Faith Healers

Earlier this week I made a trip out to Kisumu, in Western Kenya, to check on the progress of the first CARE for AIDS center in this area. Over the course of two days of meeting with staff and observing the center in action, I came to a new understanding of the unique challenges facing people living with HIV/AIDS in this area. One of the biggest and most heart-breaking problems is the way in which the "church" has contributed to the massive devastation caused by HIV.

Several decades ago, missionary movements from most major denominations came to Kenya in force and helped to establish hundreds of churches in even the most remote areas. Unfortunately, many missionaries picked a pastor, spent a short amount of time training him, financed the construction of a building, and then packed up to leave. Without a strong foundation or a full understanding of the gospel, many of these pastors slowly mixed the truth of the Bible with the cultural practices, beliefs, and superstitions that have characterized East African religion for centuries, resulting in all sorts of sects and "churches" with bizarre and un-Biblical practices.

Geofrey, the regional coordinator for CFA in Kisumu, told me the story of a client named Grace who had a terrible and unfortunate experience with this type of church. Grace found out last year that she was HIV-positive, and doctors prescribed a regimen of ARV drugs for her to take daily. These drugs are very effective in combating the effects of HIV on the immune system, but they must be taken on a strict schedule and can have difficult side effects. After taking ARV's for a few months, Grace heard of a "faith healer" at a local church who supposedly could cure HIV/AIDS. Not knowing any better, Grace attended a service at the church, where people made a great show of "praying" for her healing and "casting out" the sickness within her. After collecting the fee for the service, the leader of the church told Grace that in order to demonstrate true faith, she should burn all of her medication and believe that she was healed. She did this, but she definitely wasn't healed. A month or so later, Grace's condition started to deteriorate again rapidly, and she soon found herself in a much worse condition than she had been in at any point before. Because she stopped taking her medication against the doctor's orders, thus "defaulting" on her treatment plan, the medication would no longer be effective and the hospital refused to take her back.

It was at this point that Lazarus and Elizabeth, the CFA center workers, found Grace. They were able to go with her to the hospital and explain her situation, promising that they would maintain close supervision of her treatment if the doctor would give her another chance with an alternative drug. Thankfully, she is now back on an effective treatment regimen and is committed to sticking with it. Through meeting with Elizabeth, Grace has been educated on the reality of HIV/AIDS and now understands how the infection affects her body and how she can live positively with it. Her health has improved significantly in the past few months of proper treatment, and she is moving in the right direction towards self-sufficiency.

Few things make me more angry or heartbroken than the way in which desperate people are being taken advantage of and lied to, all in the name of Christianity. It is a sad reality that the people who are most affected by HIV/AIDS don't have the education or the understanding to recognize these schemes, but stories like these make me even more thankful for the work that CARE for AIDS is doing. Not only are we able to educate individuals on the RIGHT way to live with HIV/AIDS, we are getting the opportunity to work with church leaders and congregations, helping to produce churches that can welcome HIV-positive Kenyans with the REAL love of Christ and with advice that really does help. I am so thankful that God has blessed CFA with the opportunity to start working in Kisumu, where problems and misunderstanding like this are rampant, and I pray that He will bless us with the resources to increase our scope to every part of the country as time goes on!

A Wedding Guide

Humphrey Muriuki, the spiritual counselor at the Imani Baptist CFA center, got married on Saturday, and I was given the distinct privilege of being a groomsman in his wedding. Following is a step-by-step guide for what to expect, should you ever be given the same opportunity...

2 weeks prior to the big day: Go to a tailor in Limuru to get fitted for your suit and pick up your shirt and tie. Yep, we all got matching custom-made suits for the wedding! I was actually pleasantly surprised with how well the suit fit, especially for the total cost of about $40. As an added bonus, our ties were black and gold - Go Dores!

Saturday, 8 am - Meet at the wedding site for convoy-preparation. Assuming that you have a functioning car, you will probably be called on to assist with transportation for the festivities. The "better" the car is, the more important people you will get to transport (mine was the 2nd best - more on that soon). About 10 drivers met in the morning to have an assortment of bright green ribbons and bows attached to our cars, and then we all headed out in a convoy towards the home where the bride was staying.

