How do I serve?

Milka and I sat on the small stone wall talking after Bible club.  She had used a word I was unfamiliar with.  What does “tumikia mean?” I asked.  She said it meant to be “used up.”  You mean like using the sugar or the rice up completely?  No, she said, “It a word that means “service” or “to serve.”  

What a great picture.  I just kept thinking about that definition for the rest of the afternoon.  I had pictured an empty rice bucket or sugar container, every bit of it gone.   But the meaning was so much deeper—to be used up, spent—what a perfect way to explain service. 

It’s easy, isn’t it, to want to give some of us.  To be generous to an extent:  not just with resources—more often with our time and energy.  We want to pour our lives out, but not when it costs us too much or takes away from the things we really want to do.  Honestly, we sometimes think of giving up precious time as taking up our cross.  Seriously?  The instrument of death?  We think dying to ourselves looks like not yelling at the neighbor kids (or our own kids!)?  Surely, by God’s grace, we can do better than that!  “Whoever wants to be my disciple must take up his cross and follow me.”  Take up our cross, lay down our dreams and desires and hopes, and be free to carry the “light” and “easy” burden that Jesus offers in return.  Anything I could offer him would pale in comparison.

The church voices singing this simple chorus on Sunday stay with us:

“We’re leaving the sin of the world, we’re following Jesus our liberator/redeemer.”

“Oh, make our little lives count.

For the glory of your name.

Rivet our attention on Your cross,

And fuse our affection to yourself.

So open our mouths

And open our hands

And open our wallets

While we have breath

And make us the most radically

Loving people on earth

For the joy of all peoples

And the renown of your Name.”

--John Piper

Psalm 139 in pictures

For you created my inmost being; 

Bianca

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Aika

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; 

Aika

your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Michael

My frame was not hidden from you 

Helena

when I was made in the secret place.

Pili, Helena, Aika

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 

Sammy

your eyes saw my unformed body.  

Sammy and Jonathan

All the days ordained for me 

were written in your book before one of them came to be.   

Welcome, Sammy!  

We can't imagine any little person we would want around here more than you!

Dave of all trades

Life rolls on out here in the bush.  It has been refreshing to be back in a good routine of school and work, in particular. 

Dave was nominated to be the “mlezi of the choir” last Sunday, much to his surprise.  We usually tend to tune out during announcements, which can be lengthy at times.  So when he heard “Daudi” (David, in Swahili), it made him sit up and pay attention, only to find out that they really were talking about him.  There was much vigelegele (women doing that high-pitch yelling thing) and rejoicing, now to his great dismay.  Since we have only been to that church several times, we were a little wary about what being the mlezi really involved.

When we got back to the house later, we found out what Dave learned after the service.  Looking up mlezi in the Swahili dictionary, we were informed on the various meanings:  tonsillitis, or swollen neck glands (not anything to vigelegele about, really), a baby’s swinging cot (unlikely), or a guardian, or custodian.  Ahhhh, it was all becoming clear.  As the choir master had patiently elaborated with Dave, he was in charge of fixing any broken instruments, and general “sponsorship” of the choir.  This was particularly funny, as there is only one instrument: a very sturdy drum.  Not easily broken, but if in fact it does break, Dave will be first to be notified.  Time to update the resume. :)

Teen Week and Cultural Clues

 Our youth camp ended last weekend.  We weren’t the only ones with jet lag!  All of our staff was exhausted after a week with 40 teenagers.  Never having done this before, it was a tremendous success after much work and preparation by the staff.  These 40 youth are Mavuno children who have been placed in off-campus Christian homes, and their siblings from that home.  It was a unique chance to teach and disciple these children, and the speakers and all those involved did a tremendous job.

Game time in the morning

Their days started off early with “Body Exercises,” then chai and the first meeting of the day.  Our speakers shared on salvation, creation, AIDS, abortion, sexual purity, and peer pressure.  

conference hall

One of the counselors spoke on different youth in the Bible.  The teens seemed very receptive, reinforced by their testimonies at the end of the week.  Many of them feel alone in their faith back in their respective homes. 

Elliot, Seth and Shaina color with the Mbugua kids

Jen and Charlie 

Our team from Cardwell, along with the Manns and Elliot Heumier brought supplies for crafts, and prepared all the games for the week.  John and Malucha prepared the schedule and kept everyone on time.  Things ran so smoothly!  One of the teams won because three of their members memorized at least 40 verses that week. 

