What is the price of freedom? What is the cost of faith?

“Freedom has always been an expensive thing.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Security wands have become common--place in Kenya. It’s rare that you walk into a public establishment without being “waned.” So how is it that our security is so fragile? How is it that terrorists can walk into a mall in Nairobi and open fire and take hostages?  How is it that a four-day stand off ensues? How is that 61 people die and more than 150 are injured including 6 members of the security forces?

It turns out those security wands aren’t magic. Terrorists are fatalists and not particularly discriminating. They sprayed bullets first and then starting asking those left standing one question, “Are you Muslim?”  The answer, by the way, didn’t matter. Some people who answered in the affirmative were shot anyway.

The attack at Westgate mall wasn’t about religion. The attack, like any violent act, was about power and in this case revenge. So the terrorist might have been better served to ask, “Do you support Kenyan army operations in Somalia?” That question however would not get good headlines and maybe some blank looks, because really, unless you are directly involved in the issue, it’s not something you’ve probably given a lot of thought to. You were more caught up with your children and your work and what you were going to eat for dinner. Until of course some terrorist interrupts your Saturday at the mall and puts a gun to your head.

Fanatics kill innocent people for the wrong reasons. It’s all so senseless.

But let me make this about religion for a moment.

What if it was you and you just happened to be a Christian?

My pastor said the following in his sermon the day after the Westgate siege began, “Faith is meant to cost you something.”

I’m quite sure he didn’t change his sermon Saturday night. So the impact of that line resonated with me as we prayed for the victims and the hostages in church less than 24 hours after the tragedy began.

Would I have said, No, I’m a Christian? I hope I would have.

Terrorists may have a twisted and wrong-headed view of Islam, but they defend their misconceptions to the death. Would I defend what I believe, even in the face of death? I hope I would. I also hope my faith will never have to stand that test under such circumstances.

Which takes me back to freedom. Cases of grenade attacks and violence have increased since Kenya sent troops into Somalia. Is our freedom, our way of life, our security at risk?

I suppose one could look at it that way, but here is what I know, God is in control and he will provide safe passage for Kenya and one day soon peace and prosperity for our neighbor Somalia.

The Kenyan people are fighting against the evil invading its borders with the weapons of love and unity, which are far stronger than any evil. Outpourings of support, both during and after the Westgate siege, have been truly inspiring. Well over 11,000 pints of blood were donated, millions of shillings given and people living close to the mall even provided food and water for the security forces and media personnel who spent long hours on duty.

By definition to have freedom and/or faith you must give up a certain amount of security.

However, security without freedom is imprisonment and security without faith is a lie.

May God heal and bless my adopted country, Kenya.

Maralal Training

When God says, “Jump.” Our response should be, “How high?”

But what if God asks you to do something you don’t know how to do?

Do you punt? Run away? Hide?

Or do you ask, “Why me, God? Couldn’t you find someone more qualified for this than me?”

I don’t know why God called me to minister to youth living with HIV. I am not the most qualified. In fact, when God put this ministry on my heart, I was pretty sure he’d gotten the wrong heart.

And then I was bombarded over the period of about a week in different ways with the message, “when God calls you to serve him, you already have in you what he needs to complete his work…whatever else you need he will provide.”

So I stopped fussing and started following and God has been providing exactly what I need every step of the way!

At the end of August he provided me with a way to get more education on HIV/AIDS from a world-renowned expert.

I found HIV Hope International online and communicated with Duane Crumb, the founder and director that I wanted to know more about his organization. He wrote back and said there was a seminar in Kenya and I could contact the organizer to see if it was possible to attend. Long story short, I was accepted and last week made the 10+ hour journey to Maralal, Kenya. (See Maralal Journey blog for details of the trip).

Duane travels around the world facilitating seminars like the one I attended to equip and empower people to develop their own strategies, materials and programs to effectively address the issues involved in HIV in their local cultures and meet the needs of those living with the disease.

Maralal is the county seat so it is a fairly big town. It has a good power supply; a few cyber cafes and I even found a shop that sold a few Western food items…but sadly not a passable road in site!

The hotel we stayed in was sparse but comfortable. The shower was hot (most of the time) and the mattress was firm! We ate most of our meals in the hotel dining room.

 

Because it’s always a good idea to travel light, I had decided to wear the same outfit coming and going, so I washed the clothes that I wore on the trip to Maralal. This is the color of the water when I was finished!

The seminar itself was held at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Maralal. We arrived on Saturday night and attended church there on Sunday. A local missionary family who hail from Finland picked us up and drove us to church. They have three small children. Their daughter and I bonded over our and shared our eyewear!

