anna Bowen.

It's Night in Bujumbura

2008-01-30T10:18:00.001+03:00

It is night in Bujumbura. The normal night sounds of the capital city of Burundi are muffled, yes, almost non-existent tonight, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I write from a small, humid room on the top floor of a residence building, listening to the drips of the rain outside the lone window. I sit on a thin mattress on the floor, the same mattress where I will soon lay my head. Next to me sleeps a young man from Congo, here visiting his sister-in-law. Three feet away, another young man tosses fitfully at the sound of thunder… a university student at the University of Burundi. He is studying law and desires peace for this country torn by ten long years of civil war caused by the same tribal disputes that sparked the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Sometimes I feel as if I am in a dream. Three feet of space separate me from this young man who has lost both his mother and father to this war and yet it feels like I am oceans away from that pain that I sometimes see in his eyes. O the contrast that I feel sometimes…Here I sit with Death Cab for Cutie in my ear and my two-thousand dollar laptop and my petty worries about the scratch on my keyboard, the smudge on my screen, my skinny arms, my pounding headache, the girl in my mind, and the humid air; but, four walls separate me from one of the poorest capital cities on earth, where the majority of people live on less than one dollar a day. It is hard to reconcile the thoughts and feelings that my own blatant humanity produces in light of all that surrounds me. Oftentimes, I worry about going home, back to tv, cinemas, four cars for a family of five, Texas steaks, and apathy, materialism, and “democracy.”

I suppose that tonight I write because these thoughts and emotions need release in some way. I suppose that I am asking for prayer for our little community, our little threesome, as we count down the remaining thirty-four days that we have left together in Africa before Jill and Bethany go home. I doubt that I will find a resolution or understanding in my writing tonight, but maybe the process will bring a sort of catharsis.

Today, as we pondered our remaining five weeks together, our money situation, and the situation in Kenya that affects our return flights out of Nairobi, I felt the oppressive weight of discouragement settle upon my shoulders. Lately, I have struggled so much with expectations…for myself, for the three of us, and for our world. I struggle with the brokenness and disconnectedness I feel between Jill, Bethany, and I…brokenness made all the more evident by the thought of such short time left, by the overwhelming nature of what we must process and deal with daily, and by our broken humanity that falls so short sometimes. I struggle with who I have been and wonder sometimes at who I am becoming. I struggle with the feelings of control and security I must give to God in regards to finances. I struggle with my response to what I see; sometimes I find myself turning the switch to “off” so as not to have to deal with the poverty and unrest around me. And I become so disgusted with my petty wants, desires, and expectations in light of the brutal reality beyond these four walls.

Today, in downtown Bujumbura, I stepped over a young baby on the side of the road with no arms and legs. Whether her condition was the result of the war or a birth defect, I will never know. Insulated by the safety of a taxi, I drove past a group of children with distended bellies made grotesque from malnutrition. I drove past an open, reeking landfill, on the top of which young children rummaged around looking for even a morsel of something with caloric value. Outside my window, I can gaze upon a disgusting slum, reeking of sweat, grime, and waste where people try to catch a few hours of sleep before another day begins. People not unlike me…systems and organs wrapped up in flesh and bound by the laws of gravity, space, and time. People just like me…feeling pain, despair, and hopelessness.

It is maddening sometimes to be here at the gaping mouth of all this need with so little to offer. Though I have the entire world in the eyes of these people, I have no money to give, no skill set to offer, and no time to effect lasting change. And that, today, made me discouraged. As the girls and I were talking today, the unspoken was finally spoken; that is, “We don’t have much time left. We are at the point when we will really not be helping or loving these people. We have no money, no skills, and little time.” To that, I asked, “Ok, then why are we here?”

Bethany responded, “To be changed.” And I sat and thought about that the rest of the day. “Africa, I came to change you, but instead you’re changing me.” I came here with so much idealism, so much pride that I was doing something to “change the world.” Doing something to help people and offer hope to the hopeless and love to the loveless as I so often like to think. But, in reality, these hopeless and these loveless are offering so much to this young, hopeless and loveless, young boy.
I know God is using this time to change me and break me of my pride. In the gospels I see Christ using people that were passed over by everyone else around them. Sometimes I think that the lesser we become, the more God can and will use us. I used to say that in my comfortable and prideful bubble back home but never lived it. In an email from Jill’s friend Alex, he wrote,

“And it really made me realize that you don’t have to be great to change the world for Christ. Jesus picked the C plus average fishermen from Bethsaida over the well-schooled Hellenistic Jews from Jerusalem. So like, even though, I'm just Alex Manion, a B minus student from wimpy Grand Rapids, Michigan, I can make big change. And that pumps me up like none other man.”

Yes, Alex, you get ten dollars because I quoted you/told a story about you. ;-)

I know God has used the three of us to bring hope to people and I pray that he will use us when go home to lovingly speak honest words like the prophets did against the apathy and comfort of the modern church. I know he is continually working in us and around us daily to do big things in our lives and bring about huge change in us that he might use us as we give up more of ourselves and he makes more room for himself. But man, sometimes the sheer humanity that I see in myself and this Africa overwhelms me.

One of the reasons I decided to write tonight was the fact that I just read a short story that my friend Andrew wrote that is, in reality, about the two of us. The story is about a young, wealthy Englishman who goes to Ireland during the Potato Famine of 1848 and is forever changed. The story hit so close to home that I got a bit nauseous as I was convicted about my attitude and subtle complacency of late. I will quote a telling portion of the story to close that will offer some insight as to how I am being changed, how we need prayer, and the reality of our current situation.

However, before I do, I want to ask for prayer. Please continue to pray for this little group of three teenagers from the West which has such a desire to see the kingdom of heaven here on this earth. Please pray for our hearts, that we will remain open to being changed during this last month we have together. Please pray for our financial situation, that God might provide that we might give to those who have so much less than we do. Please pray for our safety. Please pray that we might have wisdom as we try to decide how to get the girls home in a month…their flights are out of Nairobi and as BBC so willingly relates, Kenya is a hotbed of ethnic violence right now. Please pray for Kenya-that peace would come and that people would be healed. For Burundi- that peace would remain and the economy strengthened. Pray for the girl on the street today with no arms and no legs. For the boy in Kigoma with burn scars on his face and stubs for hands. For the elderly beggar in Mwende with despair in his eyes. For me and my heart. For the three of us and our love—both to one another and to the people around us. That brokenness would be healed from Christ’s love. And finally, that we would see the Kingdom come and that all of us could be witness to God’s beautiful plan to save the world coming to pass. I love you all. Here is the portion from Andrew’s story; there are two portions that I want ya’ll to have, maybe to understand a bit of where I am and a bit of how to pray for us.

John broke the silence. "What I was goin' to say a few minutes ago is, do you think that you could do something about this, back in England? I know it's silly, but you're rich, and surely you could somehow get into the government's processes or somethin', do somethin' about the way they treat us and the way they see us... O'Brien says that to the English, we're just so many animals, grubbin' about in the dirt and prayin' to the Virgin Mary and makin' babies like a lot of half-savages or some kind of thing like that. You know we aren't all that, we're human, aren't we? So do you think you could? I know it's a big thing to ask..."
Thomas looked up at the cloudless blue sky and replied, "It's not too much to ask, not at all. It's all I would ever want to do, I'm thinking. I saw that look in your eyes when we passed that girl, and I can't let myself do that, I can't ever just build up a wall around myself and cut myself off from feeling for my fellow humans. I'm not sure exactly what I'll do yet, but when I get back to England I know that I won't be able to live the same life I have for all my eighteen years up until now."

Back in London, Thomas stood in front of the Palace of Westminster, trying desperately to reconcile all that he had seen and heard and smelled in Ireland with all that he had known in the eighteen years of his life before. His thoughts flew wildly from John's little sister to his older sister to the wealthy captain of the ship he had ridden in to his own father sitting in Parliament to the watery soup John's mother worked on to a big oaken table covered in food at his parents' house. He could not understand why the one seemed like a dream in the face of the other, and the other seemed like a dream in the face of the one. He closed his eyes and remembered Ireland; the slimy black potato that John's little sister squatted down to pull out of the ground and timidly touched to her mouth, the putrid black slime touching her lips as her face screwed up in revulsion, and the sound of her retching behind the hut a few minutes after she had tried to eat it. Then his thoughts drifted to Christmas dinner at his own house; his family bowing their heads as his father intoned the prayer over the food, his sister Mary laughing at a joke as she spooned gravy onto her plate, the Christmas tree behind them festooned with candles and popcorn. He simply could not deal with the contrast, the massive difference that a few hundred miles of geography made in people's conditions. In the last week, the sheer inanity of it all had served to transform all his youthful energy into a fire that burned in his chest, spitting out sparks at every thought he had and scorching the halls of his parents' house as he restlessly paced them.

lovewill

P.S. I just also want to say that I am sorry for the lack of blogging of late. And for the general lack of factual information about life in East Africa. It is so hard sometimes to write it all down and I find myself writing during the rough times rather than the good times when I’m thinking about development, beauty of scenery, the way of life, culture, and etc. I have been hoping to go back through my journal and blog more about those things when I am home. Until, then my prayer is that you might be privy to this journey with us…that you might be changed in your own way along with us…and that all of us might be encouraged and inspired about the hope we do have…(first chapter of 1 Peter.)

Sweet bus ride...

2008-01-28T19:54:00.000+03:00

Conveniently……

Hello world. Jill and Bethany here bringing you the latest update! Beware, it is long, but entertaining.

So here we are, trying to make our way across Tanzania before our visas run out… but the going is very, very sloooow. Pole-POLE! A few days ago, we had a truly African bus ride experience. Where to begin…

Since our original plan of taking the train from Dodoma to Kigoma was foiled (tickets were all sold out until Feb. 9—waaay past our visa expiry date), we found ourselves stranded in Dodoma with only one possible way of getting to Kigoma. Taking ANOTHER bus up to Tabora and trying to catch the train from there. It seemed like a good plan. We were told by various people that the bus ride would be anywhere from 6-10 hours.

We arrived at the bus depot at 11:00 AM expecting the bus to pull in at around 11:30, but ended up standing in the blistering heat until 12:30 when the bus actually arrived. We quickly placed our luggage with the pile of bags to be loaded and climbed on the bus to discover that it had been badly overbooked. Will fought to find the seats on our tickets, conveniently at the very back of the bus, and Erik (our new Swedish friend), Bethany, and I were standing as the bus pulled away, conveniently positioned again to look out the window and discover that all of the bags had been loaded… except ours. We watched them sitting in the dirt while we tried to explain the situation to our fellow bus mates (none of which spoke English very well) and they responded with, “Oh, it’s okay. It’s okay!” Trusting their words of wisdom, we continued on our way to stop for a “break” about 10 minutes later. At which point our bags pulled up in a taxi. With no room left underneath the bus, our bags ended up strapped to the top, always a safe place to be.

We found our seats once again—Bethany sandwiched between two Tanzanians in front of Erik, Will, and I in the back. It’s funny traveling with Will because his legs are so long that they never seem to fit anywhere, especially on buses. Conveniently again, THIS particular bus was falling apart and the seats in front of us were too close to our seats for Will to sit normally. Throw Erik’s long legs into the equation and we have an even bigger problem. So we finally pull away, on our way to Tabora, and about 20 minutes down the road the bus comes to a halt. Police Check! You will remember from the beginning that the bus was badly over-packed and there were about seven people standing in the aisle. Two policeman walk on the bus and the aisle-standers duck and a lot of Swahili is spoken. Then after another 20 minutes… the bus turns around. Always a good sign. We were informed by the man next to us, the only one who could speak English on the whole bus, that, “We are going to the police station so they can charge us. And then we will drop some people off. And THEN we will go to Tabora. No problem!” So we pass the station where we initially loaded, now gaining negative mileage towards our destination. After a quick 20 minute stop at the police station, we finally continued on our way (about 2 hours later, with… the same amount of people in the bus). A little further down the road we get pulled over for a police check AGAIN and a woman dressed in a sailor outfit climbs on the bus and proceeds to yell at all the bus occupants for about 10 minutes straight. In Swahili. We have no idea what she said, but luckily we didn’t have to make another detour back to the police station.

We continued on our way and promptly the roads began to… deteriorate. As we hit dirt roads we see simultaneously, in the very near distance, a completely gray horizon of death, and we remember that all of our backpacks… are on top of the bus. The roads became steadily worse for the next 4 hours as it continued to rain and we continued to go through pothole after mud puddle after pothole. We were convinced that at ANY second we were going to get stuck in the absolute middle of nowhere. As the roads are steadily deteriorating, the seats are steadily inching backwards with each bump we hit forcing Will into the fetal position. At this point Jill has to go to the bathroom, which is a permanent condition which she lives with, and her hopes begin to rise as we pull into the first small town we’ve seen in hours. But, being behind schedule, the bus pulls straight on through the town, drives for another 10 minutes, and then stops in the bush. Bathroom break !!! About a minute after Jill gets off the bus ( which takes a while because we are at the back) the driver begins revving the engine and honking for everyone to get back on. She is one of the last people back on the bus and we can hear people complaining about “the mzungu” who is holding the bus up.

As the bus starts moving again, we decide it is time to try and create a little more leg room. Erik stands up in aisle, but is too tall, and now his head is hitting the roof every time we hit a bump, which is at least every 3.4 seconds. The locals behind are hysterical at this point, bursting out into laughter every time Erik’s head hits the ceiling. So Will gives it a shot. Same result. The only other option is Jill, who is conveniently shorter than the guys. She ends up standing in the aisle for two hours, and only sits back back down for a third police check!

It is at this point that we realize that this bus ride is going to be a lot longer than 6-10 hours. The bus starts moving again, and there is approximately six inches of leg room left, quickly disappearing. However, things start to look up as we hit a patch of smooth roads. We pull up to another town (around 11:00 pm) and stop outside a restaurant. Of course, I (Jill) have to go to the bathroom again, so I get off the bus and ask “ Choo iko wapi ?” and end up in this sleazy bar, with a bunch of half drunk Tanzanians yelling “Mzungu” as I walk into the bathroom, which didn’t lock. I was caught between two evils : not peeing at all, or peeing in the bathroom of a sleazy bar with drunk Tanzanians yelling “Mzungu!” outside the door. I chose to pee.

We get back on the bus and I (Bethany) ask the guy next to me, the only one on the bus who spoke English “ How far is Tabora ?” and he says “ About three hours, no problem”
What ?! Another three hours ?! It was another horrible road.

Long story short ( too late, I know) we pulled into Tabora at 2:45 AM groggy-eyed, with bruised knees from lack of knee room, hot and sweaty and wanting only to shower before going to bed. We found a hotel, and the last twist of irony is that the showers didn’t work! In fact, no water whatsoever trickled out of the tap. I don’t think that day could have gotten too much worse.

The next day we rode a train for 14 hours, overnight, 3rd class. To understand what that was like, take the above and multiply by 10. A few highlights were : 170 people in a car with 70 seats, Jill getting lactated on from across the aisle, and a permanent smell of body odour in the car.

Ask us some other time about our fantastic travel experience getting to Bujumbura where Jill learned to say for the first time, in Swedish, “My father is a Viking”

Peace and Love everyone, peace and love

Bethany and Jill ( different name same brain) AKA W’all

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

2008-01-19T16:10:00.000+03:00

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

Update from Jill

2008-01-14T10:05:00.000+03:00

Hello everyone!

We just wanted to give you a quick update of our new set of plans for our last seven weeks here in Africa and ask for your prayers as we travel. We are still planning on going to Nairobi tomorrow morning to renew our visas for Kenya and if all goes well we will be booking bus tickets for EARLY Wednesday morning to go to Tanzania. Our original plan was to make a loop of East Africa—traveling first to Uganda, down to Rwanda, and back up to Kenya through Tanzania. However, given the current political situation, Western Kenya is relatively unstable and the road to Uganda has no guaranteed safety. So through some talks and advice from friends, we’ve decided to do the loop backwards, starting with Tanzania, where the roads of Southern Kenya are much safer. Parliament re-opens on Tuesday (which could create some tension) and on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday Raila wants to have countrywide protests. However, if we leave early enough Wednesday morning, we shouldn’t have any problems and we’d like to get out of Nairobi before things potentially blow up again. The bus ride to Arusha (where we’ve heard a good number of Kenyan refugees have headed) is about five hours, so we should get there with plenty of daylight to find our way around. Jason and Lisa (the missionaries we’ve been living with in Naivasha) have given us some contacts in Arusha, so we may be there for about a week and then make our way towards Rwanda. Our desire as we travel and experience the cultures of these different East African countries is to serve and join in any opportunities that arise along the way. God has really been doing a lot of work in each of our lives individually and our whole group over the last few days and we are continually being reminded of his faithfulness. We are SO excited to embark on the last leg of our journey together and we trust that God is really going to bless this time that we have left! Your continued prayers for our safety, our experience, and peace in Kenya would be much appreciated.

