Lunch at Tamambo Restaurant — Karen Blixen Tea Garden and Museum in Karen, Kenya.

I sometimes think the most profound thoughts.  But I can’t really take the credit for them; they are the thoughts of my Father’s heart that He shares with me.  God will show me the most amazing things, and though I journal about them, I often forget to share them with others.  Who knows?  Perhaps God tells me things so I can tell others.  I’ve been thinking a lot about doing more writing.  I love reading words, writing them, and thinking of them.  I guess that’s why I began to journal.  I feel so close to my heavenly Father when I am writing.  Often as I write in my journal, it is as though the words flow directly from His heart to mine, then right off the tip of my pen.  I can’t always remember what I write and tend to find myself astounded when I go back to read through my entries again.  I sometimes wonder, “Did I really write that?”  But that is because the power and the wisdom aren’t mine; I just captured a piece of them on a page while I was soaking in my Father’s presence.  I love to hear the beautiful thoughts of my Father.

A thought occurred to me while I was home alone, twirling around with lifted arms, singing worship songs: if I can dance and sing for my King when I am alone, how much more should I do it before others?  I am not talking about putting on a show for others; I am talking about showing One just how much we love Him and how serious we are about our worship.  Have you ever felt like you wanted to sing loudly, even if your voice isn’t particularly lovely, or like you wanted to fling your arms high during worship?  I have, but I must admit that sometimes I did not do it.  Why?  I was afraid – afraid of what others might think of me, afraid of what they might say.  In the words of James, “Brothers and sisters, this should not be!”  When we don’t worship our King with abandon, it begs the question, “Who are we worshipping for?”  Worship is about you and Him, not about those around you, be they friends, family, peers, elders, or even enemies.  It is a tempting trap: worship with your entire being and perhaps be misunderstood, or hold back and look like everyone else.  It is tough to ignore that desire to be understood and liked, but it shouldn’t be.  After all, it is about honoring the King of all creation, the One who was, is, and is to come.  We should realize that worshipping Him is both our privilege and our delight.

Honestly, I think it is insulting to offer God lukewarm worship as our “sacrifice of praise” (Heb. 13:15).  It’s not that we all need to jump and screech and act like a bunch of scary lunatics; it is really, simply this: we need to open our hearts and allow ourselves to be swept away as we worship.  When I feel God’s presence really strongly – as often happens to me during worship – my whole body begins to tremble, and I can’t control it.  He totally overwhelms me, and I never want that to change.  I would rather be called “strange” for being wildly in love with my King than be called “normal” for acting like everyone else around me.

Chad leading the weekly Bible lesson at Shangilia Children’s Home & School.

“How are YOU, Mzungu?”  That is the most popular line used by small children here when they see our family.  It is hilarious to me when kids ask to “feel” my hair or my skin; and it is – quite apparently – hilarious to them as well.  At church one week, one little lad reached out and gave me a swift poke in the arm and then, a huge grin lighting his face, yanked his hand back.  He then proceeded to have a giggle-filled conversation about it with his buddies (I only knew they were talking about me because I kept hearing, “mzungu”).  All the girls want to know where I got my hair (wigs are very popular here, and a blond wig would be quite a novel find) and then stare at me with disbelief me when I tell them that it is real.

Kids (and little old ladies) love to touch Sam’s hair as well – nothing like innocently sitting in a church service and having your hair rubbed every which way!  People like to hear us talk because our accents are so very “exotic.”  We have even been asked by curious children if we are “white underneath our clothes too”!  For quite a few of the children (especially in rural areas or the slums), we are the first “white people” that they have ever seen.

Dancing with the Shangilia kids!

Me and my brother, Samuel, at an outdoor restaurant along A109.

It occurred to me that we should write more about what we do here in Kenya and what life as a missionary family is like.  For us, the things we do are simply our life.  It isn’t that we don’t see funny things, or even that we don’t take pleasure in doing things, it is just that it is so normal that we don’t always take time to write about it.  I forget sometimes that other people don’t see our life as “normal,” so here I am going to try to explain what our life is really like.

Speaking for myself, it isn’t always easy being a missionary kid, but it is my life, and I wouldn’t trade it.  On average, though my eleventh grade work keeps me plenty busy, I spend over ten hours a week doing laundry (I don’t do all of it either – Mom spends at least another ten doing it as well), plus I do all our cooking and baking (another, say, 15-20 hours a week?), and it’s not like we don’t clean our house!  Taking care of my baby sis and our dogs and doing other assorted (and sometimes strange) tasks, and having a little “family time” before going to bed generally takes up the remainder of my time during “at home” days.

Visiting with other girls during a food distribution in Magadi.