The church service was small. No more than 15 people but probably twice that amount of children. Pastor Silas was very welcoming and also took part in the seminar so we got to know him well.

A group of seminar participants traveling from north of Maralal didn’t make it for the first day of the seminar because there was fighting between the Samburu and the Turkana in a town on their path so they had to wait and travel when things cooled down. My girls sms'd me all worried because they heard the news that there was fighting in Maralal. But really the injured had been taken to the hospital in Maralal, the fighting was not in town.

The seminar participants were primarily Samburu, there were also four wazungus (foreigners), and a man from Turkana. There were 7 Samburu women. We couldn’t communicate much, but by the end of the seminar we were good friends. 

The seminar was translated into Samburu and Kiswahili. We ran a generator to run the projector, but that was as high tech as we got. Some ladies from the church cooked our lunch over a three stone fire. We met Monday thru Thursday from 9 to about 3:30 p.m. On Friday we only met in the morning.

 

The ELC Maralal church is about a kilometer outside of the city. The views from the church were beautiful.

 

The first day we talked about how the church should be involved in HIV/AIDS, the goals for training, and received in depth information about transmission of HIV/AIDS. We then discussed the concepts our audience had to understand, the barriers they might have to understanding the information and what tools we needed for teaching.

On Tuesday, the first question was “Is HIV a judgment sent from God? In the “pre-test” we were given before we started the seminar the same question was asked and 70 percent of the participants responded that yes they believed HIV was a judgment from God.

The answer is NO by the way! We are all sinners. If anyone deserves this disease, we all do. One of the participants answered this way. “God loves us as a father, the same way we love our children. Loving us is giving us free will. We make choices that have consequences.” HIV is a natural consequence of sin.

On day two we also talked about the myth that HIV is a curse. Another topic was testing and we made lists about why people have sex outside or marriage. Lastly we discussed behavior change versus influencing behavior and how to encourage people living with HIV/AIDS.

On Wednesday we discussed stigma and discrimination. It took awhile to get into the discussion because there is not a word for stigma in Samburu! A lot of this was culturally based and very interesting to listen to the Samburu discuss their culture.

Then we discussed ARVs and how they work. This could have been a very complicated topic but Duane made it easily understandable and culturally relevant. We also had two bible translators at the seminar and they agreed to translate this chapter from Duane’s book, “HIV Hope for the Nations” into Samburu for their final project. 

On Thursday, we talked about our role as educators and how to interact with our audience. After lunch we started to present the projects that we had been working on. 

The lone Turkana man in the group gave a poem.

Duane requires that each participant present a song, poem, game, skit, etc. that they would use to teach about HIV.

I agonized over what to present. At first I thought I would make up an educational game…but I’m not much on game theory, so I prayed and got more anxious. And then Wednesday afternoon I had an idea. Ephesians 6 popped into my head. It talks about putting on the armor of God. Putting on the armor of God means sacrificing the things of this world. So I used the word SACRIFICE to come up with the main parts of the armor of positive living.

Breast Plate	S	Self- Acceptance
Shield	A	Adherence to ARVs and clinic instructions
Helmet	C	Choices – Make good Choices
Foundation	R	Relationship – Have a personal relationship with God
Sword	I	Information – Get the correct information
Heart	F	Faithfulness to partner/wait for sex until marriage
Rear Guard	I	Identify family and friends in Christ to support you
Glove	C	Condoms – Use Them!
Belt	E	Everyone is at risk. I am not alone. I can speak out and help others.

I also drew (not well mind you) a picture of what the armor of positive living would look like. 

God’s inspiration and timing couldn’t have been better! My presentation went great and was well received by my fellow participants.

It was also well received this week in a meeting with AIC Pastors about Maarifa, the psychosocial support ministry I am starting for youth living with HIV. We decided to use it as a framework for the materials we will create to use with the youth.

You know you are following God’s plan for your life when there is no mistaking His hand in the work that you are doing. I’m so glad I listened to God’s call even though didn’t feel qualified or ready. Now a short month and a half later I have made the leap into the unknown and have found the path was there beneath my feet all along.

Step out and faith and watch what God can do!

Maralal Safari

After 12 years of traveling around Kenya, the lack of infrastructure still overwhelms me. So does the way the entrepreneurial spirit finds ways to take advantage of impassable roads.

Potholes are moneymakers. Young men carry stones to the road and crush them into the potholes and then stand at the side of the road and “encourage” you to throw them change as you pass by. During rainy season if there is an especially muddy, impassable but heavily traveled section of road you will often find young men lurking about to offer “push and pay” service.

