Glad songs!

Early on in our time in Kenya this summer I was struck by several verses found in Psalm 116.

For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling;

I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.

What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me?

I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD.

At the beginning of the summer this verse was an encouragement to me that in the role of evangelizing and preaching that was set before me, all i had to do was "lift up the cup of salvation" or as it states later in Psalm 118 tell "glad songs of salvation...recount the deeds of the LORD." And so that was and is my only job, to tell stories of the salvation, healing, deliverance in my life and the lives of others. Both while I was in Kenya and also upon returning home.

So let me share snippets of stories of God's mighty deeds this summer through the student's own words.

"We treat, Jesus heals"
-nursing students after working in a mission hospital for three weeks

"I know now not to be competent in my self but in the Spirit."
-student sent to preach in Busia, Kenya

"God has set eternity in our hearts, but He doesn't promise any details. We are only to seek Him first and all else will fall into place."
-student sent to preach in Kessup, Kenya

"I've been worrying too much about what others think of me and I want to live to be concerned only by what God thinks...as long as I'm speaking God's truth, it doesn't matter how I'm saying it because it's God's truth!"
-student sent to preach in Kipkelion, Kenya

"I've learned that my presence is valued even when I'm not contributing. I can have confidence in Christ knowing that my soul is hidden in Him and I can't base my worth on what I've accomplished in a day, but finding my worth in Christ."
-nursing student sent to Tenwick Hospital

"How often am I on my face before my God?"
-student responding to seeing Hindus worshipping idols at a temple in Nairobi

"God really is restoring and healing me everyday, giving me hope."
-student sent to Nakuru to work with street families

"People are more willing than you think, you never know till you ask."
-student sent to evangelize in the city markets of Nairobi

"I saw my spiritual brokenness reflected in their physical brokenness. And their dependence reflected the reality of my dependence on God."
-staff sent to Huruma slum orphanage and home for disabled

Now I know that many of these short quotes don't hold the same weight for you as they do for me. I was given the privilege to see these students change over the course of 7 weeks. One of my favorite parts of this trip is sitting in the hotel conference room with everyone in New York before we fly over to Africa. I just sit in awe at all the eager faces in the room and wonder what God is going to do in them while we're together, how He will transform them.

His word never returns empty but will accomplish what He desires and achieve the purpose for which He sent it. (Isaiah 55:11) Ourselves and the students on this year's GP are a testament to that! God has done a mighty work, if not in the lives of Kenyans we administered to, then surely in the lives of those who went out.

May these glad songs and many more of this summer ring out to make God look as good as He really is :)

The final leg!

Faithful blog readers, pole sana (sorry so much) for being late in attending to this little story portal. We both returned from our assignments a couple of weeks ago but haven't had time in the schedule to sit, collect our thoughts and share with you. One thing is for sure, there has been so much incredible transformation among the students, so many good and hard questions asked, and numerous stories of God shared.

Just to give you an idea, all forty of us returned from our various 3 week assignments and stayed in Nairobi for 10 days full of tons of different experiences and training. Here's a quick list of what we jammed into this crazy time period...

• a day of Hindu training, visiting two temples
• working at an orphanage for abandoned babies, disabled children and women
• visiting "Sanctuary of Hope" a home for children from Mathare Valley slum
• evangelizing and praying for people walking thru Mathare Valley slum
• visiting a mega-church, seeing westernization
• a day of Islam training, visiting a mosque
• visiting FOCUS, InterVarsity's sister movement in Kenya
• relational evangelism at a youth prison
• visiting Africa Inland Mission, non-tradition missionaries (pilots, mechanics, accountants, etc.)

 

Here's John playing soccer with some boys at the prison. (He's wearing their uniform)

 And here's us meeting a missionary girl at Africa Inland Mission, she happens to be serving as a photojournalist on their "On Field Media" team...does she look familiar to our New Hope friends?? Of course she's none other than the beautiful Bess Brownlee from Florence, MT. You may not know but Bess came as a student on our same trip in 2009 and got hooked to come back and served with AIM!