9:30 am - Arrive at the temporary residence of the bride and her "delegation." The bride will have been preparing and getting dressed somewhere with 20 or 30 friends and family members, and it's the responsibility of the groom's "delegation" to earn the right to take her away (after previously paying a dowry of several cows and goats, of course). Our convoy brought along about 20 women who are part of Humphrey's family, and they converged on the gate of the house, singing and dancing for about 15 minutes before the bride's delegation decided the show was good enough to open the door. Then they sang and danced some more, until finally the bride came out and got into the best car. As the owner of the 2nd best car, I was given the privilege of driving flower girls and bridesmaids - in the end I pulled out with 3 bridesmaids (about 16 years old) and 10 flower girls (about 4-6 years old), all with big satin dresses, veils, gloves, and flowers. Remember, my car seats 7, so this was a record...

11:00 am - Return to the wedding venue - with a flourish of horns, dancing, and yelling - and start the ceremony. After a short delay due to a failed electrical connection, the groomsman, bridesmaids, flower girls (and little boys in suits), the bride's family, and the bride herself all lined up to march into the ceremony. The wedding was held in a big field with several tents, so we marched around the grass in step and ended up making a kind of "spirit tunnel" for the bride to pass through. Then we looked on as Humphrey and Frieda took their vows, exchanged rings, and talked with the pastor.

12:30 pm - Pictures at the wedding venue, with every conceivable combination of guests that have the slightest relation to the happy couple. Also, instead of marching back out of the ceremony, make sure you dance out in step with the rest of the wedding party. If you aren't too used to Kenyan dance-marching (like some people around here), just follow Duncan and try not to look like too much of an American. Remember that of the 300 people in attendance, you are the sole representative of the good old USA...

1:00 pm - Load up the cars again and go to a "scenic" spot for official pictures. After rounding up all 13 of my female passengers, we headed a short way down the road to Brackenhurst for a whole new round of pictures. This included lots of pictures with all of the groomsmen and the wedding party, and it also included very awkward, posed solo shots of me with each one of the bridesmaids, who lined up for pictures with the only mzungu around...I was quite the spectacle to a bunch of teenage girls!

2:00 pm - Return to the wedding venue for lunch and "presentations." We got back to the field, where all of the guests had already finished eating lunch. This put them in a great mood, so we spent the first 20 minutes or so all dancing around in a circle - think "Cotton-eyed Joe" to Kikuyu music. Then all of the wedding party took our seats of honor under the tent and were served a heaping bowl of rice, beans, stew, and chapati. While we ate, guests starting making presentations in honor of Humphrey and Frieda - some sang songs, gave speeches, or performed choreographed dances, while others carried up gifts like couches and giant cabinets (still not sure why they carried couches all the way out into the field, and I guess the couple doesn't have much say in their interior decorating).

5:00ish pm - Call it a day. I snuck out early at about 4:30, but the speeches and presentations were still going strong!

In the end, it was a long, tiring day, but I was really glad that I got to do it. Seeing all of the traditions that Kenyans include in their weddings, especially the weight that they place on families, was really interesting. It was also fun to share in the joy and celebration with so many of my Kenyan friends - almost all of the CFA staff from the Limuru region were present, and they really got a kick out of seeing me dressed up with all of the groomsman! This will definitely go down as one of those things that few foreigners will ever get to experience, and for that I am definitely thankful. Please join me in praying for Humphrey and Frieda as they start their married life - praise God for bringing them together and pray for many years of happiness and joy!

Microfinance at Work

"Microfinance" is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days. Believers present it as the magic bullet to end worldwide poverty, and skeptics swear it is simply a diabolical scheme to take the little money that poor people have. Most people, regardless of which camp they sit in, don't fully understand it - how does it work for an individual, how can it be effective on a large scale, what actually counts as microfinance, and (my biggest question) should the word have a dash in the middle or not? Having come face to face with microfinance in Kenya over the past year, I'd like to share a short story of how it's working (yes, it's working!) with a group of CARE for AIDS clients...

Margaret and Joseph, the CFA workers in the Banana Hill center, learned a few months ago about an organization known as DOREP. DOREP is a non-profit, partially government-funded organization that originally sought to help empower people living in the arid Northeast province of Kenya - hence the name, which stands for "Desert Oasis Resident Empowerment Program." It is different from many "pure" microfinance organizations in that it is not a bank, it is not fully self-sustaining on income from loans, and it relies on government assistance for funding [caveat: because of this, and other technical mistakes I might make, some of my more economically-minded friends might need to offer some corrections on this post...I'm definitely not an economist].