Not your typical dentist office backdrop.  Dr. Ian checks people out on our back porch. :)

I took a big group (18) in the Land Cruiser out to the main road (my only contribution to camp, mind you!) and they sang the WHOLE way.  I was ready to keep driving to Cairo just so I could enjoy it!  Please pray that the things they learned last week would stay with them and they would be encouraged in the Lord!

On a different note, two days ago two of the mamas from the village that I have gotten to know came to visit and brought two fresh tilapia for me.  I was SO blessed.  They had their buckets, on the way to the lake to get water, and they acted like it was no big deal.  It was a big deal to me!  They are very poor, they work extremely hard, and fish is more expensive than ever.  How humbling to receive their gift.  I was also thinking (quite honestly), how am I going to gut and de-scale these before dinner (which was an hour away).  I am not amazing with fish.  But, oh happy day, they had already prepared them for me.  No doubt they knew I was a clueless white girl I had other things to do at the moment.  As I finished what I was doing, I had plenty of time to consider how often in my life (if ever), I have given out of my poverty and not from my wealth.  I have so much to learn.

Fish, Tanzanian style, eyeballs intact.  Don't worry, you get used to them looking at you.

Hannah makes dessert to go with the fish.  "I don't like pictures of me cooking," says the domestic goddess.  Making a sword, skinning a snake, climbing huge rocks, holding lizards, yes, but cooking is not in the amazing category. :)

Yesterday, Dave and I went to visit an elderly couple that we know who live close by.  It turned out to be a very cultural experience, and you might want to preview this before reading to your children, if you are more of a private kind of family. J  We walked across the parched land, thirsty for rain after a very pathetic rainy season.  Mr. Misungui and his grandchildren were out digging sweet potatoes in their field.  I wondered aloud to Dave if he was thinking, “Great, here come visitors and I have all this work to do before the sun sets,” which made us both laugh because these people are so hospitable and kind, I’m sure it was the last thing on his mind.  “KARIBU!” he yelled, as he threw out hasty instructions to the two little children to finish digging.  He led us past the “shower,” a little squared-off area surrounded by tall grasses all fixed together.  We greeted the mama (his wife), and they pulled up two small “chairs” for us to sit on.  They were so excited that we had come to visit.  That was humbling.  Mama Misungui has had some kind of problem with her legs for a long time, and now her arm is very painful as well.  She was happy to see us, though, and we sat down outside with the two of them, their little radio talking away right next to her chair. 

We found out that they had twin grandchildren now (one was on the sister’s back).  Come to find out, Mr. M had delivered them himself, as a health officer.  Right there in the mud hut.  The first one was breech, and they didn’t know there were two until the second came.  They laughed when we asked if there had been problems.  “No problem!” 

We chatted for a while, and then Mr. M told us that he has been teaching in the village about health issues.  He went into his hut and pulled out his bag with flip-chart books that he taught from.  Put out by UNICEF, USAID, and several others, they were very comprehensive about a number of family health matters.   Then he proceeded to walk through these booklets with us: how to properly nurse a baby (which he also demonstrated on himself—“This is the way you hold the breast up, not just letting it hang down.”) and “Can you guess which picture is the right way for a baby to latch on?”  And he was pleased when we could.  “Now see, this is the woman nursing and here is the family around her, watching, smiling.”  Then the pictures of how to scoop up a child’s diarrhea from the floor with a shovel and take it to the outhouse, not just leave it there.  After that it was how to care for a pregnant woman.  “Don’t just let her go to the clinic on her own, her husband should take her, or put her on a

Bicycle.

Which, even in the picture, didn’t look very comfortable.  But was culturally appropriate.

"Don’t go to the bathroom right next to the outhouse, go IN the outhouse." This has always perplexed me, so I asked why, indeed, the man would go outside instead of just going in.  He said, “Oh, it’s work to go in!”  And then a picture of a woman squatting in the bushes with the moon above her.  “Don’t go in the bush, go in the outhouse!”  He obviously could attest to the helpfulness of these hints.  He himself had a brick outhouse that had “Choo Bora” painted on the outside:  "Good outhouse."

Here comes another one of those humbling parts.  He said, after talking, that it is their custom to at least have chai or some food for their guests, that it was bad to have us come and not have food ready.  I said that it wasn’t bad in America, and that we would come another time for chai.  Then we prayed for mama’s hand, and as we got up to leave, the two bitty ones who had been digging for their dinner, brought the sweet potatoes to Grandma and she put more than half of them in a bag

For us

Who have enough food every day

And have never been hungry in our lives

And haven’t ever dug for anything to eat

And hadn’t done anything for them, except visit

And that was humbling.