It's amazing the things that happen for students from a single spark of just one day or one experience from their entire seven weeks in Kenya. The last couple of weeks have been a bit crazy with endless learning, stimulation, and questioning for the students, many of whom were still trying to process what they had learned and experienced on their assignment. 

We wrapped it all up with a few days in Mombasa to prepare the team for re-entering America. I find this time incredibly essential for being able to integrate the lessons of the summer--and not just explode on their families--when they get off the plane. 

During this last leg of the trip we saw students feeling different calls from the Lord and switching majors, heard them empowering each other by speaking out the gifts they saw in one another, and witnessed so many incredible lessons pouring out of their mouths. 

There is really something about pulling these students (and us!) out of our comfort zone that opens us up to God in such a raw, dependent way that allows Him to work on deep stuff within us. It's beautiful!!! I wish you could all be here and see it firsthand! 

Now that all the logistics are out of the way, be looking for a new post full of these stories I keep talking about.  Kwaheri (goodbye) for now, your love and support is priceless to us.

Tiffany

Bwana asifiwe! Habari yenu?

(Praise the Lord! How are ya’ll doing?)

Greetings from Nakuru, Kenya! My assignment here with Andie has been such a whirlwind, we’ve been involved in lots of different ministries all under the head organization of “R.O.C.K. Bridge Ministries” and our main host has been an incredible guy named Zablon Kuria. Here’s a link to a pic of him! http://www.rockbridgeministries.org/meet-the-board.html .  Here you can also check out the “Projects” tab to see some of what we’ve been able to be a part of here.

We’ve done Bible studies with street women in tin shacks, helped at Nakuru Hills Special School a boarding school for 170 disabled students, handed out donations at a trash dump called Gioto, preached at business places in the morning, and even attended a Young Life meeting at a local high school. Thus the whirlwind, but most of all we’ve been consistently living at a home for street women and their children and other vulnerable girls. It’s called Nakuru 3:16 and it’s extremely raw and astoundingly beautiful.

Here’ the link to their site, http://nakuru316.org/ and here’s another link to a newspaper article I found one day in the house. It features a group from Missoula who came here last summer but it is incredibly well written and describes the situation here incredibly well. http://missoulian.com/lifestyles/territory/article_cc316252-ba24-11e0-8f04-001cc4c002e0.html

Living in the house was so overwhelming at first. There are eight adult mothers, five high school girls, and 16 children and babies all living under one roof in a four bedroom house out in a rural area around Nakuru. We go to school with the kids, do homework with them, we help cook in the tin outdoor kitchen, and mostly just play around and talk with the women and children and try to love them well.  They gather for devotion every single evening before going to bed and the first night we arrived the kids led us in a song with these words,

Who has your final say? Jehovah has my final say!

Who has your final say? Jehovah has my final say!

Jehovah turns my life around, Jehovah turns my life around

He makes a way where there is no way

Jehovah has my final say!

And this song is a favorite in the house and so it’s always in my head and I’ve been taught through it about the sovereignty of God. Every day I see or hear about a hard situation in the house that always stems from a deep inner brokenness and hurt from past abuse, rejection, or abandonment.  I have had to learn to sit in those places and trust that God is actively redeeming and restoring these women and children because I can’t fix what I am seeing. Rather than trying to tackle things on my own, I’ve been learning to wake up each day and ask “What are you up to today God? How can I be a part of it?”

And beautiful things have come of that. Knowing that God is the worker, I’ve been freed up to simply enjoy life at 3:16, dance, and laugh. To say simple words of encouragement and help lead devotions on self-worth, freedom in Christ, and the stubborn ever-pursuing love of God.  There’s oh so much to say and more will come for sure, but for now I’ll leave you with some pics and videos!