A DOREP representative held a seminar for the 70-some clients at the center several months ago, explaining to them the program and inviting them to register in a group. To be eligible for the microfinance services, DOREP requires a group of at least 15 committed individuals to register together, and 35 of our clients decided to give it a try. With the help and advice of the center workers, each client filled out a registration form and brought a registration fee of about $2.00, which officially enrolled them in the program and formed the foundation for an individual savings account in each clients name. From that point, the entire group of 35 was required to meet with a DOREP representative, named Kimani, twice a month. At each one of these meetings, the group members bring a small amount of cash to add to their personal savings account.

BUT, the DOREP representative doesn't take this money with him when he leaves. Instead, the total amount that is brought to the meeting is made available to group members in the form of "soft loans." For example, in the early meetings, the group might bring a total of about $100 to put in their individual savings accounts. That cash is divided into portions of about $5-10, and these portions are given to group members with a proposal for how they can use the money to boost their income during a one-month period - this could be by buying a sack of potatoes to sell at the market, which are cheaper in bulk, for example. The recipients of the soft loans are required to pay back the amount of the loan, plus 10%, one month after receiving it. The other members of the group help to hold the recipient responsible, because if the recipient doesn't repay the loan, there is less money available for other soft loans in the future. So far our group has had ZERO soft loan defaults, and in the last group meeting (about 3 months into the process), the group of 35 members brought a total of about $300 to save in their respective accounts, allowing 18 of the members to receive "soft loans" of up to $20.

The other benefit of saving with DOREP is eventual access to "hard loans" for greater amounts. Once a member has personally saved about $25, they are eligible to receive a loan for 3 times the amount they have saved. This loan is different from the "soft loans" because the money does not come out of the pooled savings of the group, and it is given for a longer term. The recipients of the hard loans have about a year to pay back the loan at a 1% interest rate. A unique opportunity offered by DOREP, though, is for members to take loans in non-cash forms. For example, a member who is eligible for a loan of $100 might choose to take a dairy goat instead of cash and repay the loans with profits from selling milk. If a member chooses to take this kind of agricultural project loan, DOREP trainers will teach them the best ways to manage their project (goats, chickens, rabbits, cows, greenhouses, fish-ponds, etc.) free of charge, and they will also provide a partial or full market for the products that result (milk, eggs, fish, vegetables).

Some of the members in the CFA group at Banana have now saved enough for hard loans. Several of them are planning to take the loans in cash - they have a small business and need capital to help it grow, increase their inventories, or make investments to increase productivity. Others are planning to pursue project loans, primarily for rabbit- and poultry-keeping. It's extremely exciting to see the passion and commitment that our clients have demonstrated towards a program like this. They have been incredibly consistent and faithful in saving and repaying loans, and they all speak highly of the program - even to the point of sharing with clients from other centers about its benefits. As an added benefit for CARE for AIDS, the bi-monthly meetings provide a great chance for ongoing fellowship and community-building among people who have missed out on this type of encouragement for so long.

So, despite all of the general confusion and conflicting opinions, I've been very impressed with microfinance and have enjoyed seeing the real impact that it is having on our clients. I don't know if it really is the tool for banishing poverty globally, but I can speak to it's success in my small, but very needy, corner of Kenya!

Camping in the bush

This past weekend, I had the incredible opportunity to spend a night camping INSIDE Lake Nakuru National Park, and it was an amazing experience! My good friend Joe's parents are in town for a few weeks, so they made arrangements for a special campsite, transportation, and food for the night. Ten of us loaded up in a Land Cruiser and a safari van on Friday afternoon and drove about two hours north to Nakuru, where we entered the park and drove around for a little bit before heading to our campsite.

The campsite was absolutely beautiful - a grassy area in the shade of giant acacia trees, with a view out over the grasslands toward the lake beyond. ACTS provided a bunch of tents and equipment, and we had a few of their staff to help set everything up and cook for us - plush! The evening was made a little bit more interesting by intermittent rain showers, but we had big tarps and an even bigger fire, which made for a great night sitting around the fire laughing, talking, and eating. Speaking of eating, our cooks whipped up a fantastic meal of steak and squash cooked over the fire, salad, baked potatoes, cold drinks, and tea. Meals are always better when you're out in the woods, and this had to be one of the best dinners I've ever eaten! There was something magical about walking to my tent at night, knowing that there were nothing but trees and bushes between me and the lions, buffalo, leopards, and rhino that live in the park - this knowledge can make you feel very small, but the mystery of not knowing what crept behind the bushes was amazing!