But on the way to Maralal, Kenya, last week I found yet another way to earn money, this one had much more job security. A certain section of the road to Maralal is legendary. It becomes more like a river than a road for about a kilometer. 

The matatu drivers have to drive through minus the passengers. So the passengers have to make their way to the side of the road and walk. The local entrepreneurs have fashioned a bridge across the mud/water back to the road and block the other side of the bridge and charge 10 Kenya shillings (about 15 cents) to every person who crosses the bridge. They also help the mutate drivers push their vehicles out when they get stuck, for which they earn about 100 Kenya shillings per vehicle (about $1.20 USD). 

I went to Maralal to participate in an HIV Educator training through the organization HIV Hope. Its founder Duane Crumb told us that we were his 50^th seminar. He has held them all over the world. I will tell you more about the seminar in another blog.

On the day we traveled to Maralal, we got a late start. At the Nairobi stage we bought tickets to Nyahururu, where we would have to switch buses to go to Maralal. The government decided to hold “Road Court” that day and was stopping all the public vehicles to make sure they were up to code. (Which is a bit of a farce…another story for another day). So the vehicles were late, which actually worked in our favor, because normally vehicles stop running from Nyahururu to Maralal at 2 p.m. We arrived in Nyahururu at 3:30 p.m. and were still able to get another vehicle to Maralal.

As we left Nyahururu at 4p.m. I overheard a Kenyan woman on the bus say she would be in Maralal by 10 or 11pm. Luckily, even with our ½ hour drudge through the mud and over the trolls bridge – we still arrived by 8:30 p.m. 

On the way, we saw some wildlife. Zebra, antelope, guinea fowl, dik dik, and one huge majestic looking elephant, quite close to the fence...unfortunately my camera was in my bag and the matatu driver was not inspired enough by my excited squeals to even slow down.

If you think that sounds like fun…you will really enjoy my journey home. I traveled to Maralal with 4 other people. I traveled home alone.

The bus returning to Nyahururu and then Nairobi leave Maralal at 3 a.m. I had set my alarm for 1:45 a.m. to have the taxi pick me up at 2 a.m. The taxi driver called me at 1:32 a.m. and asked if I was ready. I was still in bed. He asked how soon I could be ready. Ten minutes? I was to walk around the corner and meet the taxi at a shop called Pama. However when I got to the corner, the bus to Nyahururu was pulling up. The bus by the way doesn’t say Nyahururu, it say Real Madrid. The inside is plastered with Real Madrid posters. They are also outfitted with 5 seats across rather than 4, which means you either need to be the size of a small child or an ultra thin model to sit comfortably. I was shown to the seat behind the wall that separates the cab from the rest of the bus, next to the window. It had rained most of the evening and was chilly and wet. Naomi, the Kenyan woman who sat next to me, would not be described as small. So before we even left town an hour and 15 minutes later I was already in sardine mode.

For an hour we criss-crossed Maralal picking up passengers. The driver was constantly on his cell phone. I’m not sure how the pick up system works, but it seemed to be very efficient. About 2:30 a.m. we parked at what I assume was the bus stage. 

Then I felt the vehicle being jacked up and a tire was rolled past my window around the front of the vehicle to change the driver’s side front tire. (This couldn’t have been done before?) I needn’t have been concerned. These guys could rival a Daytona pit crew! We were on our way at 3 a.m., the appointed departure time.

The trip from Maralal to Nyahururu is bone jarring. And then there’s the river section. I was praying long before we got to the river section. The driver was making good progress through the soupy muck, around other vehicles - lorries and matatus thoroughly stuck. And then it happened. The tout ordered us all off the bus, even the mom’s with babies! It’s about 4:30 a.m. pitch black. I’m alone. I wasn’t scared, just freaked about not having someone’s hand to hold. I’m not good in the dark. In all my years in Africa, I have not developed African eyes. I swear most Africans have infrared vision! I do however have a flashlight in my cell phone! We all piled out and started making our way through the muck. We had to cross the road to walk on hard mud. I was wearing sandals and socks…I know, serious fashion statement! Needlesstosay, my socks were wet and muddy by the time I got to the other side of the road. We weaved are way around stuck vehicles and thorn bushes and watched and cheered as our bus slipped and slid by us and eventually we all climbed back on and made our way out. No bridge in the middle of the night!

At sunrise, we finally came to the hour’s worth of decent pavement before arriving in Nyahururu and the BBC English Service blasting over the bus radio was playing gospel music. Life doesn’t get much better…sunrise and pavement and gospel music! Go God!