Here's our unofficial favorite kiddo named Isaac and then Monica (age 25) who lives at 3:16 with her four kids and is currently attending cosmetology school

And here's Andie and I on the schol playground with our primary class students!

Here's our latest donation drop to the peopple living at Gioto garbage dump.


And....this is the craziness that we get to enjoy every evening at 3:16!!

Pressing on in love and power, not fear!

-Tiffany

Mathare

Hey everyone!!

I'm writing from a little cyber cafe just outside Nairobi (Kenya's sprawling capital city).  Shemiah and I have had an incredible few weeks working in Mathare Valley, 6 square miles populated by approx. 200,000 beautiful people.  Most live in 10x10 tin shacks, often being filled with families of 7 or more.  The situation appears dire.  Sewage and heaps of rotting garbage litter the landscape.  I breathe through my mouth so that I don't vomit.  Toddlers in tattered t-shirts are playing boats with plastic bottle caps in puddles of brown water.  There goes a stray dog with a litter of new pups bumping and biting through the trash.  Chickens and pigs and babies are playing in the same dirt.

But you wanna know the crazy thing?  Many of these 200,000 Kenyans are completely content.  They have learned what it means, as the apostle Paul once said, "to be content in any situation."  The Christians in Mathare Valley Slum have the joy of the Lord.  Those who don't know Christ do not have that joy.  Pending three weeks here has really shown me the truth of our good news once again.  The people who have the gospel are much happier than those who don't.  It is just a fact.  If you are reading this and don't know Christ and don't believe it, come to Mathare yourself.  See the goodness of the Provider God.  It is absolutely amazing.

I have been teaching Science and English and Christianity at an elementary school here.  I love working with the older kids, the 7th and 8th graders who are really starting to get life figured out.  They ask tough questions.  They make me think.  And they are better at math than me, so I let Shemiah teach the math!  On top of that I am teaching a writing course to young adults, ages 19-27.  We've learned how to write resumes and prepare presentations.  I'm also teaching a course that I've called "Basics of Biblical Interpretation" to that same group.  I am loving it.  I will miss this place.  Believe it or not, the sewage is normal now.  I am beginning to see through the material world and into the deeper reality of the spiritual world.  What does a nice house buy?  A shiny car?  Not peace, that is proven here.  God is really good.  Really.

In Him,

John August Hundley

As a staff team we worked for 10 hours over four days seting up partnerships and deciding where we would place each team.  It went surprisingly smoothly! Tiffany was assigned to a city called Nakuru, which is about 4 hours drive from Nairobi.  She'll be working with teenage mothers who have been rescued from the streets and are being rehabilitated from drugs and abusive relationships.  She was paired with a girl named Andie, I'm excited to hear about their friendship when we see each other again in three weeks. Please pray for peace for me, as I'll be concerned for her safety while we're apart.  I was paired with a young man named Shemiah from Bozeman, Montana.  We're going to be working in Mathare Valley Slum with a church there that is really involved in the uplift of the community.  I know that I will be changed by some of the most materially poor but spiritually rich people on the planet.  Please be praying for my relationship with Shemiah, we're going to need words of encouragement for one another for the difficult setting.

                                                        Shemiah, Me, Andie, and Tiffany

Coming back a second time has been incredible.  It has been a litmus test of my growth in the Lord.  I am a very different person than I was two years ago.  O how the Lord matures us.  I'm excited to head into the slums in the morning.  Kwaheri.

Mathare Valley and Maasai

On Wednesday we prayed as we walked through Mathare Valley Slum, which I described in the last post.  The smell of sewage stuck to our clothes.  Last night we worshiped together with the Maasai tribe of Kenya.  They are famous for their ritual jumping.  I loved seeing them praise the Lord in their culture.  Enjoy.  Tiffany and I are enjoying our time together here as we serve the students on the team.  Many of them have been shocked--as I was my first time here in 2010--by the openness of the Kenyan people to the gospel and are excitedly sharing the good news of Jesus Christ wherever they go.

In Nairobi!