In other news, we had a safe drive back from Malindi on the coast, where we went snorkeling in the beautiful Indian Ocean, hung out on the white sandy beaches for a week, and ate fresh fish and lobster for dinner every night! ☺ I am writing now from the bank of Lake Naivasha where Will, Bethany and I are about to go sailing! (And about to use up the last few drops of the sunscreen we brought from home. Turns out sunscreen costs like $30 dollars here… surprise surprise)

We will keep you updated as we find out more about our definite plans! Happy January to everyone! See you in a month and a half!

<3 Love always…. from Naivasha one last time,

Jill, Will, and Bethany

Prayer Request

2008-01-13T16:33:00.000+03:00

Dear Friends,

This will be a short blog, as it is simply a request for prayer. On Tuesday we will be going to get our visas renewed in Nairobi. Please pray for safe travel to and from and in Nairobi, and that our visas would be renewed. All of our tourist visas have expired because it has not been safe to be in Nairobi in the past few weeks, but , if all goes well, it should be no problem to have them extended.

Love, love, love and peace,Will, Jill, and Bethany

Home...

2008-01-13T16:28:00.000+03:00

Sometimes, I think God has to break us to bring us so low that the only thing we can see in that valley of despair is Him…on the mountaintop.

Lord, High and Holy, Meek and Lowly,Thou has
brought me to the valley of vision,Where I live in the depths but see thee in
the heights;hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold thy glory.

Let me learn by paradoxThat the way down is the
way up, That to be low is to be high, That the broken heart is the healed
heart,That the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, That the repenting soul
is the victorious soul,That to have nothing is to possess all,That to bear the
cross is to wear the crown,That to give is to receive,That the valley is the
place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from
deepest wellls,And the deeper the wells the brighter thy stars shine;
Let me find thy light in my darkness,Thy life
in my death,Thy joy in my sorrow,Thy grace in my sin,Thy riches in my
poverty,Thy glory in my valley.

-Arthur Bennett from a book of Puritan Prayers

The last two days have been days of despair and brokenness… confusion, frustration, and hopelessness. I have been reminded how broken we are. How broken this world is.

As you may know, Kenya has erupted into tribal violence over the dispute of the recent presidential election results. The country has experienced violence unlike anything it has seen in the last twenty years. 486 dead, and over 200,000 displaced. Everywhere we go there is need, despair, and confusion about the future. Broken.

Somewhere along the way, our little Tripod fell away from that which we set out to do. Like a ship with a small leak, it’s been slow in coming but there is a point when the weight of the water in the hold, unseen and dangerous, is glaringly visible. We have fallen away from each other and the hope to which we have been called. I’m not sure how it happened or what is next, but it’s the reality. Broken.

Something happened tonight that was a beautiful picture to me of healing and Jesus bringing broken people back together because of his love. I’ll briefly talk about the sermon we listened to and then relate the brief story of His love made evident once more.

Tonight after dinner, we listened to another Rob Bell sermon about one of the seven woes found in Matthew 23. I think it was the woe found in verse 15. Throughout the sermon, Rob talks about the metaphors Jesus uses to describe spirituality. Unsurprisingly, those metaphors are quite different from what we would want spirituality to be—something tangible, attainable, and understandable. They are far from what the church portrays. As is typical for Jesus, they are most unexpected…difficult to understand…and radical. The metaphors were knocking (Matthew 7-ask, seek, knock), water (John 4-the woman at the well), wind (John 3-Nicodemus), report (Luke 8- the demon-possessed man), and return home (Luke 15- the prodigal son). Beautiful pictures of a faith that is mysterious, intangible, and filled with hope.

The metaphor about returning home was what hit me tonight. I’ll get to why in a bit. Rob shared two stories about returning home. His premise was that we are shown a piece of home when we come to Jesus, and along the way we leave home and get lost far away. Being born again is a lot like returning home.

The first story was about a young man that approached Rob in the UK. The young man wanted to ask him a question. He shared a story about how he and a few friends had tried to form a community of believers to follow Jesus in a radical way. They moved into communal housing, shared all they owned, tried to live simple, and let the world see what it was like to really follow Jesus. However, over time, things went downhill. The young man says, “The whole beautiful thing we dreamed of is falling apart. It’s crumbling.”

Rob’s response to that story is this: “Go. Get out of here right now. Go buy a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread and pour the wine in a cup. Set the cup and the bread on a table in the middle of your house. Call and emergency meeting with your community and apologize where you have wronged others. Give the bread dipped in wine to those you have wronged and tell them you love them.”

Upon returning to the US, Rob received an email from the young man saying that he had done exactly that and that things had drastically changed for the better. People began apologizing and confessing wrongs toward each other. Rob goes on to talk about how just that simple of act of taking part in the ritual that was originally to remind us of Christ’s work on the cross has a power that is unexplainable. It brings people together as it reminds us of reconciliation and the picture that God sent His Son to die for our sins.

I listened to this story and was almost brought to tears at the similarity to our own group. We set out on our own in Africa to be a community and share what we have with one another as we try to follow Jesus and take his love to the “least of these.” But that beautiful thing we dreamed about has begun to fall apart at the seams. After we finished listening to the sermon, I got up, grabbed the bread, and read the story of the crucifixion out loud from the Message. I was brought to tears as I was reminded of the sacrifice and the pain that He went through for me. We took communion with one another, prayed together, and apologized for wrongs done.

I told the girls that I was sorry because I had lost sight of what we set out to do. I had lost sight of home—connection with Jesus. Taking His love and sharing it together. Following Him. And taking that love to those around us who are without hope, love, and peace. I’m not sure where I went wrong or how it happened, but I was brought to my knees that I’ve become so wrapped up in myself that I haven’t loved Jill and Bethany…And I haven’t love the oppressed, the poverty-stricken, and the destitute.

In the sermon, Rob Bell said something that sums up where I’ve been lately, “Any time we harm ourselves or others out of a desperate desire to heal our own pain, we are far from home.”

So where is home?

The other story was a story about a little girl that I’ll relate verbatim. Rob got the story from Marcus Borg who got the story from Parker Palmer.

“Several years ago I was told a story about a three year old girl. She was the
firstborn and the oldest child in her family, but now her mother was pregnant
again and the little girl was excited about having a new brother or sister.
Within a few hours of her parents bringing the new baby boy home from the
hospital, the girl made a request. She wanted to be alone with her new brother
in his room with the door shut. Her insistence about being alone in the room
with the boy made her parents a bit uneasy, but then they remembered that they
had installed a new intercom system in anticipation of the baby’s arrival. So
they realized they could let their daughter do this and if they heard the
slightest indication that anything strange was happening, they could be in the
baby’s room in an instant.

“So they let the little girl go into the
baby’s room, shut the door, and they raced to the intercom listening station.
They heard their daughter’s footsteps moving across the room, imagined her
standing over the crib, and then they heard her saying to her three day old
brother, ‘Tell me about God, I’ve almost forgotten.’”

Wow.

Commenting upon the story, Rob says, “So of all the ways Jesus could talk about faith, he tells a story of a return. A return to your primal roots. A return to your home. A return to a God who loves you. Maybe when people say, ‘Why are you a Christian?’ Well, because when I met Christ, in some deep, mysterious, intangible way it was like I came home.”

I’ve wandered away somehow. I need to say, “Tell me about God, I’ve almost forgotten.” In the next few days, maybe I’ll get back to the bigger picture of trying to bring love to the loveless and hope to the hopeless… To tell others about my home. To look the beggar children in the eyes and communicate love… telling them that I bring food and want to give because of the hope which I’ve been given. I hope to get back to a big picture mindset bigger than Will Watson that is concerned with big issues like displaced people, victims of violence, and those who truly fit into the category of the “least of these.” Those poorer than the poorest of the poor. In God’s time.

But for tonight, I just need to go home. Back to the love shown on that cross. Back to a radical man who walked this earth and brought hope to those dark days. That man that brought so much light. So much love. God, who walked among us and taught us about a masterfully woven plan to save the world. To mend this broken world. A world that is no longer falling apart and crumbling, but a world that is at peace.

“I have run, I have crawled. I have scaled these city walls, only to be with you. But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” We have to keep searching, asking, seeking, and longing for heaven on earth—community with others and with God.

God, may you tell us what you’re like, because we’ve almost forgotten.

Maybe in order to find out who we are, we need to remember who we were.

-Good ‘ole Jill…well, she’s not really old I guess ;-)

lovewill

Happy New Year! and the Riots in Kenya

2008-01-11T14:26:00.000+03:00

Happy New Year to everyone! 2008 has started out on a bad foot for Kenyans, as some of you may or may not know, so I thought I would try and explain why what is happening now is happening.

On December 27th Kenya held presidential and parliamentary elections. The two front runners for the presidency were Mwai Kibaki from the Party of National Unity (PNU) and Raila Odinga from the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Kibaki was seeking re-election. After the election all the votes had to be tallied by hand, which ended up taking a few days longer than expected. While they were tallying the votes tensions began to rise, and the suspicion that the election was being rigged started to arise. Riots started happening in Nairobi and Kisumu on Saturday ( I think), before the results were even released. On Sunday the results were released saying Kibaki had been re-elected by a margin of two million votes.

By about that time a lot of Kenyans were angry, because it took so long for the results to be released, and also because there was a host of ‘irregularities’ that had occurred while counting ballots. Incidents such as constituency A releasing numbers on Saturday which said Kibaki had 50 000 votes, and then on Sunday upping that number to 70 000 votes without the proper signatures. I am not going to try and list all the problems that the 2007 elections seemed to have, because a lot of the facts I would quote are probably inaccurate, so it is probably best to do your own research.

In the last week there have been a number of violent acts, mostly between Luo’s ( Raila’s tribe) and the Kikuyu ( Kibaki’s tribe). According to The Daily Nation the death toll has now reached 185 and over 150 000 people have been displaced, mostly from the Rift Valley area of Kenya. The roads in and out of Nairobi were shut down at one point and are still periodically blocked by protestors. There is a petrol shortage, and also (to Will’s great sadness) grocery prices have shot through the roof in some places where the trucks have not gotten to in a while. I heard of a man who paid 500 Ksh for two loafs of bread ( that’s about 8 dollars ). As a purely editorial comment, I feel the media is slightly exaggerating what is happening in Kenya right now.

As for how the situation affects us :

We have to watch our step more carefully. As far as I know, no westerners have been targeted yet. The conflict is mainly between the Luo and the Kikuyu, so the greatest risk to us is getting caught in the crossfire. The missionary family we are staying with now lives out in the bush-bush, so no bad stuff has made its way out our direction yet. We have to pay more attention to the newspaper and the radio, and keep tabs on what is going on, and so far it has been very helpful to have those sources of information.

We are at this moment sitting on the porch of a beautiful beachfront house in Malindi, taking a mini-vacation with the Hovingh’s. I can see the Indian Ocean, and less than two hours ago I swam in it for the first time. Everything here is beautiful and I am looking forward to hanging out on the white sand beach all week!

We left on the third, early in the morning, passed through Nairobi with no problems, stayed the night with some friends of the Hovingh’s at Athi River, and finished the drive to Malindi today, again with no problems ( But we did see some elephants in Tsavo National Park…. cool !)

Well, this is getting a bit long for my tastes, so I will just say again that we are safe, and far away from the hubs of violence and the situation does, at this moment, seem to be calming down. It is a little bit strange to know that I am in a third world country in the midst of conflict, but it is a learning experience. Hope the New Year is going well for everyone back home, and thank-you for praying for us, it is much appreciated.

Love

Bethany

Christmas in Kenya... and the search for the missing boxers.

2007-12-25T16:45:00.000+03:00

We wish you a merry Christmas...we wish you a merry Christmas!!!

Hello all,

Merry Christmas from Kenya. I apologize that we haven't been able to blog in a long time. We are deep in the bush bush in central Kenya. In order to get a signal, we have to climb a cliff and hope it's not cloudy. That makes internetting pretty difficult.

Quick update: We are staying with Jason and Lisa Hovingh at their beautiful house near River Malewa outside of Naivasha, Kenya. We got to their house around December 4th and will be with them until early January. We are actually going on a mini vacation with them to the Kenyan coast from the 4th of January to the 9th. I'm going to swim in the Indian Ocean!!!!! Woohoo!!! I'm pretty much excited. While with the Hovingh's we have been volunteering at the orphanage they are helping to start... digging trash pits, putting together teeter-totters, and sorting through piles of donated clothes from the States... By the way, if donating things to a Kenyan orphanage, please do not send night lights???? Especially if they are for 110 V outlets as we use 240 V over here... We found them and were like, "What!?!"

The girls have been homeschooling the kids and I've been helping Jason around the house and farm and working on booklets and brochures for the retreat center they are setting up. They are somewhat active in the white Kenyan farmer culture and we have been learning a ton about the "Kenyan Cowboys." Most of these people were born here and are actually Kenyan citizens. They either own or manage all the flower farms and it has definitely been an eye-opening experience to see that... I'll try to write more on that the next time I'm online.

Today is my first Kenyan Christmas. I can't believe it's December. We are spending Christmas with the Hovinghs and a family from South Africa. It's been amazing. I'm using the family's computer- BROADBAND INTERNET!!!! Like an angel from heaven. This morning, the girls and I celebrated Christmas together listening to the Michael Buble Christmas album and opening our presents... We had some great gifts.

1. Bethany got a light anywhere match from me so she can rub it in my face that she's a girl who can start a one-match fire.
2. Jill got rocks to skip...hopefully in front of her as she threw one behind her trying to skip it when I taught her how to skip rocks the other day.
3. The girls gave me a beanie (or a Toque? for you Canadians) that was actually a yamukah on my massive head... didn't even get to my ears... Ha.
4. The other day the girls were bored and decided to steal my boxers, hat, undershirt, and socks... I searched for my boxers regularly for about the last week, having no idea where they went... sheesh. I figured they stole them because whenever I mentioned it, they had to choke back laughs. Anyway, this morning after all the other gifts were opened, they told me to go look for my other gift--using the hot cold method as I walked around our little cottage. I got to the freezer and they said I was on fire... I bend down and look in the freezer and there's this wrapped package in the freezer that says Merry Christmas Will... "W'all love you" (inside joke- they make fun of my Texas use of Ya'll so they started saying w'all -we all...) I open the frozen package and find a juice container with all my boxers, beanie, and socks frozen in water. GRRRHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! But I laughed really really hard. Sheesh.
5. Because I had been asking Lisa if she had seen my boxers in the laundry for like the past week, she got me a great gift as well. She knew the girls had frozen my boxers. SO anyway, she and Jason got me silk, leapord print boxers "just so I'd have an extra pair. We laughed for a long time when I opened it. O wow... E is for how EXTREMELY NORMAL THIS IS!

Ok, so it's been a great Christmas in Kenya so far. We had an amazing lunch with lamb (South African custom), impala game pie, chicken stuffing, these amazing pumpkin fritters, some insanely strong South African Red Wine, and some awesome desert with a Russian Skaters name as the name of the dish. I'm almost full... hehe. We're about to play some games so I'm signing off for now but Merry Christmas everyone... and if you ever are missing any boxers, check the freezer. Gosh.

lovewill

P.S. Please be praying for safety as the intensely close elections are two days away... in a third world country, elections can be a scary thing. We love all of you and are missing home and snow... the girls have been listening to Christmas music just to remind them it's Christmas... being from Texas, warmth is normal at Christmas... anyway.

So, I’m in Africa…

2007-12-14T03:43:00.000+03:00

I’ve been meaning to write a blog about random Africa things for some time now. One of our comments posed some great questions that I have been meaning to answer for a long time, but I guess I’ve just put off the general info—this is how we live—blog for a long time. So here we go…

If I were to describe Africa in one word I would probably use the word: dichotomy. Everywhere I look, I see glaring opposites and the far extremes. Africa seems so alive…so vibrant and colorful…But, at the same time, never before have I seen so much death, so much pain, and so much despair. The dichotomy of life and death. So much life and so much death. I see a struggle between the age-old traditions of tribalism and the groans of development. Nairobi is a modern city…complete with modern conveniences and appliances. I’ve eaten the Kenyan version of fast food many times—fried dough in a triangle shape filled with meat, onions, and sometimes peppers. It’s called a samosa.

This place seems so ancient and comfortable in those age-old traditions. The culture is beautiful and definitely colorful; however, I see Kenya striving to develop culturally, politically, and economically. Therefore, daily I see the dichotomy and the struggle of a culture of tribalism that is testing its feet in the water of capitalism, democracy, and development. (I have many questions about whether or not the type of development that the West is seeking to impose on Africa is actually beneficial…not the medical and hygiene development, but the capitalistic and democratic development. But that’s a story for another blog).