Now, that said, here are the things we do when we aren’t at home.  We are usually at a different church each Sunday and often have to drive for hours to get to them.  (Last week we were literally driving through a river, but that’s another story.)  Services, particularly in the rural churches, are an all-day affair.  We tend to get home about twenty minutes prior to the time I get picked up for (or walk to) my Sunday-evening youth group, which begins at 5:30 p.m.  (Yeah, it makes for a long day, and I am the “snack-bringer” for my youth group, so I do my baking the day before.)  Mom, Sam, or I are typically each out at least once during the week, and we trade back-and-forth of who goes for what outreaches depending on how much room there is in the car on any given day.

We do a variety of projects, most of them with Christian Mission Aid, the NGO we are working with.  These “projects” include things like food distributions, pastoral and children’s ministry trainings, clothing distributions, sports days for children in the slums, and building projects (one of the latest was a library for the children in the Kuwinda slum).  Besides doing projects and activities for kids, we spend a lot of time building relationships.  We get to hang out and talk with the girls at the Girls’ Rescue Center in Maasailand, and we get to sing songs and do Bible lessons with the kids at Shangilia Children’s Home and Kibagare School.  It makes for a full and happy life.

Putting my handprint on the completed library in Kuwinda slum.

Last September Kathleen Trock and Sue DeKoekkoek stayed in our home, and in October the Hamlets stayed with us.  In January, my Grandma Patty visited us for a whole month, then my Grandpa Gary & Grandma Debbie came to stay in March/April.  Tomorrow we have Apostle Ed & Gretchen Kurdziel (pastors at Pure Heart Church in Ada, Michigan) staying with us for two weeks.  Those are only the people who have actually stayed in our home; we have people from Christian Mission Aid teams come to eat with us, and I often bake muffins as a welcome gift as soon as they get off the airplane.  We  keep really busy with the various ministry teams and visitors that come to work with CMA.  A few weeks ago, a team of nineteen from Fellowship Baptist Church in Collingwood, Canada was with us and I got to spend time with them.  I love to open up our home to guests and show them some good, old-fashioned hospitality.  So you see, this for us is simply life, and we love it.  This is our “normal.”

Diapers drying on the porch on an overcast day.

Me and Aviya at a food distribution in Kajiado.

I’m sure we have all read Philippians 4:13; you know, “I can do all things though him who gives me strength.” I personally, however, never really stopped to fully “get it” in context. The two verses prior to it give it a far deeper meaning: “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” (Philippians 4:11-12)

In my not-so-long life, I have lived in three countries. I have lived in a $10 million-dollar house on the Indian Ocean and in a converted two-car garage. I have lived in the suburbs of Grandville, Michigan, and on a banana farm in the middle-of-nowhere, South Africa. I now live in a third floor apartment in Nairobi, Kenya. If I have learned one thing during my time in Africa, it is how to be content wherever I’m at. I can’t truthfully say that I have always been happy. I’ve seen sad things and been in hard situations. My joy, however, is different; I have decided that I won’t let anybody, or anything, take it from me. My God is wonderful and amazing, and I have learned how to be satisfied by Him, living continually in His presence.

For years the cry of my heart has been a line from a Tenth Avenue North song: “Satisfy me Lord; I’m begging you, help me see, you’re all I want, all I need. Satisfy me, Lord.” I’m coming to the realization that He has satisfied me; He has become my heart’s cry, my greatest desire, my burning passion. Now, because of that, I am content; my joy no longer rests on circumstances or things. I, like Paul, have learned and embraced the secret to an amazingly full and joy-filled life. What is the secret? “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13) He gives me His strength, and with it, I can do all things because He is my satisfaction and my source.

My Kenyan rose makes it first bloom.

Crossing running water on the road to Magadi.

Sundays out in Maasailand are always a wonderful adventure, though I must say that one Sunday was particularly adventuresome.  First of all, it was the longest one-hour drive I have ever been on in my entire life. (It took two hours and forty minutes.)  Secondly, we weren’t just going it alone – we had our family plus Jacob Auma from CMA and a nineteen-member mission team from Canada.  Finally, it is the rainy season, which means that the pothole-filled dirt roads have turned into veritable mud-slides, or, in this case, rivers.  (At the point we found this out, I was congratulating myself for choosing to ride in one of the tour buses with the team instead of the small sedan with my family.)  Perhaps most people would have turned around, but not us.  After all, it’s just another adventure, right?

Oh, what a ride it was! We crossed all those rivers and drove through “puddles” big enough to be ponds, until we finally got to Magadi. The location where we were having a church service: a large, leafy old tree in the middle of nowhere. There was a small church building, but there were far too many people to hold a service in it! Together we worshipped, prayed, and listened to a sermon beneath the big tree that shaded us from the blazing sun. Afterwards we distributed care packages of food.