I had planned to make my way over to the matatus we had come on to get back to Nairobi, but there was an earnest young man who helped me with my bag and then told me his matatus were 150 shillings less than the one I had come on…I’m nothing if not thrifty!

Halfway back I remembered that I could cut through Kikuyu instead of going all the way to Nairobi. Which would cut about 1 and a half hours off my trip. When I got out of the matatu at Kikuyu the driver took my bag out of the back – it was covered with dust. He didn’t even attempt to wipe it off…it was that bad!

I got on the bus at 1:45 a.m. and walked into my house at 12:30 p.m. My back pain was minimal and my girls were all smiles. I cuddled my grandbaby and all the sudden the mud and hours over rough roads were a distant memory. Safari Njema!

And then there was Thursday...

Remember Janet – the Maasai woman in the village of Ikiloret in the Rift Valley, with whom I co-teach English in her village….well, after trying to track her down for nearly a month…we had concrete plans to visit her in Ilkiloret on Thursday. I made plans with a taxi driver to meet me in Ngong and then we would stop for Grace and John at the farm in Kimuga. I needed to pick cash at the ATM in Ngong. (This ATM only works one in three times that I try to use it. So of course this time being only the second try out of three this week it didn’t work. Supposedly the network was down). So I bought a few groceries and diapers for Janet and went to meet the taxi driver. We talked briefly about how going to Ilkiloret is always an adventure so one can never make plans for the rest of the day because one never knows what will happen or when you will return. That was foreshadowing of what would be a very
interesting day.

We picked up Grace and John a little after 10 am. Grace need to stop at Kimuga Secondary School which is about a mile from their house on the road to Ilkiloret to drop off a check from a donor. The principal wasn’t in but the deputy principal was. Grace explained what she needed and it still took nearly 15 minutes for us to get a receipt.

I’m not sure if I reported this or not… Janet was nominated to be the MP (Member of Parliament for Disabled People)! She also had a baby boy named Evans on April 23. If that date sounds familiar, it’s because that is MY birth date! This is a lot of change for the better in Janet’s life!

But that also means a lot of change in Wezesha By Grace’s ministry. Without Janet, or another interpreter, there is no need for me to go to Ilkiloret. We are praying that we find someone to fill Janet’s rather large shoes in her community. Preferably a woman as we would like to continue the legacy she started of women’s leadership in the Maasai community.

After our detour to Kimuga Secondary we were back on our journey. There has been a lot of rain in the Rift Valley this rainy season, so the “road” is horrible! We are hoping that Janet’s being an MP will shine some light on this forgotten region of the country. I use the word “forgotten” because if you look on maps of Kenya, the road to Ilkiloret and beyond is paved! It was supposed to be paved 10 years ago, but I’m guessing either the project was never funded or the money was eaten along the way!
 
People are buying up this harsh, thorn-ridden; semi-arid land like it was gold. As soon as the road is paved prices will skyrocket. 

This is the yard outside the school building in Ilkiloret after months of heavy rains. This is a semi-arid region!

The drive that used to take an hour and a half, now takes a good 2 hours. We are dusty and hot when we arrive. I greet the Maasai women who are outside Janet’s manyatta and her father, the former chief. And then I go into Janet’s manyatta. 

Janet feeding Evans in her manyatta.

It takes a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the dark. They had done some renovations to the Manyatta and moved a few of the walls back so that Janet has her own room. I hear Evans crying and hold him for a moment after greeting Janet. He’s tiny! He’s all of two weeks old and 2.5 kilos. I’m so used to my 6.6 kilo Baby Tamara - Evans feels weightless!

Grace doesn't have huge hands...Evans is just that tiny!

Grace comes in and we begin to talk about Evans and her days in parliament and what it’s been like there. Janet is a private person. Neither Grace nor I knew she was pregnant.

In that half light of the manyatta I thought about the three cultures seated there together: Janet, the Maasai; Grace, the Kikuyu; and me, the American. I thought about the rarity of this combination of women working together. I thought about how much cross-cultural learning went into every one of our meetings. Even though Janet and Grace are both Kenyans, their cultures are vastly different. Grace has spent most of her working life with Maasai. Janet’s father considers Grace, Janet’s other
mother. “When she’s there (Nairobi), she is yours.” He says. “Watch over her and let me know how she’s doing.”

No matter how old we get or how lofty our positions in life, as long as our parents are alive, we never stop being their children.

We are served tea by Janet’s real mother, whose name still escapes me…I have always just called her mom. A while later she comes and tells us to move to the mabati house next door because we will be served lunch and the chief wants to meet with John and Grace and Janet.