Dichotomy…that’s my word for now. Even now, I know it’s changing and will probably continue to develop and change as I continue to learn and observe.

Hmm… here we go with the random my favorite things, my observations, and general info on our daily lives. To start with a funny example of a Kenyanism, look up to the last paragraph at how I started that sentence—“even now.” Of course Kenyans have accents, but the girls and I think it is hilarious how Kenyans always start with “even.” Even me, I will vote for this candidate. Even me, I want you to come with me. Even this one, she likes this musician. Even that one, he plays football. All the time. I think it’s hilarious and we always joke about it amongst ourselves… until the day when I actually said it without thinking. We were talking to a Swiss lady who is married to a Kenyan and I actually said, “Even me, I want to do_______.” Wow, the girls thought it was hysterical and I still here about it “even now.” Ha. So that’s my Kenyanism to start with.

Dishwashing, showers, and clothes washing…
I see more of the dichotomy of Africa with the complete schism between the ways of life. While at the YWAM base two months ago, we washed clothes in buckets, took showers with buckets, and washed dishes with buckets. Whoever is making green, blue, and orange plastic buckets is making a killing. When washing clothes, you use two buckets—one for rinsing and one for washing. My Kenyan buddy, Cliff, showed me how to grasp the end of a piece of clothing in your palm and take the other edge in your other hand. Then, briskly rub the end of the item against the part in the palm (actually on your wrist) and squeegee out all the soap and water as you move up the sleeve or pant leg. It definitely took some getting used to. The general tendency for westerners is to just put all the clothes in the bucket and then swish them around and around…then just rinse them. And the Kenyans laugh really hard at us because clothes don’t get clean that way and you can’t ever get all the soap out. When I first started to do it the Kenyan way, Cliff always laughed hysterically at my clumsy attempt to do it like a Kenyan. He says I’m better now. So that’s clothes washing.

Since that time, I’ve done everything from a washer and dryer to just a washer back to the buckets and even not washing at all. So I see the spectrum depending on where I am and with whom I’m living.

Back when I was in Boy Scouts, on campouts we washed dishes with a three bucket system… which is what we do here. The first bucket can be cold and is filled with a soapy lather to just scrub everything. The second bucket is the rinse bucket with hot water. The third is the bleach bucket and is pretty hot. Yep, it’s pretty sketchy.

Public Transportation
Oh, the matatu. Imagine a Nissan 14 passenger van…absolutely no leg-room. The outside is government regulated and must be some color with a yellow stripe around the middle. The outside must be pretty plain. But the inside—hmm, any creative license is acceptable. Subwoofers, music video screens, all kinds of music at full blast. Everything from playboy stickers to soccer player posters to R&B and Hip Hop posters. I am continually amazed at how cheap the matatus are. We have traveled for 2½ hours on three dollars a person. The matatus are the public service vehicle but the government doesn’t regulate the prices and the lack of a competent police lets the matatu drivers and conductors do whatever they want. There is always a driver and a conductor. The conductor sits next to the sliding door and advertises, harangues, and pretty much yells at everyone to get in and go with this matatu because it is SOOO much better than the newer, nicer looking one next to it. Oh, and this one time I actually heard a guy advertise the matatu we were riding in by saying in Swahili, “Come ride with me… Ride with white people.” So Jill, Bethany, and I are the new matatu advertising campaign. We’ve had some funny stories with matatus. One time, they actually crammed 23 people in a 14 passenger matatu. Another time, they crammed a rather large lady in the back seat with me and she pretty much exiled me away from MY seat. Then Jill and Bethany sat in each other’s laps and I eventually ended up sitting on top of the seats, banging my head on the ceiling frequently. It is actually physically impossible for me to fit my long legs in between the seats so I had to get up on the seats so that I didn’t have to stand in the seats. Then this Akamba lady starts yelling at me and cackling because I was on top of the seat. That was pretty annoying actually.

The annoying part of matatus is the fact I’m white. So we get ripped off quite often. Normally they charge mzungus (white people) double what they do the Kenyans. Oftentimes, we’ll talk them down and because we are beginning to carry ourselves like we know what we’re doing, they are beginning to know ahead of time that I’m not going to pay the crazy price. There have been a few times when the Kenyans around me will yell or gripe at the guy for overcharging us. If that happens, they usually charge us the normal price. It’s pretty frustrating that they charge us extra just because we’re white and they think we have more money. Reverse prejudice or something.

Ok, that’s enough random Kenyan observations for now, but I’ll keep answering questions and giving observations in the next couple of days… Bye for now.

lovewill

Food for thought:

“The real authority does not reside in the biblical text itself, in the ink on paper, which is always open to misinterpretation—sometimes, history tells us, horrific and dangerous misinterpretation. Instead, the real authority lies in God, who is there behind the text or beyond it or above it. In other words, the authority is not in what I say the text says but in what God says the text says.”
-Brian McLaren- New Kind of Christian

The most random, unorganized, and spastic thing you will ever read.

2007-11-28T09:52:00.000+03:00

I want to be alive...to love. To be radical. To run with passion but not be afraid to come to a standstill. To talk about love. About politics. About philosophy. About the world. About social justice. About injustice. About faith. About religion. Heaven and hell. The supernatural. Music. Poetry. Paintings. Art. Wisdom. Listen to Death Cab For Cutie and Dave Matthews. Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros while watching the sun go down in its own explosion in the sky. Talk about social justice and the church while listening to U2. Pray while listening to This Will Destroy You. Dream about a new world, a new heart, and a new life while listening to Angels and Airwaves. Laugh and cry. Scream about injustice but whisper about love. Run through open fields and sit under the stars. Watch the nightlife and when we get bored of the city find the sunset and the sunrise. Be independent. Screw up badly but then try again and again. Write songs and poems. Love much and speak little. Enjoy the little things. Dance with abandon and cry freely. Learn what love is. Learn about sorrow and about hope. About despair. About poverty and about wealth. Feel loved, but experience loneliness. To run, to hide, as we tear down the walls that hold us back tonight. Run to a standstill and in that stillness, find the God of burning bushes and still breezes. Be still. Enjoy community. Find Jesus. Seek humility but tell their story. Study eyes. Get lost in beauty. Run away from rules to create our own. Cry with orphans and laugh with widows. Play with the children and wash their feet. Smile at and hug alcoholics, prostitutes, and drug addicts.

It is a new day. Things will never be the same. WE will never be the same... OH THE GLORY OF IT ALL! For His glory, make me alive because I am dead. Dead without his life... breathed into the world in the sunsets, sunrises, and stars...those explosions of light, sound, and color in the sky...The stars that light up the darkness. I want to be filled with that love, that life, that passion. I want to gaze at the sunset as if fades to black...dotted with the stars and talk about love. I want to look upon that love and talk about how small I am...how broken I must become. To learn together. To pray together. To love together and to love one another. To talk about Africa...about life... about God... about what it means to actually be ALIVE in this life. TO remind one another of our joy in light of the glorious rtiches given to us by the blood shed on that cross, so long ago. To learn together not to wait out the storm but to dance in the rain. To follow that light we see on the horizon. That speck of light at the end of the dark tunnel. The golden tear shed by the eyes of God for this world. To chase that light, that unfathomable love, until we are called home. That incomprehensible, undeserved love for this world that has rejected that light and that love. To chase that forever...To pick each other up when big feet and long legs trip us up...to trip, but then to look up and find the light once more. To pour ourselves out again and again... offering hope to the hopeless and love to the unlovable.

We must open our eyes to the world...screaming at the injustice we see but whispering love to those persecuted by that injustice. Loving much but speaking little. We must be still, but run as fast as we can all the while listening to Love and screaming that love through our eyes...our hands... and our feet as we seek what it means to be the hands and feet of Christ. Learning what it means to actually BE the CHURCH...not an institution but an organism that is eternally alive and changing...promoting life. We must learn that this life is not about the destination but that it is about the journey.

Walk this earth, always looking for that which we haven't found, but that which we are looking for. Recognize that we are not defined by what we do, but that we must recognize who we are...and let that define what we do. But finally, I want to be aware...aware of love, of providence, of people, and of this world...and then maybe I'll be alive.

Be radical but ordinary.

lovewill

"May we find the Way, the Truth, and the Life in a world of shortcuts, deception, and death."
-Shane Claiborne

These are a few of my favorite things !

2007-11-27T13:33:00.000+03:00

Jill got her hair braided today, and she looks a lot like a mermaid.

Yesterday Jill and I were talking about our favorite things about Africa on the way into Ngong, so I thought I would share a bit of a list:

In Africa, the food you eat comes from Africa. If you have a tomato chances are it was grown very close to where you live. I love how the cycle of life is so evident here. They grow their own food, or buy it from neighbors at the market, then they eat it and feed the leftovers to the pigs. All the natural organic products seem to have their own natural, organic life cycle. The rest of the garbage is another story though, as they burn pretty much everything else ! In North America it is the "Organic" food that costs a fortune, whereas here it is the packaged and imported food that costs a fortune. That doesn't really make sense to me.
I love mangoes. They are like 15-20 Ksh at the market, and they are so delicious. I hate, on the other hand, having to barter for them because the vendors typically try and rip us off, and make us pay extra. Some of the vendors are kind though, and give us a fair price.
I love "Africa Time". Seemingly, nothing happens fast here. There is so much less stress, and less to get done, and more time to do it in. There are alway people lounging in the grass on the side of the road, or riding their bikes to town. When I first arrived in October one of the things that struck me was the number of people riding bikes, and the number of people walking places. I love being able to walk 5 minutes to get to the store and buy a coke. And then getting to walk 5 minutes back to the store to return the bottle.
Pop tastes better out of a glass bottle.
I love Kenyan-isms. Almost all the Kenyans we've met all talk using the same vocal inflictions and the same "sayings". For example, you'll ask them a question like, "Do you like oranges Jane?" and they will look at you and say "Me?" and after you've confirmed that you were indeed talking to them, they answer. They also don't really have a word for "hello" in Swahili, so when you are greeting some one you instead say "habari yako ?" which means "how are you?" and they other person will say "msuri" which means "fine". So when we say "Hello" in English, they almost always respond by saying "Fine". Jill is the best out of all of us at imitating their speech patterns.
I love how most of the matatu's are "pimped out". They have music blaring, stickers of rappers and hip hop women, and some have screens to play music videos on. One time we were on a matatu that had a sticker on the mirror that said " Don't kis tha driver!" (*see photo above... it was so funny we had to take a picture) In the windshield of every matatu there is a piece wood or cardboard that has the route number on it, and once we were in a matatu that had "Route 23" on one side and " On a date" on the other side.
Mmm mendazi! Mendazi are these delicious triangles of fried dough that taste like heaven when they are fresh. You can get them for 5 Ksh at just about any store, although some are better than others.

That's all I've got for now. There are many other things that I know I love about Kenya. It's a really beautiful place, equally because of the people as the landscape.

peace,

Bethany

Some colored pencils and a guitar

2007-11-27T09:24:00.001+03:00

Sometimes unexplainable things happen. It seems as if the longer I am here in Africa, the more frequent those things become. I have been meaning to write about one of those times for about three weeks. At Huruma, I've been teaching creative arts class for some of the different classes as much as time and class schedules allow. Three weeks ago, I had the opportunity to work with the second graders. The following is a just a retelling of all that happened that morning. This is an excerpt from my journal about that day. Before beginning I'd to tell you about two of the children that are in that class.

One of the little boy is named Nicholas. He is deaf. I don't know why he is deaf or if he's been deaf since birth but he is a beautiful little boy that always seems to have a smile on his face.

One of the little girls is named Miracle. She has an amazing story. When she was little, her parents found out that they had both contracted HIV and that their children had it as well. In Kenya, there is a huge stigma around HIV and AIDS because of the fundamental Christian influence and the fact that HIV is a sexually transmitted disease. Miracle's parents decided that they didn't want to deal with having HIV... they didn't want that stigma placed on their family. So they hung themselves. They hung themselves in their living room in front of their children's eyes. Right in front of two year old Miracle. She does remember it. When she came to Huruma, she tested positive for HIV. However, after some time, she was tested again, and the test results were reversed- she was negative. That is unheard of... They renamed her Miracle.

Thursday, November 8, 2007
Creative Arts Class- Grade 2

Yesterday before lunch I went to Jodie's class to do their creative arts time. For the first thirty minutes or so, we talked about what it means to be creative. A lot of them said that playing football, singing, dancing, and drawing were part of their own personal creativity. I thought about how they all have innate creativity within them and how it is largely ignored and even suppressed in some cases. It seems that the teachers do not emphasize creativity whatsoever and in teaching creative arts I have met with some resistance because the teachers don't think it is important.

We started our little session with a singalong. We sang "How Great Thou Art," "Awesome God," "I'll Fly Away," and "Silent Night." At the end of the singalong, Jodie came back with paper and colored pencils. This was the part that I was excited about.

Two days before, I remembered something that my English professor did with us my senior year and thought I would try it with the kids. He had us all sit down, dimmed the lights, and played one song on repeat for the remainder of the class time. We were encouraged to listen to the song twice through and then to begin to write... writing whatever came to mind from the song whether it be prose, poetry, or lyrical. It was one of those times in life where you feel something happen inside you... you can't explain it, but you know that something was different and my writing that day reflected that. Because of that memory, I wanted to try it with the kids.

I asked the kids to sit down, separate at their desks and to put their heads down. I explained I would play a song and that I just wanted them to listen to the song, keeping their heads down and not talking with their classmates. I began to play "Mexico" by Jump Little Children. As I played and began to sing, a feeling of peace swept over the room... I watched as peaceful expressions washed over their faces and many of them began to smile. Even Nicholas, the deaf boy was smiling. I feel like he felt the music rather than heard it because his whole demeanor changed as I began to play.

After the song was over, I asked them to lift their heads and begin to draw or write whatever they felt after hearing the song. I asked them not to talk with their classmates and to keep their eyes on their own papers. They did exactly as they were told. I began the song again and played for about thirty minutes as they sat and listened and drew. I don't remember feeling that peaceful or that happy in a long time.

At the end of the time, I silently put my guitar away and walked around the classroom to see what they had drawn. My heart began to flutter, beating faster as tears came to my eyes. Probably 80% of the kids had drawn hearts...some drew one heart, some drew lots of small hearts, some drew Jodie and I with hearts around us. Even some of the boys drew hearts. (Well, of course one boy drew a lion and the other traced an elephant... that would have been me.) The deaf boy, who is actually extremely artistic, drew a heart. Even now, I still can't totally believe it or hope to comprehend what happened that morning. They hadn't seen each other's work, but they had drawn hearts as I played the music.

A class filled with the world's abandoned, orphaned, sick, destitute, and abused children drew hearts and wrote about love. The song didn't directly speak of love, but they drew hearts. Out of thirteen kids, ten drew hearts.

There are so many implications of what happened that morning. The power of music....I have aways wondered if music actually does have power. But apparently, music is able to convey love, thereby giving music some sort of supernatural quality. I will never understand what happened in that room and I won't attempt to understand now.

I have struggled with how to love these children... the abused, the abandoned, the destitute, and the dying. I have tried so hard to do something to change the world for them. I have tried so hard to wrap my mind around the big picture and fix things for them. But all it took was a guitar and a voice to convey more love than I could have ever come up with on my own. Something happened in that room that science and reason cannot explain. Something happened that was beyond my human understanding.

I think that was the simplest and yet most profound experience of my life. Don't overcomplicate love. Just love. I cannot explain or understand what happened that day... I just wanted to tell you about it. Smile about the children and go out and love someone today.

lovewill

"In a world overwhelmed with words, sometimes the most powerful communication is action that is fueled and inspired by love."

God, I want so much for you to open my eyes, because they need me to look into theirs.

P.S. This morning I was sitting and writing and I heard this crazy loud song coming down the road. As it drew closer I recognized Johnny Cash singing about being the man... And when it drove by I realized it was a presidential propaganda car... They go around blaring propaganda about a certain candidate in the election... and it was blaring Johnny Cash. HAHAHAHAHA!!!

:-)

Rob Bell, Stars, and a Rat

2007-11-26T10:23:00.000+03:00

Tonight, two little boys continually said, “Give me, give me about random things and then proceeded to go crazy and slap Jill and I on certain lower anterior areas of our anatomy. To which Jill responded, “What? Are you serious?” haha

Tonight, I saw a rat on a wall. And it was way too big. And it ran really fast.

Tonight, the sunset was beautiful… simplistic in the fact that the sky was mostly clear of clouds, vibrant in colors, and quite subtle as it faded into an endless blue dotted with specks of light. Infinite, incomprehensible beauty.