Out so far into Maasailand, groceries are exceedingly difficult to come by, and, though the rainy season had begun, there had not yet been enough time after the drought for the crops to grow back. Seeing the thankful, excited faces of so many people, old and young alike, made for a lovely last memory to take with us as we began our long drive home.

Upon further investigation, I found out that we were almost at the Tanzania border. Here is a link that shows some interesting facts about Magadi and its “soda lake.”   http://www.webkenya.com/eng/safari/magadi.php

Silence is a beautiful thing.  It is in the silence that I can best hear God speak to me.  I awake early in the morning simply to enjoy a time of soaking in His presence as the sun rises and the birds begin to sing their cheery tunes.  But such idyllic times of quiet are generally not long-lasting.  They are swept away in the busyness of everyday, sometimes completely lost or forgotten.  As much as I love my “quiet time” with God in the morning, I am learning something new: how to carry the silence.  I am learning that I can take that quiet place of listening with me throughout the day.  It is all about allowing His presence to overwhelm your life to the point where your spirit is always sensitive to His God-whispers, about allowing His silence to totally and completely invade your life.  When you do this, circumstances no longer matter; you no longer need to be in a particular place (be it location or circumstance) for God to speak to you because you realize that He is always speaking and you can be always listening, wherever you go and whatever you do.

“I want to be a mirror that reflects all that You are to those around me; 

I want to carry Your tantalizing presence everywhere that I go.”

That is the cry of my heart.  If I carry His peace and His quiet, awe-inspiring glory with me wherever I go, people can’t help but see it.  I want to be a carrier of the silence.  How about you?

The beautiful Ngong Hills. Southwest of Nairobi. An hour’s drive from our apartment in the city

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?’  And I said, ‘Here am I.  Send me!’”

These words from Isaiah 6 never fail to grab my attention.  When I read them, something inside me stirs.  That is the kind of girl I want to be – the girl who steps forward and boldly shouts, “Here I am! Use me, Daddy!”  In Genesis 3 we read how the Lord was searching for Adam and Eve in the garden.  When He called to them, saying “Where are you,” Adam replied, “I heard you…[but] I was afraid…so I hid.” That is not the kind of response I want to give when my Lord calls!  Like Samuel (Bible Samuel, not my brother Samuel), I want to be ready to jump up and come running when my Teacher calls. The first three times the Lord called to Samuel, he didn’t recognize whose voice it was; he ran and presented himself to Eli, saying, “Here I am; you called me.” (1 Sam. 3:4)  But the fourth time he was prepared.  This time when the Lord called, he replied, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” (1 Sam. 3:10)

When God calls to me, I want to answer like Moses: “Here I am.” (Ex. 3:4)  It is time for us, as sons and daughters, to pursue our Father’s heart with passion and be prepared to step up and step out.  I am ready to be done hiding; I want something big, something beautiful.  But you see, in order to come out of my hiding place, out of my comfort zone, I have to learn to walk in unrelenting obedience and listen for the God-whispers.  That is what God is teaching me.  It really is sad to miss out on something amazing because of a lack of obedience.  Our job is to be willing to obey and be used for His glory.  We must listen for God’s direction and then run with it; the end results are His prerogative, not ours.  I am ready to learn how to live a life of unrelenting obedience; I am ready to shine.  These lines from a Newsboys song come to mind:

When we walk in His footsteps,

 It’s a brighter day;

When we follow His word,

He lights the way;

When we lift up His banner and raise it high,

We light up the sky.

Navigating Kuwinda slum

The rainy season doesn’t stop us – we’re out doing neat things all the time.  I got to go with my dad, a team from Brookhouse School and international students from Roun Square to help put up a resource center, or library, as I would call it, in the Kuwinda slum.  In the two square acres that make up this slum, there are about four thousand people (2 sq. acres + 4000 people = very crowded).  Every time we go out to Kuwinda, we literally find ourselves in a sea of people, mainly children.

On that particular day, though, there were more children than usual.  Why?  That’s an easy one: not only were we exciting visitors, we had brought books!  Dozens of books, hundreds of books, small books, big books, picture books, reading books, all for the children to borrow any time they wanted.  It is a larger collection of literature than any of these children had likely ever seen before.  Books are an invaluable commodity, especially here in Kenya where they are so costly to acquire.

The very best part about these books is that they will help create in all who read them a desire to learn about and understand new things, people, and places.  To be a part of giving a child the gift of a thirst for knowledge is a truly beautiful thing, and to be able to show them God’s love while doing so is even more amazing.

Raising the roof!

Giving piggyback rides in Kuwinda