"Journeying Mercies"
This hackneyed phrase is much misused and about to be much maligned.
By me.
“Safe journey!”
I’ve heard it a thousand times, seems like. Slipping easily off the tongues of the faithful.
Let me recount the journeying mercies of late.
I sit here in Heathrow, London, awaiting flight BA214 to my natal city—good ole Beantown.
I should have been there last evening. A Kenyan young man, doing his doctorate in biology (insects and plant symbiosis) agreed (as we queued for the third strip and scan at Heathrow!) with my suspicions that the cancellation of our flight BA88 from Nairobi yesterday morning was likely due to insufficient customers to make the flight profitable.
Gregg Okesson, going for car repair in Nairobi, had dropped me off the airport at 7:45 a.m. I like to be early at airports. Like Gregg, I am the kind of traveler who checks for his ticket and passport every twenty minutes on the hour-plus drive from Scott Theological to Jomo Kenyatta Airport. You never know when essential documents, without which you will rot down to your skeleton in some odd-world airport, may de-materialize.
What to do? Join the queue. No rush, really, as I know from past experience there is no further service to London until nearly mid-night. That’s the flight I usually have taken in past years.
A young man at the window re-books me for the evening flight. He has a neck strap that may not have WWJD on it (although I did find myself in a surprisingly calm spirit after giving the situation to the Lord) but it did have “I’m a British Airways Hero” repeated on its orbit around his neck.
Everyone is getting a shuttle and will stay the day at a hotel in downtown Nairobi. Now what will I do at a hotel for 12 hours? No—I’ll go to the missionary manse that we’ve stayed at so often in the past: Mayfield Guest House. But I want a free lift. No problem. (I suppose I’m saving money for them. Who cares?)
At another counter I’m given vouchers on Jatco Taxi. Going to the other side of the roadway where arrivals catch their rides, I find a shouting match ensuing. Some irate whites (probably Americans) are insisting loudly that they are not paying a shilling more for this abominable service!
“Are you with the group?” an employ asks me. “No, no, no” I reply, “not at awl, no. I’m not with them.” I try to fake a British accent. He looks at my voucher. “You can even stand right hear,” he directs. So as several lovely Akamba guys are trying to sort it all out, I start singing softly. “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.” Maybe this will help re-set the minds of those in the melee as well my own.
Soon he comes to check details of my voucher. It will be a few minutes before Jatco comes since most taxis have already spirited off to the city my erstwhile fellow passengers. “I’m good,” I assure him. “I’m singing What a Friend We Have in Jesus to keep me focused.” He beams. “O that is good!” (All words with double O’s are pronounced here as we do “food.”)
I find that if I relate to service people, whether here on the street or at the check-points in the terminal (and there are quite a few post-9/11) that people will relax, smile, and pass good-natured pleasantries with you as they stamp your documents. I think they expect visitors to yell at them. The ole “spoonful of sugar” idea. But I genuinely like these Wakamba (People of the Kamba tribe native to the greater Nairobi area.)
Which reminds me of an anecdote Gregg told me about Jacob Kibor, head of Scott Theological College. People who know Jacob consider him the rare model of a godly African leader—even though he got degrees in America where many Africans are spoiled beyond renewal.
Seems a team came to Scott from an American church, including some of the church “brass.” Jacob went out to meet the incoming van which was disgorging lots of luggage. The team head waved his hand in a motion to Jacob indicating he should pick up his luggage and take it into the guest house. ”By the way,” he says, “ I need to see the Principal right away.”
“That is OK,” replies Jacob. “You can just go over to that administration building and he will be they-ah and you can even meet him then.”
So Jacob takes the bags in and then proceeds to the administration building and goes up to his office on the second floor. Soon a secretary escorts this guy to the office. When he realizes that sitting behind the big desk is the same flunky he had ordered with a silent gesture to fetch his bags, the team leader was speechless!
That is servant leadership—and it is rare here where degrees and how nice your teeth are give you status above others. And also if you wear glasses. I guess glasses means you do a lot of reading are super smart.
Back to the airport….
So I step into the front seat of the compact taxi car. While the voucher is being recorded I catch the eye of three women standing on the walk waiting for their ride. I smile. She smiles as I comment, “Life is an adventure with God!” “Yah—shoo-wah. Eet Ease,” she replies with a chuckle. These Wakamba are so friendly, and so many of them are Christians. You can make exploratory comments like that here and not be frowned on.
Off we go. Zip—slow. Zip—slow. Speed bumps every 100 yards. As we keep making right turns, I jokingly quip, “We’re taking a second scenic tour of the airport!” Actually he had been radioed to come back. As we pull up, the women are still there, laughing as I shrug and wave my hopeless hands. These folk are used to this sort of thing. “Sheedah” is the word for it—it’s one of the two new Kikamba words I learned this trip. In 100 years I’ll be fluent! It refers to troubles—daily hassles that impede the smooth flow of life here in Kenya.