Tonight, the girls and I listened to a Rob Bell sermon on the second of the seven woes, recorded in Luke 11 and Matthew 23. In the passage, Jesus criticized the Pharisees for being more concerned with the outside of the cup (our life) than with the inside… Though they cleaned the outside of the cup, the inside was filled with greed, wickedness, and self-indulgence. Bell’s point was that we should live an undivided life, where the outside of the cup is just a reflection of the inside. Clean the inside and the outside will take care of itself. Be real before God and man.

Tonight, God encouraged our weary hearts, stimulated our minds, and lifted our spirits with love.

Tonight, I was reminded once again of the truth of the following statement: “The pursuit of the truth is far more important than the possession of it.”-Albert Einstein

Tonight, I partook of my first communion in Africa which consisted of mandazi and water… And I about cried because of the beauty that I found in that simplicity.

Tonight, I was reminded once again how much I love Jill and Bethany.

While listening to Rob Bell’s sermon (yep, for all my friends- Jill goes to Mars Hill and gets to listen to Rob Bell on a regular basis—lovewins…lucky) from Mars Hill from September 16, and something that he said really hit me. It wasn’t even part of the sermon really, just something that he said at the beginning of his comments on Jesus and a conversation with the Pharisees. During a prayer at the beginning of his talk, he said, “As we long for a reconciled heaven and earth, please tap us into the big themes—the big story—so that we can be a part of it.”

Tap us into the big themes. The big story…. so that we can be a part of it. The big picture. After he finished his sermon, I tried to think about the big picture for the first time in a long time as I listened to Explosions in the Sky while watching the sky grow dark and the stars grow brighter and brighter…seemingly exploding into the night sky. Lately I’ve done a terrible job about being concerned with the big themes. Forgive me for the jumbled up, disorganized train of thought that could possibly follow…

Love… blinding, bright, passionate love that lights up the sky at night as the bright sun descends and sets in an explosion of color while being capped off by the subtle transition to a black sky filled with small specks of light… representing that star, burning fiercely millions of light years away…

Love…that lights up the night sky in the morning as the sun begins it’s ascent in a softer, but equally beautiful sunrise in which the darkness of night is finally chased away by the light of the Son, as it pierces the darkness and extends its long fingers into the shadows…

Love...unconditional, radical love that died on a cross for the sins of the world and broke the chains of legalism, tradition, and sin for all who cling to that cross. And that same Love chased away the darkness of death after three days, claiming victory over darkness, pain, and death for all time.

And I get to see it…. I get to experience it. I get to feel that blinding, unconditional, and vibrant Love that daily puts on a light show of explosions in the sky just because it can. I get to see that love bring tears to the eyes of a child who has been driven from home to the brutal streets by parents that beat him…I get to see that love rescue a young Masaii girl from a future of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), forced marriage, and polygamy…I get to see that love rescue an abandoned child addicted to glue from the streets…I get to see that love bring three very different people together to embark on a quest to experience that love, follow it, and seek to lose enough of ourselves in order to become channels of that love to the world.

“So what can I say and what can I do, but offer this heart, O God, completely to You? So I’ll stand, with arms high and heart abandoned—in awe of the one who gave it all. I’ll stand, my soul, Lord, to You surrendered. All I am is Yours.” -Hillsong United

Now that I have seen these things and experienced this great love…I am responsible. Faith without deeds is dead. This love manifested in salvation allows me to have an inexpressible joy, an unfathomable peace, and an unexplainable hope…even in the pain, suffering, and death I see daily. These things that I have seen and this love that I have witnessed demand my life, my time, and my all… Maybe I didn’t ask to be here and be responsible for all that I have seen, but I’m here, I’ve seen it, and I am now responsible to do something about it… to tell the world of that love. To feed and clothe a child on the streets. To look at an AIDS victim and pour forth love from my eyes. To tell their story so that they may never again be invisible. And while doing so, maybe then I’ll actually be alive… not just in a medical sense, but truly alive. That’s the big picture…at least for tonight with my characteristic idealism.

The big picture for me tonight revolves around love. I will never completely understand… I may search for all the answers, but I will never know them. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for—heaven on earth—but I’ll keep looking ahead to that…and I’ll keep pursuing truth on this journey. And I’ll continue to believe that along the way, all three of us will discover our vital connection to God and one another. That we will truly be ALIVE.

Never settle!

lovewill

"We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we are called home." To Write Love On Her Arms

Emmanuel

2007-11-22T10:32:00.000+03:00

I am the sort of person who loves hearing stories, so I thought I would share a story about Huruma.

Some of you, who have done your research, may know that Huruma houses about 150 children, 25 of which are HIV positive. The effect of HIV on the social fabric of Africa, and its ubiquitous presence here is not something that is easy for me to understand, or even recognize all the time.

But I got a little closer to understanding this weekend after we came back from Lake Naivasha and learned that one of the children, Emmanuel, had passed away. Emmanuel was a boy I didn't know very well, he was in class four and he was HIV positive.

Medically, I don't know enough to explain exactly what happened, but I can explain what I know which may or may not be biologically correct. Emmanuel had not eaten anything on Friday, probably by his own choice because Mama Zipporah is very adamant that the children on ARV's ( Anti-RetroViral) get enough to eat, and no one noticed until the next day. So his immune system became compromised, and he was taking ARV's without food, so all in all it was a bad situation. They took him to the hospital on Sunday after he didn't want to wake up or eat anything. They found out that he had contracted meningitis , and after the doctor put the IV in , he went into shock and died.

When the arrived at the hospital the nurse told Mary, a staff member at Huruma, to ask Emmanuel if he knew where he was. Emmanuel said "Yes, I am dying. I am dying." It's hard for me to imagine a child in grade four saying that.

I didn't personally know Emmanuel, but I know I had met him, and I know that I had played seven up with his class two weeks ago. I find it really eerie to know that a child I had spent time with is now gone.

When Mama took him in, she knew that he would die eventually. She understood that if he stayed wherever he was before Huruma he probably would die faster. But she chose to take him in and show him love for the time he had left. She committed to be his mother and offer him the best she could, until HIV took hold. I really admire her for seeing the value in all her children, while the rest of Kenyan society views them as a burden.

So that's the story I have to share. I hope it offered a brief glimpse into life in Africa, and maybe gave a real, human face to the AIDS crisis.

Peace,

Bethany

Thanksgiving in Kenya... well sort of.

2007-11-22T08:20:00.000+03:00

Today is Thanksgiving... And I'm in Kenya. And there is no such thing as Thanksgiving in Kenya... And unless I ate a goat or a stork or something... maybe a scrawny chicken, the whole eat turkey thing on Thanksgiving is pretty impossible. And I just said and at the beginning of lots of sentences. Sad day.

P.S. And I'm listening to John Denver... singing about how it's good to be back home again. That's somewhat ironic or something.

However, my illustrious friends and I are actually doing things for thanksgiving. Jill just made a little cut-out turkey to give to Bethany but she ran out of room at the bottom of the paper so the feet are very awkward. Ha. Right now, the girls are upstairs making french toast.... I will probably be in love with the both of them in about an hour because of that (sorry Steve). We bought two loaves of bread to make it with so that should be able to dampen my bottomless appetite. I'm getting hungry thinking about it.

Then, for lunch, Bethany is making chapatis (the Kenyan tortilla- sugar, salt, flour, and water rolled out) and the three of us are going to make apple pie filling to put on top. Man, we need some ice cream. There's not exactly any pumpkins around for us to make pumpkin pie but Jill and I made an executive decision that we don't like pumpkin pie anyway.

So that shall be our Thanksgiving. After lunch, we'll be wrapping Christmas presents for the kids and listening to the limited Christmas music on my laptop. I have decided that only for today, I will miss the football, family time, and the day after Thanksgiving when my cousins, brothers, and I laugh at the women of the family because they try to shop and then get home whining about how cold it is and how crowded everywhere is... But I will definitely miss the day after Thanksgiving even more than the day itself because the day after Thanksgiving is when my family decorates for Christmas, goes to the back of our land to cut a Christmas tree, and begins to listen to the Christmas music that I really enjoy. I'll definitely miss the decorating and all the memories that come from putting on all the tree ornaments... so many of them are associated with memories or are completely characteristic of my brothers' personalities or things that all three of us enjoy or do.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!! (for the Canadians- just imagine I said that about a month ago.)

Now for a brief update. My parents tell me I should blog more about what we do daily and about Africa in general, so the frequency of blogs may increase. Hopefully, I'll keep them short so that it can become a weekly or daily part of the day for whoever is interested.

We are still at Huruma Children's home in the Ngong Hills outside of Nairobi. We've been here for about a month and have definitely learned a lot from the kids, God, and each other. I'm learning a seemingly infinite about of things about myself (most probably not good... but that in itself is probably a good thing), God, and love/life in general. We are working on sifting through the options of what to do next... To name a few we are considering Swahili school in Nairobi (classes every other day and work at orphanages, slums, and the like on the other days... probably work with a pastor we know who works in Kibera. And continue our work with the street kids.), an orphanage and family close to Lake Naivasha, and a couple of ministries we learned about from a doctor friend we met. Please be praying for our direction about what is next for us.

Hopefully, that will give everyone an idea of where we are at the moment and an idea of what we need prayer about... (and that was an absolutely pathetic and terrible sentence grammatically) So I'll close with a random funny Kenyan story.

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to go to a Masaii village with a Kenyan social worker to pick up a girl that was going to be put into a forced marriage with a Kenyan man (probably around 70 or 80...the girl is ten)... Forced marriage occurs after a ceremony where the young girls are circumcised (FGM- female genital mutilation) and are sold at a dowry. Polygamy is normal in Masaii culture. I'll try and write about my experience in the village at a later time.

Anyway, on the way back from the village we are going up this hill, and I hear this huge, terrible noise and feel a bunch of smashing and thumping on the bottom of the truck. Uh-oh. Welcome to Kenya. As the truck slows and starts to roll backward, the driver pulls the parking break and we screech to a halt on this huge hill in the middle of nowhere. When I say nowhere about a place in Africa, it really is nowhere. We get out of the truck and look underneath the chassis... only to see that the drive shaft had pretty much self-destructed and ripped apart. And I'm thinking... awesome I'll get back early today, get a great lunch, and not have to walk a long way, deal with Kenyan mechanics, or enjoy a day stuck in Masaiiland. Ha. What ended up happening was the driver calling his mechanic "friends" who came in an old, midget, decrepit Datsun POS pickup (three of them crammed in) and they proceeded to convince me that they had no idea what they were talking about, were going to overcharge us, and would probably not help at all. We then connected our truck to theirs by a tiny little trashy rope connecting both bumpers and then we slowly groaned up the hill with the drive shaft thumping beneath my feet. At the top of the hill, the rope of course snapped but thankfully we had enough momentum to make it over the hill and coast downhill for an hour and a half... (Seriously I wanted to commit suicide or something... sitting in a hot truck going -7 mph on this barely sloping hill for an hour and a half... I took a nap.) Finally, we made it into town and I'm thinking we'll have to get a matatu to go home as the truck will need repairs... But no, it's Kenya and we went and ate lunch while they repaired the drive shaft... welded it on the spot. So an hour later they welded the pieces back together- welding is sketchy here though. We got back to the truck and the mechanic says, "You should wait a while because it is still very hot and not solid yet..." Oh boy. And guess what, our driver decided against waiting and we took off immediately, the underside of the car smoking and all. Sigh...

But as you can see, I'm still alive.

As Jill would say, "Will, that's pretty sketchy."

Oh really...

lovewill

ps: Will forgot to mention the amazing fried brownies we've been having on our down days. One day Jill and I trekked all the way to Karen, bartered for a pan at a dodgy pan-vendor, and came back to realize that the oven in the guest house does not work! I was a little disappointed, seeing as we had just spent a good two hours preparing to bake brownies. So instead I decided that I would make the batter and fry in in a frying pan. I was expecting them to turn into brownie pancakes, but they were more like scrambled brownies. Mmm they were delicious. It's been good to be able to bring elements of home into our Kenyan lives, even though , more often than not, we have to modify them in some way. I'm pretty excited to celebrate my first American thanksgiving ever, and what better way than with french toast and chapati apple pie.

Bethany the fried brownie gal...

Life and a Cappucinno

2007-11-16T08:14:00.000+03:00

I am almost tempted not to blog, because Will’s blog pretty eloquently describes almost all my thoughts of last night. But, I hardly ever write anything, and I am long past due for a blog, so I though I would begin with a funny anecdote:

It was a beautiful night in Kenya, warm with slight, refreshing breeze. Bethany is relaxing on a chair, and Jill and Will are sitting next to her, on the ground. There is a cup of cappuccino that is too hot to drink that is sitting on the arm of the chair.

They are all watching the sun go down over the Ngong hills, and Will begins to get excited about the beauty of the sunset. He attempts to describe how the color of the sky will slowly leak to the sky that is in our peripheral vision. He discovers that words alone cannot capture the essence of what he is trying to convey so he rapidly stretches his long, long arms out to show Bethany and Jill how big the sunset really is. In doing so, he knocks the cup of cappuccino off of the arm of the chair, towards Bethany’s lap. She sees the hot liquid will spill all over her if she makes no attempt to stop it so she reaches out her hand to catch the mug and in doing so launches the mug further into the air.

The cappuccino spatters through the air, and rains down all over Bethany’s face, and clothes. The moral of the story is : Don’t let Will describe the sunset with flailing arm motions, or you too could be showered in cappuccino.

That was possibly the funniest moment of my week, and I am thankful I did not get cappuccino burns all over my face.

Since we left the YWAM base I’ve realized that I lot of times I am trying to do something, instead of trying to be something. Last night as I was falling asleep I began to wonder again about my identity. I wondered whether I let the things I do define me, or whether who I am define the things I do. It’s much easier, I think, to let myself be defined by what I do. It’s less thinking power, and conscious action, because I can just go on with life, and then afterwards tie my identity to whatever it was that I did. To let who I am define what I do, is much more difficult. And I am not sure yet how exactly to go about it. It makes me think of that Casting Crowns song, “Who am I ?” The chorus says :

And you’ve told me who I am,
I am yours.

Do I let the fact that “ I am His” define what I do? I don’t know that I can completely and honestly say “yes”
I love Africa because I feel like there are so many things to talk about…. Like our conversation last night about rebirth. The more I look at our generation, the more I find people who are willing to step out of the numbness and complacency of North America and find new life. And it makes me wonder whether maybe that’s the kind of rebirth Jesus is talking about. Maybe it can be accepting the life of the way of Jesus, while there is deadness all around us. Daring to seek life in a sea of numbness, and discarding the emptiness of materialism and consumerism and replacing it with real, genuine, divine love. Birth is new life. Is discovering a new way to be alive, essentially a rebirth ?

When I think of the churches I’ve been to in North America, and even in Kenya, I am struck by how much deadness I see there. There is life there, don’t get me wrong, but when I look at their eyes, a lot people don’t seem to be truly alive. And I wonder, what’s the point of a religion if it doesn’t offer a better way of life? I’m not interested in religion that exclusively offers life after death. What’s the point of “living” after we die, if we never learned how to live before we die?

We must learn how to live, in the midst of the deadness of the world, for there can be rebirth without life.

Cheers,

Bethany

A new take on being born again...

2007-11-16T08:06:00.000+03:00

This is an excerpt from my journal for November 15, 2007. Tonight, Bethany and I were talking about being in Africa and the desire to raise awareness about what we see. We see much of our generation desiring to change things… desiring to do things differently… desiring to solve problems and create a new world. It’s not radical as this is exactly what every generation has done in some way. It’s not rebellion as every generation desires to break from the mold that the previous generation has created. We see our generation crying out against injustices around the world. No longer will it be ok for 1 out of 6 people in Africa to live on less than one dollar a day. No longer will it be ok for 1200 children to die of a preventable cause in the thirty to forty minutes that it will take me to write this blog entry. To my idealism, it feels like a generation is waking up.

Therefore, Bethany and I were talking about an awakening and our desire to add fuel to the fire by telling our story and the stories that we hear and see here in Africa. To raise awareness of a reality that we see daily. This blog entry is a thought on awakening… on being born again…on resurrection from the dead. (In metaphorical terms… of course.)

Bethany's Brilliant Thought...
Bethany mentioned that this awakening in our generation and our experiences here in Africa are causing her to wonder if being born again doesn’t mean a one time experience—that oh-so-glorified conversion experience—but rather a process of awakening. Born again—that implies new life. What if it’s about an awakening, a revival of the mind, body, and soul? What if it’s more about a journey of awakening in which we are born again and raised from the dead? What if it’s about a journey rather than a destination or a one-time experience of conversion?