We eat a lunch of beans and potatoes and chapati. (You know you are part of a Maasai family when you visit and they don’t cook you meat. They don’t have to impress you. You are one of them. Their everyday food is good enough for you!) It was delicious! Then I went outside and sat under a tree with Joyce, a Maasai woman with a 7th grade education whose English is good enough that we can communicate. She was using the beads from a necklace that broke to remake it. I asked her if she’d
make me one. She said yes. So I will buy the beads and design a pattern that I like and leave it at a certain supermarket in Ngong and she will send someone to pick it. Postal service – Maasai style!

A man whom I had met earlier that day drove up on a motorcycle. I asked Joyce if he’d take me to the school where Rebecca [the young Maasai women with whom I stay when I teach in Ikiloret] was attending a meeting.  This man never had a formal education but had picked up a bit of English. He was very interested to hear when adult classes would start again because he wanted to attend!

Rebecca and I walked back to her house together. I have a box full of my “Ilkiloret clothes and toiletries” that I keep at her house. I used to have a bed there too, but it was Grace’s and she needed it so she took it back. And now with Baby T at home and Milly back in school, I’m not able to spend the night in Ilkiloret even if I resume teaching there. Milly goes to school from 7 to 11 am every morning, so I am on grandma duty during that time most days.

After Grace and John’s meeting with the chief, we start the slow process of saying goodbye. Once we say we are leaving it takes between 15 to 25 minutes to actually leave! We get in the car, plus one, an electrician from Kiserian who had come to fix an aerial on a house nearby. If you’re wondering how you can run a television without power…you can. It’s called either solar or a car battery! But a good aerial is key!

Now it is really a good thing that we have this young man with us, because we stop before the big hill out of Ilkiloret to get a bag of charcoal, which he ends up carrying to the car. (They make charcoal in this area). We have to dismount 5 times from the car climbing out of the Rift Valley because of the steep and rocky hills and the car bottom will scrap when it is weighed down.

Grace got a call on our way back to Kimuga, that two big planes had landed in her neighbor’s field. So we went rushing home to see what was happening. 

Giraffes are just part of the landscape in this part of Kenya.

As we neared Grace’s house we saw a giraffe 30 feet from the road. The children on their way home from school walked by it as if it was no big deal. As we were taking pictures of the giraffe we heard the whirring of a jet engine, so we continued on past Grace’s house and found two giant Kenyan Army helicopters in her neighbor’s field. We ran back into the field and stood along the fence to watch them. The first one lifted off and flew over our heads. The second one lifted off and flew in the opposite direction. Then a few seconds later the one which had taken off first came back and flew over us again after the other one. I’m sure it was just some sort of training exercise but it was a pretty spectacular site for this small village! 

Kenyan Army Pilots take a break in a field in Kimuga village.

The second helicopter in the field had a cargo bay.

Grace gave me a two-liter coke bottle filled with milk from Maasai land as we were leaving her house. Maasai milk smells smokey! So I boiled it and Milly and I each had a cup of fresh smokey milk while I made dinner!

So that was my Thursday. What did you do?



Update: A man who used to teach adult education in Ilkiloret has agreed to take Janet’s place and teach classes. Grace and I will meet with him and the district adult education coordinator next Wednesday to see the way forward. God answers prayer!

Birthday Shots

I don’t know how the month of April snuck past me. I usually gear up for my birthday month, because how can you not set apart the month of your birth for special celebration. And me of all people! I love birthdays. I think it’s a crime that Kenyans don’t think celebrating birthdays is important. Case in point, my foster daughter Milly thought until a few days ago, that she was 16 and born on April 28^th then we spoke to her birth mom who said she was in fact 19 and born on April 6^th.

I know my date of birth, the fact that this year I scheduled a painful procedure that may possibly alleviate my back pain the morning of my 42^nd birthday did not escape my notice. It’s a long story…

I saw a back specialist at Cure International at Kijabe Mission Hospital (about two hours from Nairobi) in February. The MRI and the doctor’s visit proved inconclusive. The back specialist could not determine why I had pain on the right side of my back.

I met a young woman at church, named Ashby, who could be the subject of a whole other blog, who’s fiancé is a famous doctor in Canada. He is famous for treating among other things, mystery back pain! So I emailed the Canadian doctor who got back to me promptly with a possible solution. Inject lidocaine into the scar and muscle tissue that is painful to get the tissue to release, as it was previously all knotted up!

I forwarded said email that gave procedure directions to the back specialist, who forwarded it to the pain specialist who works out of the Cure clinic in Nairobi one day a week. Tuesdays! For the week before my scheduled procedure I had been in pretty severe pain, so I didn’t want to put it off. So that’s how I ended up with 30-some injections in my back on my birthday.

