HEADED TO ZAMBIA

Well, it's 4:15am Wednesday morning and we're leaving for Zambia for 30 days of training. We will be learning more about the African culture and how to best approach Africans with the gospel.

We will live and work in the city of Lusaka for 12 days and then in the village of Petuake for 12 days. We will then have the awesome opportunity to live in the home of a Zambian family for three days. This will give us great insight into the routine day of the people. Our final three days will be in debriefing at a nice resort area, yeah!

Please pray for our flights to be smooth and safe
Pray we will be open to learn all God has prepared for us
Pray we will be bold in our witnessing opportunities
Pray for our tolerance of the 95 degree heat of Zambia
Pray we will be a blessing to our interpreters and helpers as well as the people we meet each day.

We will be out of touch for these 30 days as we will have no electricity or internet access.

Thank you in advance for your prayers.

A FULL FRIDAY

Last Friday we went on a tour of some of the places in Nairobi where the Baptist have been working over the years. At our first stop, we met pastor Euticuls Wambua at Baptist Chapel (Lakisama-Lucky Summer). The church is continuing to grow so they are in the process of adding more space. Pastor Wambua is a very busy man who wears many different hats. Not only is he pastoring a church, he is director of the Kariobangi Baptist Youth Centre (Korogosho) and chairman of the Nairobi Baptist Association.

Pastor Wambua (orange shirt) and headmaster Mutemi (blue shirt), headmaster of the school at the youth center

Baptist Chapel (Lakisama-Lucky Summer)

We also went to see the Kariobangi Baptist Youth Center and Academy. The center was started years ago as a place to teach locals carpentry and sewing classes. Over the years it has expanded to include hairdressing and cooking classes. There is also now a full time school there with preschool up through level 5 classes.

The children were such a joy to be around. When the director would take us into a class, they all would stand and say, “Good morning sir”. He would say, “How are you class?” They would answer in unison, “Fine, Sir”. They would then sing us a song or two complete with hand motions, each song told about the love of God. This went on in each class we visited. One class also recited a Bible verse for us.

The Center was literally built on the site of the land field for dumping garbage for all of Nairobi. You can look through the windows and see (and smell) the present land field. We watched as people were going through the garbage and pulling out anything they thought was of any value. Here you can see a collection of trash bags divided into separate piles by their color.

This is Virginia preparing a snack for the students. It is usually bread and butter, but because today is Friday, they will receive Jam and bread.We also went to the Baptist Children’s Home. Those who stay at the children’s home are orphans who have lost their family members to AIDS. There is a school, clinic, Chapel, Technology center and demonstration farm all on the same campus with the children’s home.
Our travels through the city took us through some pretty rough areas, but everywhere we went the children would smile at us and wave and say, “How are you?”

When we returned to the office, We had a Going Away Celebration for Roy and Dena Brent. Roy and Dena have been on the mission field for over 30 years and 25 of those have been right here at the Baptist Mission of Kenya where Roy has been responsible for the travel bookings and computer networking. These are the positions we are now in since Roy is retiring. The ladies in the office and on the compound cooked up a huge feast. We had roasted goat and chicken, Sumuka wiki (Incidently, sukuma wiki means 'to push the week' which implies that sukuma wiki is a food used to stretch the meals to last for the week. It is like collard greens), rice, guacamole, mashed potatoes cooked with pumpkin leaves with corn added and chipates. Everything was delicious and then the Brents were honored and given gifts.
After the celebration we had our first Swahili tutoring session with Hellen. Hujambo, Jina Langu ni Jan. Ninatoka nchi ya America, jimba la Georgia. Habari Yako.

Hello, my name is Jan. I come from America, the state of Georgia. How are you?

