Greetings from The Continent! Wanted first of all to let people know I am alive and well in Kenya! Thanks to everyone for their comments and support in every way again. We arrived in Nairobi as a squad on the 7th of September and stayed a few days to get ourselves oriented and transport arranged for our final Kenyan destinations. My new team – Team Redemption – is with team Shekinah and we are currently in Busia, Kenya; a small but very busy border town on the western border of Uganda and just an hour north of Africa’s largest lake – Lake Victoria.
Over the last few weeks our squad has grown leaps and bounds in so many ways, drawing closer to each other and relying more and more on the Lord for strength. We have had many soaring highs and some deafening lows, but in the end we have moved from a group of people moving from place to place to do ministry to a body of the faithful ready to tear down walls and bring a new Kingdom. It has been utterly amazing and we really don’t even recognize the people we were or the group we found ourselves at training camp. Through the fire we have been sharpened and refined.
To give you a quick idea of what life is like in Busia imagine this: hot and dusty roads filled with traffic packed with goods and people destined for Uganda, or traveling back towards Nairobi. Oil tanker trucks are the most frequent, streaming fuel from middle eastern ships at Kenyan ports on the Indian Ocean to the heart of Africa. Millions (it seems) of bicycles pedal down the sides of the roads, many carrying passengers on the back (they’re like taxis and called Boda-Bodas) and often carry us into town. Market days are the most fun as the town explodes with activity with fruits and vegetables and all kinds of craziness out on display. It’s hectic, it’s beautiful and we spend the better part of the morning stocking up on food for the week. Bucket showers with cold well water is the norm… well, showers aren’t the norm, but its from a bucket when it happens. The electricity in our house goes out for hours every day, and sometimes multiple times per day – especially if rain comes. In fact right now I’m not sure when we had power last – I believe it was yesterday afternoon. I’m sitting at an internet café right now and the power actually just went out, so this will likely get posted late… We have an amazing chef named Lucas, hired from the church who accompanies us to the markets (and gets us great deals) and prepares all of our breakfast and dinner for us. Thanks to him we’ve been eating very well, and actually been eating at all as the kitchen is very basic and making any meal in it requires great knowledge and great effort. Every day there are other people’s chickens running through our yard and some of us have had our first shot at de-heading chickens with a dull knife!
The thing I want to point out though is how much joy you see on the streets here. The children march down the streets in their smart school uniforms – jumping and smiling and greeting you with a proper handshake as you pass and yelling “Hello! how are you?!” The families for the most part live in community and everyone seems to know their neighbors and do laundry and live life in the common areas. Men push bicycles loaded down with sugar cane, lumber, and many other goods down the pathways and women often lay in the shade of large trees on the side of the paths whittling away at kale and watching over small children resting beside them. Life is hard, life is simple, smiles are bountiful. Two thoughts continues to play back in my mind: there is no reason to feel sorry for Africa, as they do not feel sorry for themselves; additionally we come to get into Africa and in turn Africa gets into us. This is it in a nutshell and though I’ve heard these things for awhile I can now affirm them as true.
The internet here is ok, but the power goes out it seems ever time I go, but I’ll try to give updates as much as possible. Thanks to everyone for your prayers and encouragement!