But let me back up, (that wasn’t a pun)… Monday is Bible Study day. I attend two different bi-weekly Monday Bible Studies. Ashby attends the one that was on April 22. I got a text near the end of Bible Study that it was raining hard in Ngong (and as my 23-year-old, who tends to exaggerate a bit, texted – there is an ocean forming outside our gate! Come home early!)

Ashby, who spends the night at my house after Bible Study because she has recently opened a children’s home in the bush and can’t get there after dark, has a four-wheel drive vehicle so we didn’t rush out of Bible Study. This was a good thing because the women laid hands on me and prayed for healing through this procedure I was to endure the next morning.

There was in fact a small lake, ocean is a bit strong, in front of my house, but Ashby’s vehicle easily crossed it.

Ashby and I made pasta, salad and French bread for the girls and Gracious. My Kenyan niece, Gracious, who is six, has been a fixture at my house for the past two weeks as her mom who works overnights at a gas station, looks for a new house help. 

Sorry about the blurry picture - I need to train Ashby on proper operation of the camera!

Ashby had bought me a present and gotten at everyone at Bible Study to sign a card for me! After pasta we ate chocolate cake from the local supermarket that is dyn-o-mite!

Me and my girls on the eve of my 42nd birthday!

The next morning my neighbor offered me a lift to Nairobi as I was leaving! Lorraine is my upstairs neighbor. I don’t know her well but her kids are friends with Gracious and spend a lot of time in my house.

She dropped me off and I walked about ¾ mile to where I boarded a matatu for Westlands where the clinic is located. When I got to Westlands I walked another ¼ mile to the clinic.

I was early and spent my time waiting for the doctor in prayer. It went something like this: God please let this procedure work. Please take away my pain. Please be with this doctor, guide her hands, make them instruments of your healing.

Breathe, Breathe, Breathe, pray some more.

In walks the smallest doctor I’ve ever met. She was tiny! After a few minutes the nurse called me to take my vitals. Wouldn’t you know it my blood pressure was low. 97/51.

I convinced the nurse that I hadn’t eaten breakfast and that my blood pressure usually ran low. Started to kick self because of not having eaten anything…but I was so anxious I couldn’t bring myself to eat…so lesson learned. Force-feeding oneself on occasion is called for!

Then I went to see the doctor who asked me about my medical history and talked to me about the procedure she was going to perform. She also told me it would be painful!

I wasn’t quite prepared for the pain. Little pops of pain as the lidocaine entered the muscle…so many time that I stopped counting. As I laid on the table recovering, I noticed severe pain further down than she’d injected. When I mentioned it she probed the area and said I could come back another time to inject that area or I could do it now but that she didn’t want to overwhelm me.

“Do it now.” The thought of the mile walk and the two bumpy matatu rides I would have to endure made the decision easy. Of course this was the tightest muscle and of course the most painful. Saved the best for last!

As I lay on the table crying from, I think, relief more than pain, she reached over and took my hand and said, “Can I pray with you?”

“Oh please,” I said. I knew Kijabe was a mission hospital. I knew mission hospital doctors were encouraged to pray with and for their patients. But the back specialist hadn’t asked to pray with me.

My being was flooded with God’s pure grace, mercy and love as my doctor prayed for my health, my ministry and for God’s blessing on my life. As I walked back to the fancy Westlands mall to eat at my favorite salad bar (my birthday treat), I started to contemplate the experience.

When we are at are lowest, when are backs are against the wall, we cry out in prayer. “God, are you listening? Here my prayer.” And we cry and wail and we tell God about our pain, frustration, anger, hurt. We’ve been betrayed, belittled, beaten, physically or emotionally harmed. We need healing.

That’s what I felt like in the waiting room. And then a tiny angel in the form of my doctor walked through the door and said, “this will hurt but it will be worth it.” And isn’t that what being a Christian is all about enduring the suffering because there is an ultimate heavenly reward.

And then she prayed…and while the pain didn’t stop, I felt something more important healing. I felt the frustration and anger I had held onto for so long about this back pain begin to ease. God has a plan. He has a plan for my life and for this pain. He loves me. He doesn’t want me to suffer. This too shall pass.

So in years to come when someone asks how I spent my 42^nd birthday. I will tell them about my 30 birthday shots and the praying doctor who began my healing celebration.