The next morning we woke up early and went out for a sunrise game drive. The landscape was covered in a layer of mist, and the sunrise through the mist and the trees was simply beautiful. Before too long we came upon a group of 6 lions with a freshly killed buffalo, so we cut off the Land Cruiser and watched their morning play out. At first they were barely visible through the mist, but after a few minutes the sun came out and lit up the lions as they took turns tearing into the buffalo. Much to our delight, after eating their fill the lions decided to walk right past our truck to a group of bushes for a nap - one by one they made their way directly towards us, passing within 10 feet of the van and watching us closely with their huge yellow eyes. One adolescent male paced through the grass until he was just feet away from where I looked out of the window, cocking his head to the side with an incredible combination of curiosity and a confident lack of fear.
Later in the morning we went back to camp for a giant breakfast under the trees, complete with bacon, eggs, and porridge. We broke down the camp and packed up the vehicles, and then drove around for a couple more hours before heading out from the park. We came upon a gigantic white rhino with her baby, along with herds of giraffe, zebra, and buffalo. Lake Nakuru is famous for its flamingos, and we spent a few minutes walking by the lake, marveling at the enormous flocks of bright pink birds walking in the water and flying around in the background - a truly gorgeous sight! All in all, the trip was an amazing experience and gave me a whole new look into the beautiful, mysterious landscapes that this country holds.

The Rainy Season

As we have now officially entered the "short rainy season" in Limuru, the weather has become odd but perfectly predictable. Every morning I wake up to rain and fog - serious fog, like the kind of fog where you can only see to the street in front of the house and not much further (see picture). This hangs around until about 9:30 in the morning, when it quickly disappears and the sun comes out. We're blessed with sunshine until about 4 or 5 in the afternoon, and then big clouds come in from the horizon. In another hour or so, it starts raining lightly, and by the time it's dark outside, the rain is coming down full force! It usually rains for most of the night, which makes for great sleeping - I love how the sound of rain on the roof drowns out the dogs and donkeys that usually form my night-time entertainment.

Apparently this is the time of year when these rains can be expected, which is good news for Kenya. For the past couple of years the normal climate patterns have been totally out of whack, but maybe this is the start of a return to predictability?

Apart from allowing me to sleep really well, another major side effect of the rain is mud...lots of mud. When most of your roads and paths are made out of dirt, consistent rainfall brings about a quick transformation from dusty dirt roads to deep, deep mud. It's impossible to walk anywhere without getting your shoes caked with the stuff, so I've pretty much to come to accept the fact that getting mud on shoes, cars, and floors is pretty much unavoidable these days. This makes me realize how much of our time in America is spent on man-made surfaces - basically all of it. When it rains in the States you might get a little wet, but you are always walking from tile to wood to pavement to stone to bricks...none of which turn into mud! Sure, its a small difference, but it's cool that I've been here long enough to start noticing the little things that you might not think about on a vacation...

"Swallowship"

People often ask me about what it's like working with so many people from a different culture. Everyone assumes (rightly so) that Kenyans do a lot of things differently than we do in America, and when people hear about the Kenyan mindset on things like organization, efficiency, and planning, they tend to roll their eyes, let out a sigh, or look shocked that I've survived so long in this kind of environment! This usually leads to a conversation about how part of my job has been helping to add some of those things - organization, efficiency, and planning - to CARE for AIDS in Kenya, and it's true that our team has grown a lot in those areas over the past 9 months. While I've been able to teach them a few things from my experience, though, our Kenyan team has showed and taught me a lot of very valuable things as well.

One of the things that our Kenyan Directors do extremely well is maintain a focus on community-building within the group. When I first got here, I was confused by the time in meetings that seemed to have no purpose other than socializing. I had never been in a "work" meeting where everyone sang worship songs at the beginning and end, and I had never heard of stopping for 30 minutes in the middle of a meeting for a "tea break." At first, I thought these were just products of an un-productive Kenyan mindset and that I needed to fix them. It turns out, though, that while some of the "community time" had room to be a little more planned and streamlined, its presence in our group interactions was absolutely vital. I quickly learned that Kenyans place a significant value on personal relationships. If they know and trust you - and feel that you know, trust, and care about them - they are much more willing to go the extra mile in their working responsibilities. Furthermore, if they feel a personal connection with the team in a Saturday meeting, they are likely to focus and strive harder to meet the goals of the team from Monday to Friday. In fact, what I saw as "inefficiency" in the small picture was really bringing about a boost in efficiency in the grander scheme of things.