Christ comes in and begins to burn away all the dross—those impurities which we may have accumulated over time. So being born again may actually have something to do with becoming who we were when we were first born rather than becoming someone else or finding who we are to be. Yes, we are new in Christ… but newness doesn’t have to mean we become something completely different in a blink of an eye. Maybe newness refers more to being raised from the dead to a new life which is a process. II Corinthians something or other says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” And in some other place it says, “I am made alive in Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me.” [Forgive me if I misquoted something] Maybe being born again is about awakening, that we may actually come alive.

When the old self, the dross that has built up around the original beauty, has died or been burned away so that there is unblemished purity and beauty and unity, is completely gone, a rebirth can happen. Born again. Alive. Awakening. When we are born again in Christ, our journey is redirected along a different path, a path of awakening and renewal. A path of resurrection from the dead, old self. In Christianese terms, it’s called sanctification, the process in which Christ draws us closer to Himself and makes us holy as He is holy. So this journey, this awakening I see my generation experiencing, may actually be the product of Christ being made alive in me. The process of being born again. The process of our awakening.

(See John 3—Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus about being born again. “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” Vs. 6)

“Come awake, from sleep arise.
You were dead, now come alive.
Wake up, wake up, open your eyes.
Climb from your grave, into the light.”

-David Crowder

Here in Africa, I am seeing how this is true for myself. I am in a completely new place, experiencing horrible, difficult… though beautiful things. The comforts, luxuries, and securities of home have been stripped away and Will is decreasing because by himself, Will will fall apart. My dross is in the endless of process of being burned away.

Yesterday, I realized that my pride and insecurity causes me to fight change—that which is different from what I’ve known. I fight admitting things to myself that may not be easy to accept. I fight the stages that I go through. I fight the changes in myself because it's uncomfortable... I have to become someone else. I fight admitting things like how much I care about people because it leaves me open for pain at a later time. I fight letting I AM have control because I want to hold to my i am...ness.

But I am being born again. I am learning that I shouldn’t fight the stages as much, but that I should accept it as a process. Last week, I understood that the balance is more like a pendulum. I’m learning that balance shouldn't be a lever with equal weight on both sides, but instead it should be the balance of a pendulum with God as the anchor point... if you always had equal weight, you'd never move and therefore never grow. Instead, the pendulum’s momentum speeds up and slows down in relation with our distance from God. When we get far enough away from him, our momentum slows to a stop (we run ourselves to a standstill). Finally, we are pulled back into God, momentum quickening once more. In those stages, we’ll learn and grow. We can’t always be going at top speed, right underneath God. But we can’t always remain still either. In fact, we spend most of our time in the transition stages, either to reach maximum momentum or a complete stop, only to be pulled back in to the center by the anchor point—God.

Therefore, I’m experiencing an awakening, a renewal of my mind, body, and soul in which God is showing me so much about leaving, changing, stages, love, and faith. Don’t fight the stages. Don’t be afraid to leave yourself…who knows, maybe you just had to leave it in order to find it again, in a new and beautiful way. Don’t be afraid to die and be born again, alive in Christ.

lovewill

There's a little red bridge with the view of the sun with a lake
Recommends such a setting sight
And the thousands of stars come out thousands of times
We can go, only if you believe.

Only if you believe.

-Angels and Airwaves “Call To Arms”

Leave...

2007-11-07T22:30:00.000+03:00

Wednesday night bloggageness #2

I guess this sort of has to do with what Jill wrote about how maybe we shouldn’t be so concerned with who we are or who we should become, but instead, try to figure out who we were.

I don’t really like looking at pictures of that little curly redhaired little boy that I apparently was at some point. First of all, I always gripe at Mom, asking, “Mom, why the heck did you make me wear that?” We have a picture of David, Sam, and I all dressed up in little sailor suits and I think Sam has a sailor hat on. Little jumpsuits with navy stripes and yellow borders… Oh wow. Wait’ll I show that to their fiancés after they get engaged. hehe.

On a more serious note, I don’t really like looking at those pictures because I don’t understand who that little boy was. How did he turn into who I am now? There is a home video somewhere of my cousin and I in short shorts, long socks, and disgusting tie-dye and neon orange shirts, holding hands as we “walked” around a roller-blading rink. I obviously didn’t care what anyone thought about me. I just don’t identify with that little guy. Or maybe it would hurt too much to figure out where I went wrong.

So carefree, so loving. I had so much faith, never questioning God or Jesus but just really loving them with as much love as I could muster at that point. I ran around with a pop gun, shooting the bad guys and rescuing the princess… Yes, I did discover how to be a G.I. Joe and rescue princesses at the same time. I’m pretty much a stud in case anybody was wondering. My brothers and I built massive waterparks out of sand in the summer, ruining t-shirts and staining them forever. We’d put the hose at the top of a pile of sand and just see what the water would do. We built rope swings on lakes, fished for crawdads, put snapping turtles in girls’ pools, and generally did everything boys do. And a lot more.

But then, I went to high school and decided it was good to be cool. So girls became important, weight lifting a daily thing in the summer, and designer clothes an essential. Started playing sports and spent every waking moment shooting a basketball or doing homework… well, mostly. And you ask, “How’d you end up in Africa?” Good question.

Sometime last spring I read a phenomenal book by Donald Miller that told the story of a roadtrip he and a friend did one year that took them from Houston, Texas to Oregon. It’s called, “Through Painted Deserts.” At the beginning of the book, he talks about the value of leaving.

“Everybody has to change or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.”

“And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is that your story will be about changing, about getting something born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it? It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: LEAVE.”

Leaving… I like the sound of the word. Jill, Bethany, and I, in our conversations at night, have talked about that word. I have tried to explain something deep within me that is hard to articulate, but that I think is one of the most valuable things any of us can do.

I think that we have to leave in order to be able to stay.

I’m one of those people who have to change, or I’ll seriously die. Or actually, the part of me that is most alive will die, thereby making me dead. I don’t think that it’s because I get bored with where I am. That I just need a change of pace to keep me interested or thinking, though those are great things. I honestly believe that one must leave the luxuries of home and the comforts of familiar places, culture, and people in order to realize how beautiful those things are.

I wrote a note on Facebook last spring about leaving. Here’s a portion of it:

“Maybe we need to leave to figure out how to stay. I have felt lately that I need to leave, to go be with the lepers, to cave dive with hippies, to sleep on the front lawn in Oregon with some beautiful sisters, laughing about life, to play night golf, to feed that kid on the posters from Chad, to give the girl who was raped in Sudan a hug, to go to Afghanistan and tell the orphan the world does have love left in it. To get out of here... to find something- maybe a perspective... to see the beauty in the simplicity of the foot to the accelerator... or the hugs. Or the music of it all. Maybe I need to do that so I get a perspective... so I learn the beauty of it- the simplicity of it. So that then I can come back and remember all of that as I live in this America. This place where all of that is radical but it shouldn't be.”

And now that I’m here, in Africa, trying to love people… taking bucket showers, and washing clothes in a bucket, I’m beginning to see the beauty in simplicity. Away from text messages, dating, partying, and success…here I am. I wish that everybody who had the chance to leave would do it…Jill and I talked today about how it will be hard to go home, back to all those things. We don’t ever want to forget that which we have seen, that which has broken our hearts, that which is changing us as we and talk among a completely different culture.

So I think that we have to leave in order to be able to stay… And the following is a twist on that idea…

In what is probably the greatest book ever written (Manalive), G.K. Chesterton writes,
"This round road I am treading is an untrodden path. I do believe in breaking out; I am a revolutionist. But don't you see that all these real leaps and destructions and escapes are only attempts to get back to Eden--to something we have had, to something at least we have heard of? Don't you see one only breaks the fence or shoots the moon in order to get HOME?"

When Jill quietly spoke into that dark night two weeks ago, quietly wondering if maybe we’re just supposed to figure out who we were rather than worry so much about who we are becoming, it hit me that I’m trying to leave something that is within myself so that I might be able to stay… with myself? (I’m Ron Burgundy?) That didn’t really make sense but I guess that I’m realizing that there are things that have made me into a certain person that I need to get rid of, that I need to leave. As the quote says, all these leaps and escapes that I’m making these days here in Africa, are really only an attempt to get home, to get back to something that I know is there, but that I have lost somewhere along the way.

I wish I could bring all of you here…. That we could all leave together, that we might all be able to stay, or get back to wherever home is. That we might see that life is about more than what we’ve made it.

Life has to be about something more than parties, success, big rims, stereo systems, designer clothes, text messages, girlfriends, and things… It has to be about something greater than ourselves or that which we can accumulate for ourselves. If I am the center… If “I” am what life is about, then it’s really not about much, is it?

In this leaving, I’m sure seeing a different side of this life. Did you catch that? This life…Don’t you want to be alive? To feel alive? Do you ever get sick of feeling dead? I sure do.

Here at Huruma Children’s Home, where the destitute, dying, and abused find food, help, and love, I’m beginning to see a little of what I need to get back to. I’ve overcomplicated life for so long. Maybe life was supposed to be about the simple things… the sunrise over a valley near Machakos, the sunset over a landscape straight from the lion king… Maybe we’re supposed to enjoy God, to enjoy that which He’s put in front of us as we really try to be ALIVE.

I’ll leave you with the conclusion to what I wrote last spring… I wonder if that young man had any idea he’d get the opportunity to leave… had any idea that we all have to leave in order to come home.

“Maybe it was meant to be about enjoying God- seeing him in a sunrise over the Andes next to Quito- seen with a street child. Maybe it was meant to be about seeing God's love in the eyes that girl who loves me even though my people, the people from my country killed her family and her hope... even her innocence. For as I look into those questioning eyes, maybe I will see my own staring back and realize I got it all wrong. And through our tears even though we don't speak the same language, maybe I can again enjoy God in the wonder of the hug. Seeing God, enjoying God... in the snow, in the replenishing rain, in the softness of a touch, in the breath of fresh air... what would it be like to be in a coma and then take that first conscious breath once again. I should revel in that as I see the sunrise, as I give a hug, as I play guitar and piano, as I climb the mountain, as I crest the hill...as I leave- needing that fresh breath once more so that I might be able breath a fresh breath into the body. The body that has become more concerned with the shell- the skin, rather than that which makes it alive... Maybe God can use me to wake it from its coma and show how God can breathe a fresh breath into the body once more. The air around here has gotten kind of stagnant. Let's all breathe again- enjoying Him in the process... In the morning, after the frozen night, let him shine light on the frozen twig once more... so that the life within can once again begin to grow."

LEAVE!

lovewill

Wednesday night bloggageness #1

2007-11-07T22:02:00.000+03:00

And this shalt be in response to Jill’s response to Bethany’s response to what happened last Sunday…Doubting you followed that but mmkay.

I always wonder where to begin. In beginning the blog, I had every intention of writing often and extensively about things that have happened, things that we’ve done, and thoughts that we discussed/thoughts that I have. However, with everything that happens on a daily basis, I find disgust myself on a regular basis because it takes so much effort to open up and really write about things, so much time, and my thoughts are all so jumbled and mixed up that I never know where to begin. So I just don’t write. Sigh…

Tonight, I sit here in a Kenyan family’s home down the hill from the orphanage with an adorable three year old Kenyan girl named Sabrina laying across one leg as I listen to music and think about the events of the last couple of weeks. I’m listening to a song by the Fray off of their first EP and I’m amazed because it is the story of my life. As I listened to the song, I randomly found the blog that Jill wrote yesterday about the lady that I ignored because of my complacency, my calloused heart, and a plethora of excuses because I was too busy and too poor (isn’t that hilarious? Not so much really.).

And now, here I am, knowing that I should write a lot tonight.

I just finished reading what Jill wrote about the little boys in Karen and all the memories of those little boys, that little beggar mother, the sea of boys in the small shop the morning I went to work with the street kids all came crashing back. Since I don’t ever know where to begin, I’ll just tell one of the stories, or retell it from my perspective.

I am also haunted by the little mother in downtown Nairobi. She will forever be another of the invisible faces that fill spaces in my mind. I was leading the girls to Railways that morning, the central matatu stage. Because I was in front, I think it was an unsaid but understood thing that if I had stopped, things would have been different. The girls are always hurrying to keep up with my six three legs anyway. As we walked that morning, I remember a mental sigh of frustration as that mother came up behind me and I heard her jingle the coins in the cup as she begged for money from the girls. Rolling my eyes, I kept walking, thinking about all the beggars and having read and been told never to give money because it will be used for glue, drugs, or alcohol. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking that morning. I kept walking and turned off everything in my heart, sealing my calloused heart off from feeling anything for that woman. She sped up to beg to me and I actually told her no multiple times and then ignored her. We crossed Haille Sellassie Ave. and she changed direction. I looked back and lost her in the crowd as she crossed the street. Still looking behind me, I looked at the girls, seeing the pain in their eyes as Jill spoke for all of us, “I feel like the worst person in the world right now.”

I immediately felt the frustration at the situation turn into frustration at myself and pain as I realized, “Wow, I just did a spectacular job of acting like Jesus.” I don’t remember exactly how we began talking about it, but somebody mentioned something about how we had not exactly exemplified Christ in dealing with the girl. I now picture Jesus looking down with a tear in his eye as we walked away from that girl. Jesus, the one who walked Galilee healing people, touching people, and loving people. In the story of the rich, young ruler, Mark recounts, “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” As He walked around Palestine, He made time for people, loving them, talking to them, and healing them. No money to give, but He gave so much more than money.

So with a heavy heart, we got on the bus to Ngong and all sat alone with our thoughts. I retreated into my own world, looking out the window, away from the girls as the tears started. I remember wishing that I could just get out of the bus and run back to where we left her, searching for her and when I found her, I would give her a hug and say, “I’m sorry. I really do love you.” I wish I would have done so. We eventually talked about it and decided together that we would not hold back Christ’s love because of our busy schedules, our calloused hearts, and our endless excuses revolving around people won’t use the money for the right reasons.

Looking back on that day, I am amazed at how much it affected us, how much we learned, and how different my attitude toward similar situations has been since. The next morning, I got up alone to go and work with the street kids once more. We went to another corner, one that is known to have a lot of young girls and their babies. At that corner, there was a boy with the scariest, most fascinating, and powerful eyes I have ever seen. Eyes so deep… endless. Eyes that have experience more pain and seen more things than I can ever imagine. Eyes that tell a story about the loss of innocence and the desperation that follows. Eyes that speak of death, sorrow, and resilience. Bloodshot from malnutrition and seemingly dead. Eyes that seem as if they see nothing. I don’t know his name, but I find myself wondering how he got there, what he does on a daily basis, and how to help him…to give him a name and a face in that world of nameless kids and invisible faces.

After working with the kids, I had to take a matatu out of the area because Sandy was going south of Nairobi and wasn’t going home until later. Because I only had a thousand shilling bill, I needed change for the matatu. The boys were still close to me, and one of them told me with tears in his eyes, “I didn’t get any milk. I’m hungry.” I glanced to his wrist to see the telltale bulge under his tattered coat, revealing the presence of the glue bottle. With him in tow and the beggar mother in mind, I walked across to the street to a small store and asked the shopkeeper for milk. Fred, a Kenyan worker, and I grabbed handfuls of powdered milk packages (which they devour dry), costing about ten shilling each (that’s about fifteen cents). As we began to pass them out, boys began appearing from everywhere, clutching at the milk, at my pockets, and at me, begging for, “more more.” I think we passed out around 12 or 13 packages and then had to run away quickly to catch the matatu. It was such a little gesture, but maybe one of those boys saw love in my eyes. “Change the world one hug, one smile, and one person at a time.”

I have been in Africa over a month now. In one month, I have learned more about faith, dependence, love, and trust than I had in my previous years. And the more I learn, the more I am astounded by the fact that I know nothing about any of those things. I have undergone a process in which God has stripped away all the baggage I have that I might be free to love with His love. It hurts. I am finding that Will must disappear so that Christ may fill his place, loving these people through me. I think that it doesn’t really matter what these people do with the money I give them. I think it has more to do with my heart. Do I trust God enough to trust that He will take my sacrifice and use it? Do I love that person enough to risk them abusing what I do or give? Yep, I’m young, immature, and idealistic but seriously, what is love? Am I willing to really try to understand that question? I talk about love a lot, and I think we left YWAM in order to try and learn what it means to love, to learn what it means to be a true disciple. How do I, a young man with an insubstantial and nonexistent bank account, love people here and try to “change the world”? I have no money, no understanding of love, and nothing left within me to be able to pour into these people. “Give until there is nothing left.”

May Jill, Bethany, and I have the courage to do give until there is nothing left. Love one person at a time. And truly follow Jesus one step at a time.

"We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers: bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we are called home." To Write Love On Her Arms

Amen to that.

lovewill

2007-11-07T21:59:00.001+03:00

In response to Bethany’s entry from last Sunday—this is Jill.