The Art of “Being” Versus the Compulsion to “Do”

Read Psalm 37:1-9

These versus tell us three times not to fret and give instructions using these verbs: trust, delight, commit, be still, wait patiently, refrain from anger! If we don’t fret we will get to know the desires of our heart, he will make our righteousness shine like the sun and we will inherit the kingdom of heaven. It actually makes fretting sound pretty pathetic! It gently tells us how to just “be” in the presence of the Lord.

Being does not come easy to me as I’ve always equated it with laziness. However, my Bible Study started a new book called “Women of Balance,” and the first lesson talks about finding balance between being and doing.

Growing up in a developed country one learns that doing is the path to success and we have all kinds of gadgets to make our doing easier. Oddly enough, the gadgets make me so efficient that I can fit more doing into my schedule.

In Kenya, I am often just as busy, but am forced in a state of being by events beyond my control. There are many events that can force one into a state of being, the list includes but is not limited to:

1.     Rolling black outs – they are often announced days in advance in the newspaper which says the power will be out from 9 am until 5 pm. The last power outage was from about 10 pm to 10 pm to following day…yeah that’s right, 24 hours!

·      On black out days, I either have to wade through the sea of humanity at the only cyber with a generator in Ngong, or if its not that important, I spend the day at home being less productive, but more peaceful. There is nothing like cooking and eating by candlelight!

2.     Inefficient public transport – some matatus on my route jump the queue and arrive at my stage empty…so they wait at each stage for about 5 minutes instead of stopping only long enough to drop off and pick up passangers. This can increase your travel time by half and hour!

·      When I remember that I have no control over when I’m going to arrive at my destination…I let myself just be. Sometimes I use the time to pray, or I strike up a conversation with my seatmate and sometimes I just sit and look out the window and marvel at my place in God’s beautiful world.

3.     Supermarket lines – I’m not sure why supermarket lines in Kenya are so slow, sometimes their computers go offline, other time there is a power outage and the computer system has to switch to the generator system, sometimes the person in front of you pays with a credit card which requires them to go to the customer service desk to pay and then come back to the line to finish their transaction.

·      Normally one doesn’t have the time to talk to the person in front of behind you in line. But I have made quite a few friends in the supermarket line because we are forced to stand there for a ridiculously long time. Humans, being relational creatures, eventual one will speak and then before long you realize this stranger could actually be a friend and not too long after that you’ve exchanged phone numbers and arranged to have coffee. Being requires that you don’t get hot headed and change lines before you get to that far.

4.     Traffic jams: Referred to affectionately as “jams,” these miles long pile up of cars happen because Kenya’s roads are too narrow and there are no turn lanes. Not to mention that quite a large portion of what passes for vehicles in Kenya are not road worthy.

·      It’s just God’s way of giving you extra hours within the day to pray, not only for deliverance from the insanity of the jam, but also to express your gratefulness for what God has done to and through you during the day.

5.     Kenyan time: i.e. one to two hours later than the time set for a meeting/function, etc. A perfect example of this (and number 4) is when the first ever Kenyan Presidential Debate started almost 2 hours late because one of the candidates was stuck in a jam!

·      Even weddings start late here. I have to admit I’m not very good at being when I know someone is running on Kenya time, because they are wasting my time. This however is an opportunity to pray for patience and thank God for calling me to Kenya…and reminding myself I said yes to God and that Kenyan time is part of that bargain.

6.     My new personal forced state of being is Baby Tamara. Her needs trump anything else I’m doing and force me to sit or walk with her and just be!

·      This is my favorite state of forced being! I think about how wonderful my unconventional family is. I marvel at how God works and at how perfect his plans are. I think about how lucky I am to be a mom to Judie and Millie and a grandmother to Tamara. I can’t even imagine what other plans he has for my life, but I am so happy for the moments when I can just be and dream and pray about God’s will for my life.

With the exception of black outs and babies, the advent of mobile phones has made being almost obsolete, you can still play games, email, check FB, listen to music or check out videos on YouTube while you are in a traffic jam, waiting for a wedding to start, stuck in the checkout line, or on the matatu.

However on this particular black out day my phone battery is dead, I’ve done the work I can do on my computer without being online (I use a hotspot on my phone to hook up wirelessly to the internet), and studying Swahili has given me a headache. So there is always reading, or I could arrange my Tupperware baskets or maybe I could try just being for a while. At least until the power comes back on!

Note: Two days after I wrote this blog, as I finished my editing, the lights went out…it’s 7:08 pm. In order to upload the blog I will have to be online. My phone is fully charged but who knows when the power will come back on. The timing of this power outage is telling. They just announced that Raila Odinga’s challenge of the Presidential Election to the Supreme Court of Kenya has been denied and Uhuru Kenyatta has been declared president. And then the lights went out…Again. Maybe Kenyatta will do something about it or maybe I’ll be doing a lot of being in the future. Only God knows!

