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