I am still haunted by what happened that morning. I still think about the woman following us on the deserted Sunday streets of Nairobi, her baby tied to her back, clutching a cup of coins. And I still feel sick when I think about our reaction. We were not lost in the shuffling crowd typical of downtown, but we could not hear her voice. We were not bound by Western standards of time and punctuality as we made our way to church, but we did not slow our pace. Our hurried steps maintained their stride as she desperately ran to catch up, circling us, shaking her meager earnings, repeating her words over and over. “Please. Some food for my baby.” Anything to get our attention. And we continued on our way. Eventually she gave up and changed directions. I watched her go, and wanted to call her back. But I didn’t.

We boarded the bus in silence and I spent the entire ride to Ngong unsuccessfully trying to hold back tears. I wanted so much to take back what had happened. I wanted to ask the woman’s name, how old her baby was, how often someone actually acknowledged her presence on a daily basis. As Will, Bethany, and I discussed the situation, we examined our excuses. We didn’t know how much money to give her. We weren’t confident that she would actually spend the money on food. We didn’t see any stores open to buy milk. We were late for church. And as soon as we spoke those words, we realized that none of these things could justify our actions. Maybe it wasn’t about giving the “right” amount of money or being able to buy food or worrying about what she would spend it on. Maybe it was about the love behind our actions. Maybe it was about any action at all.

So we made a pact. The next time an opportunity presented itself… we wouldn’t let the fear of not doing it exactly right keep us from not doing anything at all.

So Sunday night, one week later… On our way back to the orphanage from our weekend in Machakos, we stopped in Karen to pick up some essentials at the Nakumatt (toilet paper, water, bread). Stepping off the matatu, we were greeted by six small boys on the side of the road. They approached us in dirty, tattered clothes, speaking quickly. We stooped down to understand them and heard only, “We are hungry.” Will, Bethany, and I looked at each other and Will spoke the simple words in all of our eyes. “You’re hungry? Okay.” No questions asked.

The boys grabbed our hands as we made our way to the supermarket and Will went to find a taxi. We attempted to strike up conversation, with our limited Swahili. The boy next to me was slightly taller than my hip, and I asked him his age, expecting to hear seven or eight. When he told me he was 14, I almost didn’t believe him. His nine year old brother, who was noticeably taller, and seven year old brother were close behind. I asked him where he lived and he pointed to a general direction across town. He told me that he lived with his mother and that he didn’t have a dad. We walked into the Nakumatt and the boys led Bethany and I over to the bread aisle. We filled a cart with muffins, an enormous loaf of bread, two cartons of milk, and some chocolate bars. Will came back to meet us as we checked out, and the boys followed us to a grassy area outside the supermarket where we sat with them while they ate.

I have never seen so much food disappear so fast. The muffins were divided up, two for each. Some crammed both in their mouths; others shoved one in their pocket for later. The loaf of bread was torn open and they grabbed multiple pieces at a time, balling them up in their fists to devour them faster. They snatched the milk cartons away from each other, their small mouths still full of bread, spilling all over their clothes. Seeing the problems that would arise with the two chocolate bars, we divided the squares into six servings, and they all eagerly held out their hands.

I think the food was gone in under two minutes.

I asked one of them if they had eaten today. Between mouthfuls and gulps of milk, he told me that they hadn’t had breakfast, but they had some rice for lunch. We continued to ask them various questions about their life. Some questions were answered, others weren’t. We sat and watched them eat, wondering what their lives were like, having no way to really know. As they finished, they helped us pick up the trash and throw everything away. It was getting dark, and they asked for some money for a ride home. We gave them 60 shillings, 10 for each boy. They thanked us and ran off. We would probably never see them again, but this time felt much different. God presented us with another opportunity to show His love, and this time we embraced it.

Before the boys walked away, Will asked us, “How do we end this? Should we tell them why we did this?” I didn’t have an answer, and we said nothing. But as the group turned to walk away, we all waved goodbye, and I heard him say, “Nakupenda.” --I love you. I hope they heard. And if they didn’t, I hope they know.

“Sometimes we learn how to do things well by first having the courage to do them badly.” – Soul Graffiti

My attempt at a witty title has been lost in the dichotomy of Africa, the suffering, the beauty, the injustice, the kids, the love, and the redemption

2007-10-30T22:45:00.001+03:00

Tonight, the question now becomes where to begin...

"Midnight
our sons and daughters
Were cut down and taken from us
Hear their heartbeat...
We hear their heartbeat
In the wind
We hear their laughter
In the rain
We see their tears
Hear their heartbeat...
We hear their heartbeat
Night hangs like a prisoner
Streched over black and blue
Hear their heartbeat...
We hear their heartbeat
In the trees
Our sons stand naked
Through the walls
Our daughters cry
See their tears in the rainfall"
-U2- Mothers of the Disappeared

I really don't know where to begin tonight. I have needed to write about my actual experience with the street kids for some time now, but my callouses, frustrations, and busy days have not allowed me to do so. Tonight I write about injustice. About pain. About eyes. About hopelessness and despair. About suffering. I write about the destruction of sin, but the redemption of Love. About children who have no hope, and who need Love. About love--that undefinable phenomenon that occurs between people and about Love--Jesus Christ. I write about struggle-- a struggle for the kids near River Road and a struggle for us, those who saw into their lives last Friday morning. Tonight I write about a journey that I have undergone in the last week, a journey from the darkness of River Road, which passes through confusion, a calloused heart, frustration, and which ends in Love. Therefore, I write about the redemption of grace. But finally, I write about children who are nameless... children who are described as trash. Children who have but one Hope. And children who have become invisible, lost in a world of back alleyways, trash, and glue. Children lost in my oblivious apathy. Children whose story must be told and children whose faces must be seen.

Tonight, I will write a lot. I will try to paint dark, but accurate pictures... leaving no holds barred and no child invisible. I will try to relate a story in which I experienced more pain than ever before, but in the journey, discovered more of Love and Grace than ever before. My words will not do the invisible justice. But maybe the pictures will bring them into the light. Maybe you will be changed. Maybe pain, apathy, or a schedule will cause you to turn away. But maybe, through the journey, both you and I, the reader and the writer, will find some sort of catharsis in the darkness... as a faint light on the horizon slowly breaks through that darkness until the full blown Son blinds us with love.

"We are traveling together like companions on a quest-and going slow enough to notice our surroundings...Perhaps it is in the journey, not the destination, where we will unearth our vital connection with God and one another. And surely this is a quest we were made to embark on together."
-Soul Graffiti

Friday, October 25th, 2007
Near River Road, Nairobi- 5:30 AM

In my groggy, early-morning stupor, I notice the landscape and attitude of the city begin to change as Sandy's land rover turns onto River Road and heads down into the industrial, poor sector of Nairobi. I have come with my camera, my jacket, and my innocent, naive eyes. We turn onto a dark street with sidewalks on both sides and search for a place to park, along the side of the street. Even in the early morning quiet, I feel a pall of an unexplainable darkness surrounding me as we park the Rover and get out of the car. Jill and Bethany, also groggy-eyed, hop out of the backseat, and we make sure we lock the doors of the car as we cross the street, where a group of children line the walls of buildings, closed shops, and barred windows. I see huddled bodies crouching on the street, sitting on the steps to shops, and sitting on top of canvas bags, bulky with unknown contents. As we draw nearer, silent in expectation and eager, but subdued excitement, I begin to notice the huddled children, who sit listening as a pastor speaks to them in Kiswahili. There are a few people leaning against car doors behind the pastor: a mzungu lady (white lady), a young Kenyan man, and a young Kenyan girl. We walk up and lean against the car and I am able to begin to observe for the first time. I see about twenty young men and about five young girls huddled along the wall as the pastor glances back and forth, passionately speaking in Swahili. The pastor is a Kenyan of diminutive size with a strong voice and a caring face. The young man is named Fred, the young lady Eunice, and the white lady Linda.

As I glance back to the kids, I see one of them dip his head to his shirt sleeve and I see him take a deep breath. The pastor notices as well and points at him and says something. The boy reaches inside his shirt sleeve and pulls out a bottle of glue and holds it next to his stomach. Through the course of my uninterrupted observation as the pastor speaks, I notice multiple heads dipping their noses into shirt sleeves, jackets, and visible glue bottles. Many times, the bottles are not filled with glue, only a small deposit of leftover glue in the bottom of the bottle.

Many of the children shiver in the coolness of the Nairobi morning and I realize that their tattered jackets, trousers, and shoes do nothing against the chill. Many of the boys are barefoot, and those with shoes might as well be wearing sandals. Many sit next to one another and use an empty canvas bag to cover them. Some have cuts and bruises on their faces and others look extremely malnourished and have that hungry look in their eye. Still others frequently fall into fits of coughing, characteristic of acute Tuberculosis. One girl with a drawn face, and a frail, extremely thin body, has a look of pain and sickness in her eyes (I found out later she has full blown AIDS)... Next to her is a young girl in a red beanie and a tattered jacket. The woman holds a baby against her, in the traditional Kenyan wrap. I cannot help but staring at the eyes of the kids... eyes of resilient determination, eyes wide with the high from the glue, eyes that show more pain, knowledge of the brutality of the streets, and a crippling mix of despair and hopelessness. However, I do not let myself break with the roiling emotions at this point. Instead, I begin to shut down so as not to be overwhelmed, thinking that I will push back the emotions so that I might just observe. Bad idea.

After a few minutes, the pastor finishes speaking and turns to those leaning against the cars, who move forward to places in front of the kids as the kids lean in closer. Bethany, Jill, and I split up and move to different groups as they begin to pray. My group is led by our missionary friend, Sandy, and she begins to pray for the guys in the group, asking God to be with them every day, to provide for them, to give them strength to get off the glue, and to reveal Himself to them. She prays that Christ might touch their hearts and love them today. The guys are respectful, heads bowed and silent. They shiver constantly, and every now and then, one coughs uncontrollably. Some evidently understand more English than others as they whisper translations in the ears of other boys.

After Sandy's prayer, the place becomes more lively as the workers pull out a box of milk, first aid equipment, and some clothes. I run back across the street to grab my camera from the car and look up and down the street as the area begins to awaken and move onto the streets... vendors setting up shop, shopkeepers opening doors and sweeping steps, and the random car driving down the street. As I cross the street once more, I see two boys running toward the group from the Southeast. One of the boys runs ahead to Sandy, his face covered in glue and his eyes wild with concern and an expression I do not understand and frankly do not care to. As I reach the boys once more, I hear him rattle off a string of words to Sandy in Swahili, after which she looks helplessly at Fred, who makes his way to the boy. The boy continues his rapid speaking and Fred whispers something to Sandy and begins walking away at a rapid pace with the boy. Sandy tells me that the boy's brother has been beaten and Fred is going to check on him.

I brush the thought away as the boys begin crowding me, with a small container of milk in one hand. They are eager to talk to me and I make small talk with different ones who speak English. I learn that one of the boys in front of me had no schooling as he has been on the street for the duration of his short life, and has therefore never attended school. Most of the boys are between the ages of 13 and 18, with a few being younger. I begin taking pictures of the different boys and try to decide what to talk about to boys who have never seen a tv, never watched a football match, and have never gone to school. I mostly take pictures, and grasp my camera tightly as they crowd around, clutching at the camera to see the digital image on the LCD screen. The pictures of themselves fascinate them and they ask to see them constantly. Many of them get first aid from Linda and one in particular caught my ear as he told Linda of a pain in his knee. He gets two Tylenol pills. The boys continue asking for more milk as they have immediately hidden the milk they have already received inside their jacket, in hopes that they might claim not to have one and get another.

I then meet this little girl named Sophia. She is seven years old and is adorable. Huge, bright eyes and full of life and energy. However, there is something different about her reactions, her intelligence, and her coherence. I see the glue in the mother's hands and briefly wonder if Sophia is on glue as well. (Later I find out that this is highly likely because the glue stifles the hunger and keeps the appetite down.) Malnutrition and the use of glue stunt the growth and the mental development of kids. I don't understand what it is about her eyes. She latches on to my arm and we play with her as she smiles and warms up to us. Behind the light of the smile in her eyes, is a veil of something darker. I play with Sophia for awhile and enjoy taking pictures of her and her mother. Her mother is probably no older than nineteen but looks like she is in her late thirties. Later, I find out that her mother has full blown AIDS and that her newborn baby is probably HIV positive. Eunice, who is holding Sophia, looks at me and says, "It's not fair that she is here. She will always be here and has no chance of getting out. It's not fair, but that's the way it is. She will live the remainder of her probably short life on these streets." My heart breaks, with a brief thought about how insane all of this is, but I quickly shove down the frog in my throat as we begin to wrap it up with the boys.

Fred gets back with the young boy whose face is covered with glue, and seems urgent to get going. He explains to Sandy that the boy is in bad shape and we need to go look at him and see what we can do. The young boy with Fred is the brother of the boy who has been beating. We pack up the supplies and get ready to leave. It's about 6:30AM at this point. We cannot stay long on the street because the kids are not allowed to congregate or they will be arrested for vagrancy. They must continually move in small groups during the day in order to be protected from the police. If arrested, they go immediately to jail. They have no identification (Which means they will never go to school... Most of them have no idea how old they are and some don't know their own name.) and are therefore stuck in jail if arrested. If they are taken to jail, most of them will die in a short time, as Kenyan jails aren't exactly the Hilton. I learn from Sandy that they each have their own territory and must report to the leader of their small gang, probably paying him whatever they can come up with from begging, pickpocketing, and anything else they can do. Many times, the gang leader is Mungiki, which is the crime organization in Nairobi that even the police fear. I am sobered by the roughness in which these kids live.

Every now and then I cast a glance to Jill and Bethany, searching for how they are doing in their facial expressions. Jill looks my way with a dead look in her normally fiery eyes, and I must look away or risk an emotional breakdown on the spot. Bethany is on the other side of a group of boys, and I am unable to see her expression. I go around to the boys and shake hands and give high fives. They recoil from hugs. They have never experienced any affection of any kind unless it has been from a prostitute, which are common. And that doesn't count.

We hop back in the car, and Sandy follows Fred and Linda a couple of streets over. They stop their car and alight at the entrance to an alleyway. Oh boy, recounting this will be tough. Sandy tells us that there is a boy in the alleyway who was beaten yesterday and is in bad shape. She mentions that we might want to stay in the car, but a mixture of curiosity, pride, and the normal teenage boy attitude of invincibility drive me out of the car. The girls follow. Sandy, Linda, and Fred have already turned the corner with the pastor and some of the boys and I immediately get scared because I'm in an alley on the wrong side of the tracks with two North American girls, not sure where the people who have any clue have gone. Thankfully, we see them down another sub-alley and follow immediately. As we get closer, I notice a body huddled up against the wall in a trash heap. The entire alley is carpeted with assorted trash including bottles, bags, destroyed clothes, plastic, and anything else one could imagine.

We walk up to the group and I see Linda and Sandy kneeling around a body that is shaking uncontrollably. He is laying on a canvas bag and is surprisingly small for his apparent age, not that I could tell his age for all the blood. Fred is standing in front of us, blocking our view of his upper body and face. Linda touches his hip and he recoils with pain. Sandy mentions something about bones probably being broken all over and internal injuries being probable. The first thing I see is his hand as it leaves his hip to move toward his face. His hand is caked with dry blood and recently covered with new, wet blood... bright, red, and glistening in the early morning sunlight. Then, the smell of the blood and the alleyway hits me. Sensory overload. My curiosity takes hold and I move around Fred to look at his face. (And this is where I choke up and feel sick even now.) The boy's head is horribly swollen, especially around his left temple. He is on his side and the side of the face facing me is covered in contusions, blood, and cuts. It is harder for me to see the bruises and cuts because he is black and it doesn't show up as well. His eyes are closed and there is blood all around his cheeks and nose. His nose is still bleeding. Fred comments how this happened sometime yesterday and he is still bleeding. My first thought went something like this, "Wow, um, this is not good." I notice his brother and friend pacing nervously around us. More of the boys from the street have arrived and are filling in behind me. The brother smears glue around his mouth and nose and puts the bottle to his nose, sniffing deeply at frequent intervals. The friend is sniffing uncontrollably as well. Sandy sees it and chastises him about it, then mumbles something about it being from stress.

I look back to the boy, and see his eyes flutter open and wildly spin unseeingly around. I realize that he is either approaching a coma or is passing between a state of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness. We are way beyond my knowledge of first aid from lifeguarding and scouts. His mouth is oozing blood as well and everything around his cheekbones and eye socket is horrible swollen. I see cuts and open contusions on the top of his head as well. Sandy and Linda decide that he's going to the hospital somehow and Fred and a street guy try to sit him up, at which he gasps and moans... a haunting moan/groan unlike anything I've ever heard. His brother staggers nervously around, pacing as he sniffs more glue. The brother is crying now. I reach down and grasp his wrist, feeling for his pulse, which is faint, fluttering softly under my fingertips. Now closer to his head, I see the swelling is more than I had originally thought. As they lay him back down until they can find some other way of transporting him, Fred mentions something about the cuts and bruises around his torso, indicating broken ribs and internal injuries. His nose is bleeding once more and his eyes are almost swollen completely shut. Concussion is an understatement.