As the importance of community-building aspects has been stressed again and again, both by our Kenyan staff and our American team, we have been able to find some great ways to build relationships among our team here on the ground. The number of staff in Limuru that attend our meetings every other week is up to 15 people, so we have a great time when we are all together! Just last week, to celebrate Easter, we had a special meeting in which we stayed away from "business" issues and instead focuses on worshiping together, sharing with each other, and listening to an instructive financial seminar that Steve put together. Then we finished with a great lunch of ugali and "nyama choma," roasted beef that is a favorite of both the Kikuyus from this area and me. Kevin likes to refer to this mix of fellowship and eating as "swallowship," and its a community-building strategy that Kenyans will rarely refuse!

It's so fun to be a part of gatherings like this where everyone relaxes and has a good time - sometimes it's easy to forget that the only reason all the members of this group know each other is that they work together. I'm starting to learn that this kind of "working relationship" is probably the best kind that there is!

An Afternoon on the Golf Course

Every once in a while, a day comes along when it's easy to forget that I'm in Kenya, and as much as I love living here, sometimes a break from the norm is quite welcome! Yesterday was one of those days when I felt like I'd left the country behind and entered a whole different world...

The parents of one of my good friends, Joe Heritage, are visiting Kenya for a couple of weeks, and yesterday his dad Kirby took Adrian, Joe, and I out for an afternoon at the Limuru Country Club. We pulled into the parking lot, just a few minutes away from my house, and were immediately struck with the collection of Range Rovers and Mercedes packing the place - I have no idea where those people are coming from around here, but apparently there are much more rich people in the area than I thought! We signed in at the clubhouse and picked up four caddies for 9 holes of golf. If you know me at all, you probably know that I wouldn't consider myself a "golfer." In fact, I haven't played golf in at least 11 years, so I was a little bit nervous as we stepped up to the first teebox. Thankfully, Joe isn't a great golfer either, and my googling of "basic golf swing" caught me up on the fundamentals. We played "best ball," so Joe and I both took each shot and then picked the best one of the two for our next shot - in this way we made it through most of the holes with a pretty respectable score. On the fifth hole I even connected with a solid drive - wow, what a feeling! Even more than the excitement that came from hitting the rare, somewhat good shot, I absolutely loved the golf experience - it was a beautiful, sunny, 75-degree day, and walking around on the grass, laughing with friends and hilarious Kenyan caddies, and soaking up an opportunity to relax all made for an excellent afternoon. At the end of the round, Joe and I were pretty proud of our performance...we were only a few strokes behind Adrian and Kirby, and we'd even pulled out a single-bogey on one par 3 - success!

After the sun went down over the golf course in a beautiful African sunset, we picked up Carmen and Joe's mom Rita for dinner at the Kentmere club. Kentmere is an British club from the colonialist days in Kenya, and you truly feel like you've entered an old-World British hunting lodge, complete with dark, wood paneling and stone fireplaces, when you step inside. It's really the only "nice" place to eat close to Limuru, and we enjoyed a leisurely dinner with great food and lots of laughs.

I got home last night thanking God for such a relaxing, wonderful afternoon and evening. I never expected when I arrived here that I would end up spending a Friday afternoon playing golf, and when the opportunity arose, I was really worried that I wouldn't enjoy it at all, but life is full of surprises! Maybe someday golf will turn into a "hobby" for me, but for now I'll take the rare afternoon on the links and savor it for all its worth!

Prayer Requests for April

Now that the craziness of visitors, holidays, and adventures around Africa has died down, I wanted to share a few things that I would love all of you to be praying for...

First - I realized today that I only have a month left in Kenya before returning to the States for a while over the summer - it seems like time is flying by! I would really appreciate your prayers that I would be intentional with my time here over the next month. Right now I have a huge list of "big picture" things to be working on, and I need some wisdom and discernment to figure out the best way to accomplish those things, along with the random other issues that come up on a daily basis. Also, I would love prayers for God to begin opening doors in America for the summer, as I will be fundraising again to support my return to Kenya in July.