Prayer, Love, Relationships and Teenagers

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. - Ephesians 4:2

I am a crier: a no-holds-barred, waterfall, river overflowing its banks kind of tear factory. I have no explanation for it. It’s just how I’m made. I even cry when I’m happy! So it should come as no surprise that when the teenagers, actually young adults, in my life do, say or act in ways that melt my heart…I sometimes shed a tear.

Just this past week they have done and said things that have made every prayer, spoken through tears, at the end of my rope worth the time and energy.

Raymond is a 20-year-old boy that was orphaned at the age of 13 and spent the next four plus years in IDP camps before he was finally put in an orphanage and then eventually ended up with Wezesha. He is impulsive and can have a very bad attitude, but he is also a gentle soul with a brilliant mind and bright future. He has come to understand his weaknesses and how they play out in his relationship with John and Grace. He is in his last year of high school and attends day school, which was his choice. He recently met his sponsor, Laura, in person for the first time.

He said of her, “The first time she told me she loved me, I didn’t know what to say. We don’t say I love you very often here. I don’t remember my biological mother ever telling me she loved me. We love each other yes, but we don’t say it. So I didn’t know how to react. Then she told me how much it cost to come all the way to Kenya from America and that she would never have come to Kenya except that I am here and she wanted to know me better. And then I knew what love was.”

“And you Auntie,” he said to me. “You taught me how to trust. Because Kenyan’s are very slow to trust. But you have never let me down. You are always here for me. Saying I love you and trusting are very new ideas for me. But I can say I know them now.”

Here is a young man that I have spent the better part of the week trying to get him to understand and praying that he would here me that his problems aren’t about his situation but rather, his attitude. And not only did he agree with me, but he melted my heart by telling me he is learning to love and trust. For a young man who has lived on the streets that is a miracle in and of itself!

Raymond carrying Tamara in the Ngong Hills last Sunday

Judie is my 23-year-old foster daughter. She has been with me for nearly 9 years. She is as stubborn as the day is long, and beautiful and silly and a great cook and the joy of my life, most days…

While my mom was here she showed off her not so pretty side, the jealous, rebellious, pouty side. She is also finishing her last year of high school and is not doing well. She is also having some health issues. She cycles through mood swings so fast, that she might wake up with a smile on her face and be scowling by noon. Today, however, was a good day. She goes to boarding school but has been coming to church with us on Sunday while my mom was in Kenya. She showed up to church today, 5 days after my mom left. I didn’t say anything much about it because she was smiling! After church she and Millicent and I went to lunch. She didn’t order anything (which is very unusual for a child that would give her right arm for a piece of chicken – they get no nice food at boarding school), she asked if instead of me buying her lunch, I would buy a pair of shoes for another girl in her school who is from a children’s home and didn’t have shoes.

Commence melting heart…although I kept the tears in check. My so often jealous and self-absorbed high schooler, sacrificed her own desire for a nice chicken lunch, probably her favorite food in the world, so that another child could have a pair of shoes. I need a proud mama button! Not that I’m not always proud to be her mother…but sometimes you just want to shout it from the mountain tops: “My kid has a big heart! The thing I actually appreciate most is that she was willing to sacrifice something that meant something to her instead of asking me to just pay for it myself.

This photo of Judie is the screensaver on my laptop. When she's in a bad mood I look at it to remind me of how beautiful her smile is!

My last heart melt story is about my new foster daughter Millicent. She is not nearly as shy as Judie is, but she is definitely feeling me out and is very quiet. I asked Raymond to ask Millie how she liked staying at my house. (I didn’t want the “this is what my new mom wants to hear” version and I knew she would tell Raymond the truth because they both come from the streets. She told him she was so happy to have her own room and space for the baby, and to be able to eat three meals everyday and that I was really nice.

On March 16 as I was falling to sleep, I got this text from Millicent who sleeps in the room next to mine:

Thank u for what u are doing

to me and the little tamara may

the lord be with u I love u mom

gdnt

On March 19 the next text came:

            You have realy changed my life

            and tamara thank you for

            putting hope in me I love you

mom gdnt

And on March 23:

I lov u mom hve a good day

Millicent's smile could light up even the darkest corners of this world. My prayer is that her future will be bright and her dreams will be many.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. - Romans 8:28

God may not have given me biological children, but these children of God that he has blessed me with fill my heart with a love so big I can’t even begin to explain it. And yes…sometimes being this happy and proud of my kids makes me cry!