The boys get a discarded canvas bag from the trash around him and lay the bag next to him. Fred and the pastor roll him onto the bag, at which he again moans softly. I cannot help but thinking that moving him in this way will exacerbate his injuries and if he has any spinal injuries, we have just made them worse. However, what choice do we have? He must get to a hospital and an ambulance would laugh at coming to River Road to pick up a street boy. It's not like Kenya has an ambulance service anyway. They roll him onto the bag and his eyes snap open as he moans before going unconscious once more as he faints from what I assume to be pain. Fred and a bigger boy grab the ends and begin to half-drag half-carry him out of the alleyway. The brother follows, sobbing as he completely covers his face in glue, and staggers down the alleyway. The brother cannot be more than 11 or 12. My little brother Sam is 13. Oh, it makes me nauseous to imagine. I walk mechanically after the group and snap a quick look at the girls. Their faces are drawn and I know that I cannot make eye contact or I will lose it completely. That won't help anyone. As we follow the bag, I see one of his battered, bare feet slip out and bounce along the ground. Linda opens the back of her Rover-type Nissan and they slide him into the back, laying him diagonally. Fred positions him and I look inside to see him bleeding once more. Two of the bigger street boys jump in the back with him. Fred raises his voice as one of the other boys steps on his midsection to get to the seat. I hear a groan come from the floor as the other boy steps over him and sits down. The brother softly wails as he will not be able to go. I later found out that Nairobi Kenyatta National Hospital is required to provide care (whenever they are able get to them, which could be days) and it is supposed to be free. However, the two street boys must go in with him because if they so much as see a white person, the price skyrockets.

As Linda gets ready to shut the door, I get one last glance and notice a huge, single tear fall from his right eye before the door slams. That is the last I saw of him. The small crowd disperses and I turn and stagger numbly back to our car. We get in and Sandy begins telling us what happened. Apparently, there was a large crowd yesterday around a street vendor and someone stole something from him. The crowd thought this boy did it and the mob immediately knocked him to the ground and began beating him. As he fell to the ground, the kicking began. They continued kicking him all over his body as he lay defenseless in the midst of the mob. I have no idea why they stopped or why he was even close to alive. His face will never look the same. Sandy tells us that the mobs around Nairobi will either kick or stone a person to death in a situation such as this one. The car is quiet and though I find myself wondering how the girls are doing, I cannot bring myself to look at them. And this is where I shut down.

Ok, out of journal mode. As we drove away, I realized I will never see that boy again. I know they walked into the hospital with him, but I will never know if he made it or what will become of him. Because they are street boys, there is the possibility of them being arrested at the hospital. If he was arrested and taken to jail there is no way he is still alive. As I watched them drive away, I realized that I was utterly powerless to do anything for him. I won't ever know if he made it or how his brother is coping with the tragedy. Such is life on the streets. I have no picture of him, because I felt it irreverent to take pictures of him. I now wish I had. I DO NOT EVEN KNOW HIS NAME! He will forever remain in my memory as the invisible boy, whose name I don't know, and whose face I have tried to push away. I feel as if for a moment, when our lives intertwined, I was able to see him, but the world has stripped his face away, sending him back to invisibility and oblivion in relation to my world. Their are invisible children everywhere.

At that point, I continued pushing my emotions down and away, refusing to think about what I had seen and denying the past two hours. We reached the Wilson's house and the girls lay down and fell asleep. I tried to sleep but wasn't able to. I plugged my camera into my computer and began furiously editing the pictures I had taken so as to stay busy. I definitely didn't feel like reading or praying at that point. I eventually fell asleep and when I awoke, it honestly felt like it was a different day. We didn't talk about it all day and that night we talked about something completely different after I asked if we should talk about the boy, to which the answer was a unanimous no. Not that I really wanted to talk about it.

Now to the journey... (At this point, I thought about stopping and doing another blog about the journey back to some semblance of healing, because this is long, but I'm just going to keep it all together here.)

The next morning the stress of Jill being sick, things going on at home back in Texas, and just the entire week hit me and I had to get away. I went for a walk and began to pray for specific issues with Jill and Bethany and found myself realizing that I could not pray whatsoever. Jill had been very sick the for two days before and that brought on a lot of stress for the three of us. I think our confidence was shaken as we realized the brutal (but also beautiful) reality of being in Africa. I was utterly powerless to protect her or help relieve her of pain. That extremely bothered me. Having known Bethany and Jill for only a month, I didn't understand her or know her well enough to know what she needed or wanted as she was sick. That brought on a bunch of stress for me and I can only imagine what she was feeling, realizing she was sick in Africa, away from the comfort and safety of home and friends. That morning, everything kind of got jumbled inside of me and I had to get away. I went for a walk began praying for all of us, but realized that it felt like there was huge chasm between me and God. Jill and I talked about it later, but it feels like the moment I shut myself down to feeling anything and ignoring what had happened, a huge chasm was created between me and God. I found my thoughts drifting back to the boy for the first time since I had watched them drive away.

The thing that bothered me the most was that there is no hope for these street children. They are stuck in an endless cycle of AIDS, prostitution, addiction, and hunger. They have been cast out on the streets because their parents died of AIDS and they either have no family or their family cannot care for them. They cannot go to school because they have no identification, do not know their age, and have no way of getting any. Because of prostitution, many of them will contract AIDS before they reach twenty, and for the girls, their babies will then contract HIV and will become just another number in the hundreds of thousands of AIDS orphans in Kenya. The cycle continues, untouched by the government because these kids are not worth it. They are trash and if one dies today, well, good riddance. Therefore, I am utterly powerless to help. Nothing anyone does today, tomorrow, or in the foreseeable future will bring hope for them. They will live out the remainder of their lives on the streets. The unchangeable reality breaks my heart and hurts my head.

In my already emotional, stressed state I fell apart as my mind drifted to his facial expressions as he lay there against the wall in the trash of a back alleyway in Nairobi, completely invisible to the rest of the world. How many other boys have died like that, in a back alleyway, unknown and unloved in this world. Completely invisible. I wondered what his thoughts were as he lay broken, bruised, bleeding, and battered in the trash. And then I broke, sobbing uncontrollably as I wondered how he was ever supposed to believe in a God who claims to be a God of love. I became angry and bitter, crying angry tears as I started asking the hard questions. I remember thinking, "How could you sit by and watch as his life is destroyed? Where were you when they knocked him to the ground and kicked his frail body again and again until he held onto life by a single thread? How is he ever supposed to believe in a God of love if you let this happen? Were you there beside him? Dammit God, why did you allow that to happen... where were you when they beat him within an inch of his life?" I remember thinking that it was not fair that there was not a supernatural switch somewhere that I could flip in order to switch places with the boy because I wanted so badly to take his place in that alleyway. No, not for noble reasons, but I selfishly wanted to be that boy in the street, eyes swollen shut with pain, battered and bleeding on the ground. I wanted to switch places because then I'd be the one on the ground and would not have to gaze upon that pain and agony, as it was my own. I mentally yelled at God, "Is this all some cosmic game of chess where you move pieces around, knocking pieces over when they are no longer necessary. So, for minutes I ranted and raved about injustice, the darkness, and the frustration that I had with God. I knew He was not the one to blame, but I wanted to blame Him for everything, dumping the responsibility completely in His lap. Isn't that characteristic of me, blame the Creator of the universe for something that my own race has done?

As I sat, screaming at God in my mind, basically cussing God out, I think He just listened and when I had nothing left but sobs of frustration and pain, I feel like He asked me, "Ok Will, you done yet?" I did not resolve anything that morning, but had to head back as we needed to leave for the market. However, looking back on it, I feel like God valued the honesty. It's not like He has to have my approval or anything. Yesterday, Jill read me a verse about the rich young ruler in Mark, where it says, "Jesus looked at him and loved him." I think that Saturday morning God just listened to me and loved me. I resolved nothing and the frustration was still there, but I had put everything into the open and had admitted that I was mad at God.

The next morning, after brushing off a homeless girl with a baby who begged for money (see Bethany's blog), we got on a matatu to make the hour journey out to the orphanage where we were going to church. On the bus, I turned to the window and put my head in my hands thinking about that beggar and about how I had completely failed miserably at being like Christ. She was even asking for food and not really money. The baby was tied to her back. Even if He had nothing to give, He would have stopped and loved her, spending time with her. At that point, I thought about His love and began to pray once more, asking God the why questions once more, this time not in frustration but in a genuine "I want to know" attitude. As I sat in that crammed bus, Job 38-42 came to mind. "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? vs. 4 Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place? vs. 12 What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? ... Surely you know, for you were already born, you have lived soooo many years. vs. 19-21 Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion? vs. 31 Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? vs. 8"

Wow, who am I sometimes seems inadequate in its simplicity. Job followed by a mixture of the message of love in the gospels and verses about following Christ brought peace and comfort.

This is normally the part where a conclusion occurs. I have no conclusion. There is no way to explain away what I have seen. Sometimes, trusting God's sovereignty seems like a cop out. My heart still hurts and I do not understand why there is injustice in the world. I will never understand why God does not reach in and save kids like the nameless boy. I will never understand why he has to be beaten for me to be slapped out of my apathy. I will never understand why the Church back home will continue to build buildings, pay pastors, and sponsor huge stadium rallies that end up asking for more money. I will never understand why the church which is to be the bride of Christ has become a prostitute, selling herself out of greed, materialism, and selfish pride. I will never understand why that church as a whole has forgotten to be the hands and feet of Christ. I will never understand why a perfect God allows such imperfection in the world, such pain, such suffering, and such brutality to occur. I will never understand why I have become calloused, apathetic, and complacent about invisible faces... pushing them away for my own comfort and security. God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable. Jill has to remind me of that all the time. I will never understand why we have let these things happen, and not just allowed them, but caused them in many cases. I will never understand.

But maybe I don't have to.

How big is God? Where is my faith? Am I willing to give up myself to have faith that God is in control? Am I willing to completely depend on a God whom I must believe is in control and is a God of love? Am I willing to have faith? Am I willing to submit? Am I willing to finally follow?

These things are not God's fault. He is perfect, loving, and completely sovereign. These things are caused by the fallen world, fallen because of sin. My sin. So in reality, it is not God's fault, but mine. Not directly maybe, but I am a sinner completely in need of a savior. Though I have no answers, I think I am beginning to have a peace that I don't have to have the answers. But if I have faith in that fact, that faith must be expressed through love. That faith must be proven through deeds as James says. I am seeing a gospel of action, of love, and of passion. Reading the gospels again, I am fascinated by Jesus. So completely unique, engaging, confident, calm, and divine. The epitome of love. The conclusion of the ultimate love story. The most beautiful story ever told. I have decided that I want to follow that. I keep wondering why the disciples got up and immediately left their nets to follow Him. I think it was His eyes. In his eyes, I think they could see the complete collision of divinity and humanity... of love and wisdom, of understanding and justice, of healing and hope... And they followed. I have to follow.

Ok, I'm beginning to ramble. I write too much. I will leave you with no answers, only a couple of thoughts. Jill and Bethany remind me all the time, "Following Jesus is simple, but never easy." (Shane Claiborne) "Do little things with great love." (Mother Theresa)

I cannot change what I see, but I have to be the hands and feet of Christ. Maybe if we would give up enough of ourselves to do his work, the church might truly be the hope of the world. So here I am in Africa, completely broken, wanting to understand what it means to BE the CHURCH... to understand what love is... to understand how love someone by looking at them. Maybe we can change the world one smile, one hug, one person at a time. Loving that which is placed in front of us, trusting in something greater than ourselves as we seek to BE the CHURCH... Be that organic bride that should exemplify love. Maybe by doing so, I might understand how to open myself to let Christ's love pour through me, but in order for that to happen, the "me" has to disappear. Maybe I can then learn how to write about these kids, to take pictures of them, that their story might be told and their faces become visible.

For you who has made it this far, my prayer is that you will not turn away from what you have seen and read. That you will never forget this story. Some of you will have no idea how to cope, some will turn away because of apathy, busy schedules, or complacency. But maybe... just maybe... something in this story has changed something inside of you. May we BE the hands and feet of Christ. "May we find the Way, the Truth, and the Life, in a world of shortcuts, deception, and death." (Shane Claiborne) And through that, maybe the world will be changed as we embrace the light of the sunrise, that Son that peeks over the horizon, chasing away the darkness on those streets, illuminating faces so that they will no longer be invisible.

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."
-Galatians 5:6

Love wins,

Will

Late Night Conversations in Kenya...

2007-10-29T10:00:00.000+03:00

Most of our nights in Africa are spent somewhere under the stars, thinking, talking, praying. Sometimes we talk about love. Sometimes we are silent. Sometimes we reminisce about the past. Sometimes we dream about the future. Sometimes we just ask questions. Sometimes we try to find answers.

The other night, we were trying to decide what exactly makes us who we are. Is it our passions? Our desires? The things we do? Our likes and dislikes? Our personality?

We all sat in silence for a long time. This was a difficult question for me to answer. For a long time, I've felt unable to adequately answer the question, "Who am I?" I've always thought I would figure it out someday. I thought coming to Africa would help me discover myself. I thought if I had more experience, more time, more change... maybe then I would finally become the person God made me to be. And then it hit me. What am I trying so hard to become? God already made me. What if I am doing this all backwards? What if I am searching for something I already have? What if instead of moving forward I should be moving backward?

Right before I left for Africa, my family and I spent a night watching home videos of me as a little girl. I remember watching my 3 year old self and feeling very disconnected from whoever she was. I had the feeling that she was someone I had known a long, long time ago and then forgotten about. That girl was not confused about who she was. In fact, the question never even crossed her mind. She was not tainted by opinions, expectations, or pressures. She just simply was.

Maybe instead of trying to find ourselves, we first have to realize that we have lost ourselves. Maybe instead of trying to make something of ourselves, we have to rediscover who we were already made to be. Because I think when God made us... he made us to be someone. Maybe in removing all the layers of experiences and alterations and social awareness that have built up over the years, we get a little bit closer to finding ourselves. And maybe in removing those layers of separation, we get a little bit closer to God.

"I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3)

Love always,
Jill

I Speak for the Bush

2007-10-28T21:03:00.000+03:00

This is the first time I've written on the blog ( this is Bethany) and its going to go all the way back to my first weekend in Kenya, which was the Challenge Weekend at Shalom Girls High School (The North American equivalent would be a youth retreat)

There was a beautiful girl there who wrote poems and shared one with us , and then later shared a few more with Will. I love this poem because it asks us to examine what exactly we have built our "civilized" society on. The second to last stanza is incredibly profound... but I'll just let you read it.

I Speak For the Bush
by: Benedict Mutuku Mueni

When my friend sees me
He swells and pants like a frog
Because I talk the wisdom of the Bush!
He says we from the Bush
Do not understand civilized ways
For we tell our women
To keep the hem of their dresses
Below the knee.
We from the Bush, my friend insists,
Do not know how to enjoy!

When we come to the civilized city
Like nuns, we stay away from nightclubs
Where women belong to no men
And men belong to know women
And these civilized people
Quarrel and fight like hungry lions!

But, my friend, why do men
with crippled legs, lifeless eyes
wooden legs, empty stomachs
Wander about the streets
of this civilized world ?

Teach me, my friend, the trick
so that my eyes may not
See those house have no walls
But emptiness all around;
Show me the way you use
To seal your ears
To stop hearing the cry of the hungry.

Teach me the new wisdom
Which tells men
To talk about money and not love,
When they meet women

Tell your God to convert
Me to the faith of the indifferent
The faith of those
Who will never listen until
They are shaken with blows.

I speak for the Bush:
You speak for the civilized-
Will you hear me?

Some of the words she writes have hit uncomfortably close to home. Today started out with a reminder of how wretched I really am. As we were in a rush to get to Huruma Children's Home, a young women, probably in her teens, saw us and ran after us with a baby on her back and a begging cup in her hand. She walked with us for blocks saying " Please madam, some coins. Baby is hungry". The day before we had been told by a Kenyan friend not to give to beggars money, but to give them food, and at the moment we couldn't see anything open. So I looked into her eyes, saw the pain of her existence, then looked away and said in an embarrassed voice "No."

After the experience I keep thinking of the parable of the sheep and the goats, and realized I had refused to feed Christ in one of his most distressing disguises. I remembered the WWJD bracelets that I used to wear because they were in style and didn't require much moral obligation, and was crushed by the fact that if Jesus had been present, he would have behaved so differently. Probably, Jesus would not have seen her as a beggar or prostitute, but only as a child of God.