The rain just stopped pouring down, good news for the Kenyans.  We spent the day on a scavenger hunt around Nairobi getting to know the city.  I was following around a group of five students as they stumbled through this busy city, all of them on their first trip in the third world.  I had conversation with a Tibetan Buddhist under an overhang of a skyscraper in the pouring rain about the salvation of Jesus Christ.  "In Christianity," I told him, "salvation comes first, and then the good works come as a response to the love of our savior."  I seem to find Tibetan Buddhists everywhere.

Yesterday we spent the day walking through the Mathare Valley slum, one of the most decrepit living situations in the world today.  Their hope in Jesus is astounding.  With less to distract the poor they seem to figure out what the world is really about much quicker than those in the world's one percent.

Tiffany and I are having a wonderful time learning to minister together to the students on the trip.  We are both leading small groups, mine being five men, hers five women.  It was so wonderful to hear their responses to the depravity of Mathare; all of them were excited for ways to change their own lives in order to join in the mission of Jesus Christ that is already strong in that Valley.  What a beautiful thing it is to watch the love of the Lord grow in the students. 

Please be praying for the staff team, especially for wisdom in the process of deciding where and with whom the students will be sent on their 3 week ministry assignments.  These meetings can be long and stressful, and we are all already tired after long days.  We need your prayers.  I will try to post a video next week, I've got some awesome footage of our experiences here so far, so... stay tuned!  :)

In Him,

John

Hello again, friends!

We arrived in NYC and have had our first staff meeting and our first large group meeting with the team.  Seems like an amazing bunch of students ready to rock (or get rocked).  I took a video of our large group meeting to offer you a little taste of what we're in for.  We're going to try to keep our blog updated with videos throughout the summer, but it will entirely depend upon the availability of capable computers in Kenya.  Nairobi should have a few Internet Cafes that will work, but once we leave the city the odds quickly deteriorate along with the availability of technology and internet access.  Regardless, we'll keep you as up to date as is possible.

This is the director of the Global Project, Brian Lee, giving a short talk about what the GP might look like.  Brian was the officiant of our marriage last August.

We take off tomorrow at 6pm EST from New York's JFK airport.  We'll have a 12 hour layover in London before continuing on to Nairobi.

Beauty and Training

Oh Hi!

Tiffany and I are busy preparing for our departure next Wednesday; O how quickly it has come!  We went backpacking a few days ago, spending two nights in the woods.  I was pleasantly surprised by Tiffany’s toughness; we hiked—tangled up in overloaded packs—about fifteen miles, several of which were full of deadfalls, creeks and feet of snow.  We caught fish and cooked them over the fire, had a bear scare and were staggered once again by the magnificence of the Lord’s creation.  And, of course, we made some Jiffy Pop over the fire.

            I have been made aware lately of an interesting kind of “magical thinking” prevalent in the church today, most notably within Evangelicalism.  Tiffany spent much of the winter preparing for our backpacking trip.  She ran and lifted weights and did plyometrics for several months, with this trip as one of her motivations.  And the work paid back tenfold.  Now we are about to depart on a two month journey to Kenya to serve the Lord, but I didn’t do extra pushups to prepare.  I didn’t run like I would in preparation for a marathon.  I didn’t even practice my Swahili.  Within the Christian life I have been confronted by a dilemma.  If I were training for football I wouldn’t skip practice to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare online.  I would run and sweat and tackle and sweat and run and sweat.  And tackle.  How could I expect to beat the guy staring me down through those helmet bars across the line of scrimmage without putting in work?  Similarly, how can I expect to become a “better Christian” without practice? 