Second - we have several centers that are currently in, or will be soon starting, the process of recruiting groups of clients. This is a difficult, time-consuming, and sometimes frustrating job for our center workers, so please pray for Joseph and Margaret at Banana Hill and John and Sarah at Gachie as they search for good candidates for the CFA program. Pray for energy and persistence, as well as for guidance in finding the people who are really desperate for help. Pray that God would open doors and give them supernatural access to people who might be hiding because of stigma, and pray that they would meet each person with open arms and the love of Christ.

Third - please pray for Justin and everyone else who is helping with fundraising and marketing efforts in the US. CARE for AIDS is working on a few new strategies for advertising and recruiting donors, and we really need the provision of God to help us reach out to new networks of people and relay to them what is going on in Kenya. Please pray that God would bring people with open hearts into contact with the vision of CFA, and pray that He would provide the funding that we need to open new centers in the coming months.

Thank you so much for your continued prayers! It brings me so much peace and joy to know that friends and family back in the US are praying for me, the rest of our staff in Kenya, and everyone involved with CARE for AIDS. I believe that God has huge things in store for this ministry in the coming months and years, and I count it an incredible blessing to get to be a part of it!

Easter in Community

He is risen!

Easter Sunday looked very different for me this year than it has in the past, but it was full of incredible blessing nonetheless. Driving home last night, I was struck by not only the incomprehensible act of grace that Easter represents, but also by the beautiful gift of Christian community that has its roots in the death and resurrection of Christ. Yesterday I experienced this community in two vastly different ways, but each one showed evidence of a love that exists as a reflection of the love of Jesus.

I started my Easter Sunday by going with Joe and Duncan to Jikaze, a community about 30 minutes away in the Great Rift Valley. Over the past eight months, I have had the privilege of getting to know the people of Jikaze and have been welcomed into their lives in a humbling way. This community of about 800 people came together when the disputed presidential election of 2007 sent about 600,000 Kenyans away from their homes. Most of the people in Jikaze left their homes in Western Kenya for fear of violence, and the government provided them with this plot of land in the Great Rift Valley to form a new settlement. The people have almost nothing, but they hosted a special Easter church service yesterday to dedicate a piece of land where they will soon build an interdenominational community church. Joe, Duncan, and I were invited as honored guests and friends because of some work that we have been able to do to help the people establish themselves, and we were given an experience that really touched our hearts.

The church leaders at Jikaze had prepared an amazing service to celebrate Easter. Several teams of children performed songs and dances, and a couple different choirs sang special songs under a big tent set up in a field. Joe, Duncan, and I were each given the chance to encourage the whole community, and it was incredibly humbling to speak in front of the group. They truly seemed to soak up every word we said, and even though I didn't feel as if I really said anything of meaning, we were rewarded with rousing applause and intense appreciation. There was so much joy in that service from everyone involved, and it was easy to see the pride on each person's face as they continue to grow and develop as a town and as a community.

Later in the afternoon, I went over to a friend's house for a big Easter dinner. It was a pot-luck meal of sorts, so everyone provided a different dish for our amazing feast. I contributed some cornbread and chocolate-chip cookie mix (thanks mom!), and we all spent several hours between the kitchen and the ping-pong table, cooking together and laughing a lot. I'm so thankful for this kind of personal, encouraging community - we had ten people together last night of all ages from all backgrounds, but we are each here trying to work for the kingdom of God in our own small ways. I left the house last night feeling loved, encouraged, and most of all joyful, praising God for friendships and for fellowship founded in a celebration of His Son!

Both of these experiences yesterday showed me the amazing capacity that the gospel has for bringing people together. Sometimes God brings me community with struggling Kenyan families through a raspy PA system and Swahili songs, and other times God gives me community with fellow Americans over a ping-pong table, but in every case His presence is felt. I'm so thankful that God didn't call me to live as a believer in solitude, but that He called us to live together, to work together, to encourage each other, to learn from each other, to worship alongside each other, to share with each other, and to grow closer to Him - together.

Moments that "stick"

Throughout life there are certain moments that seem to stick in our minds - moments when the world becomes crystal-clear and everything just seems to line up perfectly, moments when the truth of God's presence is utterly unavoidable. I've found that these kinds of moments happen more often here than at any other point or place in my life, or maybe it's just that I'm growing to appreciate and realize more often when God is offering them. One such moment took place a couple of days ago...