God help those of us who have sealed our ears "to stop hearing the cry of the hungry".

The Street Children of Nairobi

2007-10-24T09:37:00.001+03:00

Hey everyone...

At some point, we will definitely collaborate on a blog that explains what exactly we are doing and why we are in Nairobi and not at YWAM any longer. The last week has been crazy and all three of us would like to communicate everything that has happened, as well as explain what we intend to do for the remainder of our time in Africa. Hopefully, we'll be able to post that later today so that we won't have to continue telling people in emails that we'll explain everything soon.
However, before doing that, I needed to write about what happened last night while it is still fresh on my memory. I had wanted the next post to be the explanation post, but at this point, I need to try and relate/comprehend all that happened last night and the insane story we were told at dinner.
Last night, Mrs. Wilson cooked Mexican food for everyone which was absolutely amazing. Being from Texas, I can definitely comment on Mexican food, and hers was absolutely wonderful. Last night was the first time I had seen cheese for about three and a half weeks. What a novelty! Dinner conversation started with the normal, "This is what I/we did today." "How was your day?" "Oh, that's cool." However, as the conversation progressed, I don't think that either Jill, Bethany, or I were prepared for what we were about to hear. As we ate, Mrs. Wilson began sharing what exactly she does on a weekly basis in relation to her mission work here in Kenya. The Wilsons are missionaries with the IMB (Southern Baptist Convention) and have lived in Africa for 25 years I think. They lived in Nigeria for 18 years and in Kenya for 7.
Mrs. Wilson told us that three days a week she works with the street children of Nairobi from 5am to 7am three days a week. We asked why it had to be so early, to which she responded, "Well, you have to get the kids early because they are most likely to be sober the earlier it is. Also, if you wait too long, the police will arrest any congregation of street kids on charges of vagrancy." There are no tickets in Kenya, so once arrested you go straight to jail. Bad deal. Most of the kids would not return from jail alive.
Mrs. Wilson continued on to tell us about the three mornings that she works with the kids. On Mondays, she and her group (apparently there are about four of them that work with the kids: a local pastor, a big Kenyan young man named Kevin, and a young Kenyan young lady) go to a street corner where most of the girls congregate. The street kids move in gang-like structures around a certain territory. Most of them work around a series of corners in Nairobi's industrial sector down by the river. She works in a place that is very close to the matatu stage (matatus are the local transport- fifteen passenger imported Nissan vans that are extremely cheap) where we were dropped off our first afternoon in Nairobi. That was somewhat of a culture shock because we didn't exactly get dropped off in an upscale neighborhood. Upon alighting, we were immediately surrounded by multiple men who reeked of alcohol and who asked for money as they tried to help me with my backpack. I definitely didn't want any of them touching my stuff. Though I wouldn't go there to go for a stroll, at this point it wouldn't be a big deal to go there because I would know where I was. We just weren't expecting it on Saturday. Thankfully, two Kenyan businessman (probably angels or something) quickly assessed the situation and quietly whispered in my ear that this was not a safe place (*sarcastically* no way!!!) and that we should follow them. They led us to a bus stop and helped us get on our way to where we are now.

Disclaimer** It is hard for me to write about all this because I'm still somewhat numb to what we were told because I don't know how else to react. Nevertheless, I really feel like people at home need to hear it so I'm just going to try and write what she told us. **

Anyway, back to the kids. So on Mondays, Mrs. Wilson works at a corner where most of the young girls are. I guess when she was talking, I assumed these would be young children somewhere between the ages of 7 and 14. However, she then went on to say that these were the young girls with infants... Most of them have AIDS/HIV which means that the babies are HIV positive as well. We found out that most of these girls are probably no older than 16 or 17 but look like they are late 20s or early 30s. There is no way to tell because none of them have birth certificates or identification of any kind. Many have no idea where or when they were born and where their families are, if they are still alive. Sandy (Mrs. Wilson) then told us that most of the girls will have a toddler and an infant with them. They sort of move together under certain gang leaders and many provide income to the gang leaders by way of prostitution, spreading AIDS and STDs like wildfire among the guys of the street gangs.
Sandy and her group meet with these girls every Monday early in the morning and pray for/with them as well as share with the girls about Christ. They then hang out, do basic first aid, and eventually feed them before they are forced to disperse as the shop vendors push them away. Apparently street kids are called chicoras (sp?), which means trash in Swahili. Because they are regarded as trash, you can arrest them for anything you want, treat them however you like, and ignore their existence. Sandy told us that if somebody shot one of them, no one would miss a step and would leave them to die, completely ignoring them. They are regarded as trash, and if Nairobi is one less (except multiply that by 1,ooos) street kid at the end of the day... well, good riddance. Therefore, they have to disperse as it becomes light. Sandy and her group do the same ministries on Wednesday and Friday, except in different locations and with groups that are mostly boys. The group ministers to the older kids because a lot of the younger ones don't make it, or are picked up by homes that pull street kids off the street. The homes do not take the older kids.
Sandy then began telling us about some stories of certain occurrences that she has seen or experienced while working with kids. As she told us about the basic first aid that they are able to administer, she shared some of the stories of medical issues that she's seen. She takes Vicks Vapor rub, cough medicine, neosporin, cold medicine, and some other ointments and bandages to help with basic medical problems.
She told us that earlier this year, she had a young man (15 0r 16) approach her complaining that his "chest hurt." He complained of the area around his heart hurting and she told him that he should see a doctor (not that he would have the means to do so) because she could not help with chest pains. He continued to ask and then pointed to the vapor rub while motioning that she should rub it around on his chest. She finally agreed thinking that it might help a bit anyway, and asked him to pull back his shirt. He opened up his shirt and "my jaw dropped because there was a bullet hole right above his heart. So I looked at his back and gasped as well because the exit hole was present as well. He just said his chest hurt. Then he began pointing to my neosporin and telling me to put it in the hole. I did what I could and never saw him again. One of his friends later said he made it and was ok."
I was speechless. And overwhelmed to say the least. I could not believe that some kid had been shot and had an open bullet hole in his chest. I just sit here imagining his eyes, his face, his open and bleeding chest as he tries to get the only medicine available. Wow.
She also told us of another boy who needed medical attention. She was administering first aid another time and a boy come up to her with a knife wound across his right cheekbone. Apparently it was a gaping slice and so she immediately said, "You've got to come with me so we can get some stitches." He refused because they hate going to the hospital because of the threat of being arrested. They don't have any papers or identification and so there is a risk of being arrested. In Kenya, there are no tickets. You just get arrested and sent to jail unless you can bribe your way out of it. If one of the street kids goes to jail, they most likely die. So he just asked her to put neosporin on the cut and pray that it would heal. She tried to get him to go with her but he kept insisting that all she had to do was pray for him. She ended up applying the neosporin and praying for him. Later, when she saw him again and saw that his face had healed completely with only a little scar she said that she felt, "Oh ye of little faith." Bad grammar- sorry.
As we were talking, she told us about the events of late. This past Monday there were not very many girls at the corner and she couldn't figure out why. I may not remember this exactly. She asked around to see what was going on and apparently they had had to run to another corner which is a pretty traumatic experience. She thinks that they ran because of the turf war that is occurring between some of the kids.
She described a little bit of the background about the turf war and why it is a big deal. A few weeks ago, a Masaii street kid and a Masaii guy from town got into a huge fight and apparently the Masaii kid from town was shot and killed. In Kenya, the Masaii are a big tribe from the south and they are known for their fierceness, bravery, and traditions. They have kept their traditions and remain very true to their heritage even with all the westernization. The Masaii are extremely hardcore warriors and have some pretty crazy rites of passage. Just to give you an idea of what is expected of them even today before they are allowed to pass to manhood, the rite of passage requires thirteen year old boys to stand in a line naked with their legs spread and their arms behind their backs. They must remain completely stationary and rigid as someone goes down the line and circumcises them while they are standing with no antiseptic. If they so much as flinch, they are not allowed to pass to manhood. I'd fail for sure.
Therefore, the Masaii are respected and feared by many people including the police. So, when Masaii begin fighting it's a big deal. Because the guy was killed, the other Masaii guys from town apparently conducted a big raid on the street kids one night. Somehow, the feared and mysterious Mungiki crime organization became involved as well. The Mungiki probably control many of the street kids. Even the police fear Mungiki because of their fierceness, ruthlessness, and organized structure. I have heard a lot about them and people are definitely afraid of them and their capabilities. Somehow the Mungiki are now fighting the Masaii and of course the police will not intervene because they are scared of both. I'm guessing the Mungiki are angry about the raid so they fought back.
All that goes to say that the girls fled and tried to go somewhere else because of the fighting. I don't know much more than that. Sandy (Mrs. Wilson) has been going for years and apparently doesn't feel too threatened when she's down there. She goes with some savvy Kenyans and a couple of big men who do a good job of protecting her. She told us that sometimes a fight will break out, and the street kids will surround her and protect her until the fight moves or passes. I don't think that my naive brain can begin to comprehend what exactly is going on, but I'm going with Sandy tomorrow morning so hopefully I will be able to take some pictures and figure out more of what is happening. If you read this before Thursday night in the US please pray for safety and that the kids will be ok. Also pray that the fight will be resolved as well.
She also told us more about the rest of the kids. They are able to buy shoe glue for about 25 shillings (3 cents) a bottle and stuff it up their sleeves so they can go around sniffing it all day. The glue makes them high and stifles their ravenous hunger so they begin to do it a lot so they don't have to eat as much. They would rather spend the 25 shillings on the glue than a loaf of bread that will only last a day. The glue will eventually rot their brains and I don't even want to know what the life expectancy is for these kids. They have no hope to ever get out of the situation because if they are still on the streets, they didn't get picked up by a children's home and they are too old and dangerous at this point. They don't know how old they are or have any sort of identification or birth certificates and will therefore never be able to go to school or get a job.
It is an endless cycle. The kids are probably there because their parents died of AIDS and they were orphaned, or they were tossed on the streets to beg because one parent died or both died and a relative couldn't take care of all the kids. When they are thrown out on the streets to beg, they normally decide to just become a street kid because they can do better on their own than trying to support the family by begging. They are there because of AIDS but have never gone to school and kids on the street at age fifteen high on glue don't make awesome decisions. Therefore, they just pass AIDS around to one another and the girls who sell themselves just pass it around to whoever will have them.
When I heard about these kids, my heart broke for them. It was interesting how we all reacted to the stories. I couldn't look at Jill at dinner because I knew I'd start crying. I knew she was having trouble. I really couldn't process the stories or even attempt to prevent the feeling of being overwhelmed while Sandy shared about these kids. I still can't really write about it very well. Sigh...
After dinner, the girls couldn't really handle much and went to their rooms to journal and be alone. I stayed in the kitchen to help with dishes but I had to first go to my room and pretty much turn myself off so that I could stay coherent and make it through the dishes. After finishing the dishes we all went to the porch and sat in silence for awhile. I couldn't think or even understand what I was feeling. I had tears and my eyes and got choked up when Jill came out to the porch because I could immediately see that she was having a lot of trouble as well. Bethany came out and responded in a third way.
In the about me section of this blog there is a little blurb about each of us. Bethany is the I hate the world so I'm going to change it, Jill is love wins, and I'm tall and think a lot. That was somewhat of an inside joke that came out as a joke a week or so ago. However, it is amazing how accurate that was. That is exactly how we all reacted to the story. Bethany was angry and said she just wanted to run away so that she wouldn't be so angry about the kids. Jill said, "My heart hurts" to me and began to cry because of the story. And I was somewhere in the middle: a mixture of unintelligible frustration, pain, sadness, confusion, and anger. I was angry at the world in general for allowing it to happen and about the fact that I am completely powerless to do anything. I am a big picture person and it drove me crazy that my brain realized that there was no immediate or even possible way to stop the endless cycle that these kids are stuck within. Jill and her love wins self was completely brokenhearted about the kids and wanted to try and understand the people aspect of the story. We all reacted differently and, incidentally, our reactions helped us to deal with the other's reactions and with our own. I immediately began processing the problems and how to fix them, which frustrated me because there is no way to do so. Grrrhhh... We sat talking for awhile and it was pretty rough to think straight because we were all hurting in our own way about the situation. Lord God, please help these kids.
I would go into my preliminary deconstruction of the situation but I do need to get some sleep before going in the morning. I will write later, probably with the girls about the situation as I see it and what we observe. Please pray for these kids.
Though I'll try and deconstruct later, I'll say this now... The problems are all twisted upon one another that there is no close solution to the problem. I struggle with choosing a worthwhile direction for my life sometimes and this really made me consider once again how I can help things in the world. Honestly, I'm at a loss as to how to begin to do something. Jill reminded me, "Will, you have to start changing the world one smile, one hug, one person at a time. Following Jesus is simple, but never easy." There are so many quotes from people like Mother Theresa and Shane Claiborn about that. Do little things with great love.
The political situation will probably not improve in the near future. The AIDS situation will get worse. If you pull a thousand of the kids off the street tomorrow, by Saturday there will be 1,500 that take the place of the 1,000. The girls will continue to contract AIDS from prostitution and there multiple kids will be HIV positive and will continue to spread the pandemic before they die. The country calls these kids chicora (trash) and therefore doesn't give a flip what happens to them. Who cares if they get shot, if they fry their brains on shoe glue, if they spread AIDS. They are trash anyway. Therefore, the problem is only going to get worse. The police just arrest them and don't do much about them whatsoever. My brain quickly thought all these things and wondered, "How do we begin? Where do I start?" Thankfully, Jill reminded me to start with one person, but my preliminary conclusion is probably oversimplified and much too cliche.

The CHURCH is the hope of the world. If it is not, then it is no CHURCH at all. We must be the solution. The love of Christ will be the only thing that will make a difference. We can help try and meet these kids' basic needs for survival and try to live out Jesus' love at the same time. I don't think politics or NGOs will ever do any good. The CHURCH has to be the hope and the love for these children.

More later after I've seen it but I just had to write about it... Record something and try to tell people at home about these kids. Sigh... Love is not against the law. I love you all and hopefully one of the girls will write something tomorrow or something.

In Him,
Will

"Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world."
-Ammon Hennacy, Catholic activist, 1893-1970

"Stones taught me to fly. Love taught me to cry. So come on courage, teach me to be shy. 'Cuz it's not hard to fall, when you float like a cannonball."
-Damien Rice

Purpose of the blog and random assorted information...

2007-10-24T07:50:00.001+03:00

Hey everybody,

Seeing as this is the first blog type entry, I figured that I might try and communicate our desire for the purpose of this blog. A couple of days ago, we were trying to figure out how we could possibly hope to keep up with emails and post pictures with our limited internet access moving at the speed of slow. Facebook, as it proposes, is the perfect social utility, allowing the uploading of pictures, blogs, contact info, and anything else you can think of. However, we realized that most of the world over thirty does not have a facebook account, thereby eliminating that option for the sake of our parents, supporters, friends, and family. Therefore, we decided to create a blog where we could post photos, journal, blog, and give updates about our present location and work. So here I am. We're not completely in love with blogger because of the difficulty of uploading pictures, so I may upload all my pictures to Picasa Web Albums on Google and post the link on the blog so that people can go back and forth somewhat seamlessly.

Though we may still try to email and do mass emails and reply to the emails we receive to some extent, that is much more expensive than the three of us collaborating on this blog site with all of our pictures, observations, ideas, epiphanies, inside jokes (which, if posted, would become not inside-jokes), hilarious moments, sad moments, and anything else we feel like writing about or posting.

So, that is the idea. We hope you enjoy and maybe just maybe, something one of us writes will inspire, encourage, convict, or help some of you who may have the absolute and previously unsurpassed "privilege" of vicariously enjoying Africa with us.

Love to all,

Will Watson

P.S. Here is some random info that some of you may want to know...

Link to Will's Picasa Web Albums: Click here

Textable Cell Phone Number [due to costs, you may or may not get a reply ;-) But we'll try.) +245724537801

Current Location (Subject to change- especially in the next few days): Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya

TIA: This is Africa!

2007-10-24T07:23:00.001+03:00

I am…

Too deaf to hear their voices…
Too blind to see their faces…
Too calloused to feel their touch…
Too mute to tell their story…

The voices that cry out in longing,
The faces that have become invisible,
The touch that has been shunned,
The story that has been muted.

I need an ear to hear their voice…
I need eyes to see theirs looking into mine…
I need a broken heart to feel their pulse…
I need a voice to tell their story…

I need you, God.

Teach me to open my ears to hear their cry.
Teach me to open my eyes to see the invisible.
Teach me to open my arms to beckon them.
Teach me to open my mouth to scream for the mute.

Teach me to love.

Tear away the wax in my ears.
Tear away the scales on my eyes.
Tear away the shell ‘round my heart.
Tear away the muzzle on my mouth.

Tear away ME until only LOVE remains.