Jeff had to leave before the class was over to make an airport run to pick up a group of missionaries coming into town for a conference. The traffic is so bad in Nairobi, it took him over 4 hours to make the trip to the airport, drop the missionaries off and then return home. It is only about a 20 miles trip total! He had fun with it anyway. As the missionaries loaded into the van, he announced, “I have only been in Nairobi for 5 weeks, so you might want to tighten up your seat belts”. The lady sitting in the front seat quickly jumped out and went to the back. Upon arriving at the hotel, the gentleman who ended up in the front seat commented that he had made a hole in the floor board slamming on his imaginary brake.

As if that was not enough excitement for one day, Molly added to our excitement when we got home. She cornered her first hedgehog. They are so small and very prickly. We set it out on the sidewalk and left it alone until it finally unrolled and walked away. The perfect ending to a long day.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON DRIVE

Well after being here for a whole month, Jan finally drove for the first time this Sunday. Sunday is the slowest traffic day and we went out of the city on a divided highway, so it was very easy driving for the first time. It was still very stressful and she is not looking forward to the day she has to drive in the city. It is like NASCAR at Bristol Motor Speedway (bumper cars at 80 MPH)!

The Bible study group that Jan is meeting with is using one evening each month to work on crafts. They then sell the crafts to raise money to purchase bibles that they then give away. This week they worked on rolled paper bead necklaces. They also began making a storying quilt to be used to tell the Bible in Chronological stories. It is going to be red, black and white, great Georgia colors. These ladies are very talented . We hope to send some pictures of the necklaces if anyone is interested in purchasing them to help out.

We have mentioned that our yard is full of beautiful plants and trees and one of those trees in a banana tree. This week we picked our first stalk of bananas and hung them on the porch to ripen. They are a small variety and very sweet. So for now it is bananas in the cereal, banana sandwiches for lunch and banana bread for dessert.

Funny story: Jan has been working with Shem, the volunteer coordinator at the mission. This week we had a meeting with the drivers who drive the volunteers on their trips. As Shem was talking to the drivers about identifying who was the volunteer team leader, he mentioned that all “wazungu” (White Men) look alike. He then laughed and said, and believe it or not the wazungu think that we Kenyans all look alike too. Funny but true.

The electricity is so expensive here, we do not turn our water heater on but about 2 hours in the morning. So, today we had a "widow maker" installed in our bathroom. For those who are not familiar with a "widow maker", it's a shower head with an 220 volt electrical wire running into it. Let's think about this. You're standing in a shower with a 220 volt electrical cord above your head. The husband must typically get the first shower, hence the name "widow maker". We are now able to flip a switch in our bathroom and have instant hot water whenever we want to take a shower. Yeah!

BUSY WEEK

This has really been a busy week. We have discovered that much of the life of a logistic coordinator is spent on the road. Jeff spent the first part of the week working on getting internet service to the office where the media consultants will be working since they were due to arrive this week. He also made a presentation for improving the internet service for all the Baptist facilities here in Nairobi. Everyone was in favor of it. It will be implemented in the next couple of weeks, so hopefully we will be able to post more pictures more often in the near future.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we spent time with our Regional Logistics Coordinator as he gave us an orientation and his expectations from us. He is a very nice gentleman and will be great to work under. Jeff is still researching how to keep the network running and Jan is struggling through making travel arrangements for everyone. She will not receive official training in booking reservation until after we return from our trip to Zambia.

On Saturday we spent the day with Barry and Marleen Robinson. We visited the Giraffe Center and the Elephant Orphanage. The giraffes were very friendly and Jeff and Barry were brave enough to let them take a piece of food from their mouths! Check out the long tongue. The baby elephants were so cute and we learned a lot about their personalities.This picture is out of focus but you can see how long a gariffe's tongue is.

We also welcomed two new members to our team this week. They are two young ladies from the media department who will be working out of Nairobi. One is a photographer and the other a journalist. Today after church, we took them out for their first adventure at driving on the left side of the road from the right side of the car. We took a trip out into the Rift Valley and saw some beautiful country side while they practiced their driving.