From the hills of Ngong Valley to the bush of Olipishet

As I first suspected a blog a week may have been a bit ambitious, but we are still going to try. While we have written some things to post later (they will come out of order) it has been hard to submit them to the electronic form and get them sent off for a variety of reasons.  The first of which may be evident from Audrey's last post but I will elaborate.  In Kenya, all phones and cellular Internet run off of SIM cards.  These SIM cards come with a phone number and pin code.  As an American, I only thought it right to assume after entering the pin code initially and unlocking the phone I was done with that code, or I could enter a new one and put away all that old information I no longer needed.  How wrong I was... Turns out, that this little code is needed any time the battery dies or the phone is switched off.  This of course did not happen until we had gone about two hours away from civilization and left the code locked in a guest house store room.  It also just so happens that as Murphy's law states it happened at the convenient time of the car overheating and breaking down, so calling for assistance was a bit more difficult.  But alas, we got moving, got to where we were going, and all was well.  That was SIM card lock number 1 (unfortunately the phone with all our African contacts), however we still had Audrey's phone and the IPad. That, my friends, was SIM card lock number two, I had also turned off the iPad.  So we were without my phone and Internet from iPad, no big deal you say, just call someone, they should be able to fix that. Think again, TIA (this is Africa).  We called several times to customer service from Audrey's phone with no answer or to wait on hold and get hung up on. Finally when we asked a Kenyan friend to call from his phone they picked up first try right away.  Pretty sure someone was screening the American's calls...  And believe it or not, easily enough we got my phone unlocked, but as for the iPad... Well, you have to know the phone number to unlock a phone and since we were not using the iPad as a phone we didn't know the phone number.  Later on we tried to go to the store and use my ID to find the number, but that too was impossible since the clerk who sold us the numbers entered an extra different symbol at the end of my ID number on each different phone number making it impossible to find.  So, we ended up buying a new phone number for the iPad, and have since that time saved all phone numbers and pin codes in a secure space.

This was reason one for our delayed response, but I have more excuses too, ha!  Cellular signal was not great when we were in the city, but especially now where we are for language learning in the bush it is non-existent, if we drive 15 minutes or so in one particular direction there is a hope, so maybe you will see this blog, or maybe I am just writing to myself.  Thirdly, power for charging devices is always a challenge but we may have enough generators and solar chargers to sort that out now.  Our last excuse I believe would be time and self care, our weeks in Ngong were wonderful but taxing on our mental and emotional health to some degree.  We were traveling to many houses and churches, visiting many families, and constantly having people to come visit us, that rarely was there a time besides at 11pm where Audrey and I could just be and process the day's events, much less have a quiet time. By the time we had made it back to the city for our two days of "rest" we had pictures to edit, audio of language helpers to edit, update and prayer letters to write, and shopping to do before we headed out to the bush.  Needless to say, we didn't get much rest. I say this not to complain about anyone or anything, because I have loved everyone and every moment I have had here. I only say this to explain and to share a glimpse of our life here.  However, one great thing about Olipishet where we are doing our language learning now is that most days (with the exceptions of market day and Sundays) we are not visiting anyone, just cooking, doing language learning with our one helper, cooking, practicing, maybe having a small conversation with the same language helper in the evening, but we are able to have some rest.  We can process, we can just be in His arms without the added on cultural stress. Of course stress will come and we are exited to interact with people, but we are still getting our feet under us and our beaks wet. Continue to pray for us to have grace and love, to be filled by Him who sustains us and to be at peace as we learn and get adjusted.  We are trying to come up with systems to better disperse our blogging and editing of media so it doesn't all happen on our rest days so be in prayer for that as well.

A quick devotion before to center us again before I sign off only sharing my angst and complaints, ha!  Matthew 5- Beatitudes: blessed are those who are at the end of their rope, who have lost what's dear to them, who hunger, who are persecuted and who love unconditionally -for their trust is in God.  Those who are prideful and striving for their slice of the pie now, are getting it.  But it is the humble and loving who put their faith in God, that are rewarded.  The second part of the beatitudes is what hit me though, I have always read this and it has probably hit me in part before, but I got more of the blow today.  Jesus says and I am paraphrasing, "For you, my followers, are the salt of earth, if you do not have these characteristics listed above, if you are not enhancing the flavor of the lives of others, how will they see Me in you?  Huge cities can't hide at night, you can see their lights from far away (can I see yours, from a distance, all the time?) I did not make you lights just to cover you up when it was inconvenient for you to shine, or when others were going to make fun of you.  I made you lights so people could see Me in you.  I have a hard time with this. It is easy at times to hide or to blend in when people are making blatant statements about Christians because of the hate and anger that some have shown them. It's easy to just stay quiet and look away.  However, it does not seem to me that this is what Christ calls us to here. So be salt, be light, all the time, from a distance, and wear the weather good and bad, for this is who we have been made to be.