Just down the road from my house is an international conference center for Baptist missionaries called Brackenhurst. Its beautifully manicured grounds, internet access, and good food combine to make "Bracken" an oasis of tranquility and comfort in the midst of the African craziness that surrounds me most of the time. One of my favorite things about Bracken is that it is surrounded by tea fields and dirt paths, creating a perfect spot to go running, away from the crowds of people and curious kids that line the main roads. Tea fields are one of the most beautiful man-made landscapes I've ever seen - picture a huge, mottled carpet, with colors ranging from a dark evergreen to a bright, almost neon green. The fields are cut in regular intervals by thin dirt paths, and the armies of people picking the new leaves keep the top of the solid mass of bushes at a constant level.

On thursday, I was running on of these dirt paths through the tea fields under a brilliant African sun, which made the green of the bushes greener, the blue of the sky bluer, and the rich brown of the dirt browner. I could see dark clouds moving in from behind me, though, and before too long a light, misty rain started to fall. The sun and the rain combined to throw the complete arc of a stunning rainbow over the fields, seemingly only a few hundred yards away from me. My mind took a picture that will stick with me forever - looking down the rolling hills of tea bushes, under the arching rainbow, on to the blue sky dotted with white clouds. I felt like God was smiling down on me, telling me that He is there, because truly nothing else could be responsible for something so beautiful!

The Land of a Thousand Hills

Last week after the CFA vision trip left, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Rwanda with my parents and Justin, Lindsay, and Mark Miller. It truly was one of the most beautiful and intriguing places that I have ever been, so I'll try to give you a glimpse of what some of the four-day trip was like...

We started off in true African style, boarding an airplane for a "direct" flight to Kigali, but landing in Bujumbura instead. At first we couldn't figure out what country we were in (turned out to be Burundi), but luckily the plane continued on to Rwanda after a short visit on the Bujumbura runway. After clearing customs we were met by our amazing driver and guide, Jared. One thing I quickly learned about Rwanda is that the standard of English is far below that of Kenya, and Jared provided us with never-ending amusement as he occasionally misunderstood our questions and responded with hilariously un-related answers. They were always accompanied by a giant smile, though, so we spent a lot of time laughing together!

After driving about 3 hours northwest of Kigali and spending the night in a little African guesthouse, we showed up early the next morning at the Ranger Headquarters for Parc Nacional de Volcans. Our goal for the day was to hike into the jungle and find the elusive, endangered Mountain Gorillas, and we soon sweet-talked our way into being assigned to the best gorilla family with the best ranger/guides! As the sun rose and we drove a few minutes to the start of our hike, we were all in awe of the 5 massive volcanoes that surrounded the area - Rwanda is called "The Land of a Thousand Hills," and it certainly felt like we were right in the middle of them. Before long we were hiking up one of those volcanoes through terraced fields, passing Rwandan women carrying out back-breaking labor with wooden hoes while their little children looked at us curiously. I'm sure we made an interesting sight in this remote place - a group of white people with backpacks following a ranger, a "tracker" with an AK-47, and a guide. After an hour or so, we crossed a thick stone wall and moved into another world - from the sunny, plowed hillsides, we entered the dark, dense jungle of the National Park.

Now, I've done a lot of hiking, but this hike was intense! The trackers in front of us cut a trail through the thick bushes, trees, and bamboo with machetes, and we pushed through the choking brush and stinging nettles to follow them. After another 1 1/2 hours or so, we rounded a bend and found ourselves face-to-face with our first gorilla. WOW. The next hour was absolutely unbelievable...we watched from mere feet away as young gorillas ran and tumbled all around. The little ones climbed and swung on vines above our heads, and the females lazed around, eating celery and bamboo. The highlight for me, though, were the two Silverback gorillas that led this family. A male mountain gorilla becomes a "silverback" at about 16 years of age, and they were clearly the dominant members of the family. We watched in awe as each silverback relaxed in the grass, babies and young gorillas climbing all over them. Justin and I held our breath as we knelt down for a picture and one of the giant males ran directly behind us, grunting and growling less than 10 feet away! The whole group was amazingly entertaining and active, peering at us curiously, beating their chests, and eating constantly.

After about an hour with the gorillas we had to hike back down, but I was left with a memory that I will never forget. There are only a little over 700 mountain gorillas left in the world, and I consider myself extremely blessed to be one of the few people in the world who has had an encounter like this with such amazing animals. Their facial expressions and movements are eerily "human" sometimes, and it's hard not to be captivated when a giant Silverback stares straight into your eyes! Praise God for His incredible creation and the chance to see little, but incredible, pieces of it...

"Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom."
Isaiah 40:28