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I would be the first to tell you that the Christian life isn’t much like football.  For one, I’m not out to beat the guy across the line; my goal isn’t a seven hundred pound squat.  I would be the first to tell you that I can’t do anything in the power of myself to perfect myself.  I cannot fix my sin.  I cannot fix my sin.  But I can open myself deeper to the power of one who can.  Dallas Willard, one of the foremost Christian thinkers alive today and author of The Spirit of the Disciplines, wrote the following: “The Christian life is what you do when you realize you can do nothing.”  This is what I’ve been trying to figure out.  How do I do away with the magical thinking that if I listen to that amazing sermon one more time I’ll walk away more like Jesus Christ?  What can I do to open my heart to the power of the risen Christ, allowing Him to transform me?  I’m learning more and more every day.  This is how I am preparing to be Christ to the people of Kenya and my fellow GPers that I’m expected to disciple along the way.  For indeed, the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead dwells in me.  Finding answers to the two questions above is how I am preparing to be like Christ in my classes, in my marriage, in my workplace, and in my local Church. 

I won’t change by watching another webisode of the latest sitcom.  I won’t even change by trying really hard or beating myself up when I fail.  I will only change when I learn what it takes for me to open up to the Lord today.  It will be different for you.  It will probably be different for me tomorrow.  That’s why people say Christianity is a relationship, not a religion.  That’s why the cathedrals with organs that were built by colonialists in the African bush are empty.  Africans and God don’t relate behind stained glass.  They gather together under the stars with drum and song.

So as we prepare, offering ourselves as sacrifices to the Lord, we pray that God will show us the way to Himself.  That He’ll remind us again of who we are in Him.  For I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live.  We pray that we’ll be able to open our hearts honestly, that we’ll be able to discern His desired relationship with us, today.  We know He’s with us to the end of the age and we, therefore, go.

Spring Break :)

Hey everyone, we hope you are all doing well! The last few weeks have been pretty swell for us. Spring Break came and saved John from his crazy school schedule and gave both of us some much needed rest and time together. We were able to stay in a friend's ranch house outside of Wisdom, MT. (Thanks Anne!) There we found ourselves out of cell service and without internet for three days. It was grand to have some down time, go on walks, play board games, watch movies, take naps, read fun books, and of course eat some ice cream. Here are some pictures from our time there, one showing John's ingenuity building his own ramps to be able to change the oil in our little car. :)

A little quiet morning time

Four logs and two boards later the car is up and ready!

We were completely surrounded by mountains!

Over the end of Spring Break John was able to visit his sister Esther in California. It was such a blast, including an all day deep sea fishing adventure, check out these photos!

The eyes on this fish freak me out!

Easter was so great, I was able to go to a passion play here in town and even a sunrise service in the mountains with some friends. (We love you Elsens!) We are now back to life as we know it in lovely Missoula and are looking ahead to summer days in Kenya. We are beginning to get the necessary immunizations and it seems like at least every other day we have a support envelope trickle in from one of you incredible people. We are seeing our needs met by our faithful God who loves us with steadfast love. We are almost halfway in reaching our support goal! We've been able to start communicating with a majority of the students who are going on the project this year via facebook and I've begun editing the praise song book we will use during our corporate worship times in Kenya. It's all becoming a little more real and I know that once John is through with his school semester it will be even more of a reality that we are going! Thanks for loving us and partnering with us, we put it all in the hands of Him who is capable of more than we could ask or imagine! Talk to you soon :)

Online Donations!

Hey everybody!!

Habari yako? ("how are you?" in Kiswahili)

This is just a quick post to get this blog up and running! If you're reading this you are one of our more technologically savvy supporters and you like to do things online, so here we are trying to keep up with your coolness :)

Here's the link for donating online:

https://donate.intervarsity.org/donate

InterVarsity just remodeled their site for online giving and it's incredible and oh so quick and simple. I went through the process a few times myself just to make sure that it was working properly and it is!

So all you have to do is type in either "John Hundley" or "Tiffany Hundley" on the link site and our names should pop up and you can select us and be on your merry way inputting credit card numbers. Please call us if you have any questions!

Thanks for getting this far and viewing our blog! We promise to keep this place hopping with pictures and messages...until then...here are some photos from our last time in Kenya!