“Let us pray Him, therefore, to shed abroad in us the mind that was in Christ; that we may offer up ourselves to be disposed of as He sees best, whether for joy or sorrow; to be slighted, or esteemed; to have many friends, or to dwell in a lonely home; to be passed by, or called to serve Him and His kingdom in our own land, or among people of a strange tongue; to be, to go, to do, to suffer even as He wills, even as He ordains, even as Christ endured, ‘who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God.’”   --Henry Edward Manning

Things we saw on the way home

Traveling home from Kenya brought back all the realities of life in Africa.  It is good to get away and appreciate the uniqueness of this place again.  I thought I would share some of the sights with you on the 12-hour trek home.

We started out with Chris, Lindy and Ezra Thompson. 

 

Leaving early the next morning, we headed down the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley.  I always love seeing it in the early morning.  

It's hard to tell from the picture, but people have set up shop on the very edge of the road, then literally propped up their shops with long poles, so that with one slip of the foot, a customer could easily tumble over the huge cliff.  Not a happy thought.  And the bathroom that is perched above the drop-off is less than tempting!

Past the tea fields in Kenya

And numerous people carrying tea from the fields to the trucks with large hanging tea baskets

Banana pickup point

Matatus (public transport), with the man who takes the money hanging out the door.  This is how they get more customers and dangle out of the permanently-open van door.

I took this of the men fixing the truck, but I like the propped up pole even better.

Women collecting water in their plastic jugs from the well

Carrying water around to sell

Magic Obama Pops.  Who could ask for more?  It is almost as popular as Obama gum.

Most vehicles like to print sayings of one kind or another.  This truck, "No pain, no gain."  I don't like driving towards a truck driver who has this kind of mission statement. 

Things for sale on the side of the road

A gas station, a broken-down truck, a random cow

Furniture store, mosque

Walking Wal-mart:  who needs a store when the store comes to your window?

 Grass for cows, walking down the road

 Furniture shop called, "Fly Emirates workshop"

Ready to get home!

Soap stone sellers

Trucks with sugar cane on board, and beautiful, paved roads!

Moving house on public transport

Back to the land of Coke and Pepsi buildings in abundance

Huts on the edge of the Serengeti, 2 hours from home

A little shnooze

Musa, overjoyed at finally being home

On to Mavuno, 7 km from Musa's.  A tomato seller on the road

Tomatoes weren't all that was on the road!

Happy reunions

And YOUTH CAMP!  40 teens for the week

Youth camp was a huge success, no thanks to us!  We arrived in the middle of the week and it was a great way to start our time back.  Waking up to 40 children singing at the top of their lungs was amazing.  A team from Cardwell, MT and Jen and Charlie Mann were also here to welcome us, along with billions of lake flies that have been buzzing into the house every night. :)  Praise God, we're back!  Will post more later about youth camp.

Up, up, and away

When Musa was asked this morning if he was excited about going back, he said, "YES!  Goodbye, America!"  Which suprised me, as he spent some money yesterday buying an American flag.  He has had such a good time here, but he is ready to go home.

After commenting about how we haven't been on a plane in ages, Lauren said to Grandpa, "I'm so happy to be going on a plane, Grandpa, but I don't want to leave you."  So we are caught between being ready to head back, and being sad over all the continual goodbyes.

We head out tonight, and Dave just went and bought another suitcase (not a good sign :).  We have had a busy, fun couple of weeks with family--what a gift!

A HUGE thank-you to Paul for driving our van back to Montana.  How many people do you know who will drive from South Carolina to Montana just for "fun"?

Thank you, each one of you, for your encouragement and love.

Thank you, David Helsby, for 16 years (yesterday) of adventure!  I love you.

Pray that we will go out as salt and light back to Africa!

Family Ties

We have had some incredible times with friends in the last couple of weeks.  It has been so refreshing to catch up on old relationships and meet new ones, as well.  We are so thankful now to have some time with our families!  In the past couple weeks we have seen both of our grandmas (one is 88, one will be 90 soon!),  had a very sweet time with Dave's mom, his dad, and now we have a big reunion on my side with all the siblings and my folks.  Two of my siblings live in Taiwan with their families, so it is no small task getting everyone back here at the same time!  We will be here in South Carolina for another week and a half before we head back to Tanzania.  The cousins are having the grandest of times!