An elderly couple (no comments, please!) are getting into the cab. They have luggage. I offer to hold my carryon in my lap instead of leaving it in the trunk. One suitcase gets put by the back door, the driver having moved his seat back to jam it so it doesn’t fall on the frail oldies.
The gentleman has a beard and a turban that tells me he is a Sikh. I tell him I go to Dehradun, India each year. We comment on the some of the sites that he has been to in common with me. They have lived in London for many years now.
So it’s a short detour to drop them off. “Journeying mercies….”
After dropping the couple off, the gate opens at Mayfield Guest House and feel like I am on familiar territory.
“Please,” I say to the woman at the register desk, “you can rescue me and take me in for the day?” I explain the cancellation. She puts me on the list for dinner and supper and charges me $11.
Instantly a tall fellow comes into the lobby. It’s Gregg! “I thought I heard a Boston accent out here!” So Gregg (staying overnight here while his Land Cruiser is being relieved of its alarm system that shuts the motor off in a most annoying fashion when you least have time to fool with it) and I spend the day talking theology, sending emails on his wireless computer to let Ellie know I’ll be a day late. we hike around Ngong Road area to shop for his son’s bicycle tubes at the YAYA center—a 5 story mall. Once again, a minus turns into a plus!
Over supper I also meet a neat young couple from Brazil going as missionaries to Morrocco. How get into this Muslim country? They will truthfully say they are studying Arabic there. It’s beautiful how God is using such to go unobtrusively into cultures where you and I would stand out like sore American thumbs. I mention how Chet and Fran Matheson spent years in Brazil at Belem as Wycliffe translators. I learn that Belem is Portuguese for Bethlehem. I tell them a Brad Gill story of when he was a “rug dealer” in Marakesh, Morocco at the time when the USA went after targets in the Near East some years back. God protected them through Muslim friends they had made there who were able to separate individual people from the actions of their government. (Both these missionary families have ties with West Congregational Church.)
So here I am with the laptop at Heathrow. There are hurricane force winds in UK today, with snow in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Flights to Holland are cancelled.
But a New York-bound flight just got off. Hopefully the Boston flight will get out before the brunt of the storm gets to London. The BBC anchors on the morning news are reporting all the weird weather in California today. Governor Schwarzenegger is shown declaring billions lost in citrus damage.
Well—it’s time to check the gate posting. Bye for now….
• * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Hello again!
Here I sit in a Beoing 777, munching tea and apple pie w/custard whilst looking down 7 miles to the billows of the cold North Atlantic. Waiting at Gate 23, I had struck up a conversation with an Asian girl – ah, woman – whose parents live in Pepperell, where she grew up. She had a Harvard sweatshirt on. I asked if she was at that distinguished university founded by Congregationalists to train ministers of the Gospel, now fallen to “other side” pretty much. “Yes,” she replied, “but way back in 1996. Now I am taking a PhD in biology at Stanford.” (Way back in 1996—give me a break!) She said organic chemistry and physics were her favorite subjects! I confessed I needed something much more fuzzy--philosophy. She had taken a course on public health ethics where they had done some Plato and Aristotle. But she never had the benefit of a general philosophy course. And these people call themselves educated.
We walk down the ramp together. It is a lot colder than Kenya. As I put on the sweater Ellie knit for me 20 years ago (really warm, thick wool) she mentions that as a kid winter was her favorite season, what with skating and skiing in New England. But now she has been corrupted by California. Shame, really. So I tell her about the snow and ice in southern Cal yesterday.
At the end of the ramp where we would normally step into a plane, they shunted us down 3 flights of concrete steps, into the drizzle, and onto a shuttle bus. As we pass one after another planes with boarding steps, the lot of us begin to speculate where we were going. More of those journeying mercies? After riding a full 15 minutes we stop at the last plane. Up the steps, bags in hand. Ah! At least it’s a newer 777. And I have a window seat!
As I settle in a young T-shirt asks if he can swap seats with me so he can sit with his girl friend. I decline. But a girl nearby says she’ll swap. As she slips into the seat next, I am relieved. You see, one of my journeying mercies prayers is that I will be spared the tubby Mrs. Hips who tips the scales at about 275, spilling over into adjacent seats right and left. I had seen that on my other flight. It is not a pretty sight. Her skeletal frame was within tolerance. But how the rest of her slid in around her was a wonder to behold. To be fair, I should say that Mr. I-Used-to-Play-Football can have the same effect. Anybody remember “Refrigerator” Perry of the Chicago Bears? I wonder if they make him fly first class where the seats are big enough for both Ellie and me? Journeying mercies!
Anyway, I ask my seat-mate if she was from the Boston area. Yes – she is at U. Mass, Lowell now. “Where are you coming back from? I query. “Ghana. I went to visit missionaries from our church who have an orphanage there.” She mentions the church—a start-up of some 20 years ago recently moved to Reading and a larger facility. “Bible-based?” “Very,” she says. So we had a great conversation about where we’ve gone on errands for the Lord. This explains why she so readily yielded her seat to young T-shirt—she’s a real Christian!
Journeying mercies, again.
I think maybe I should modify my opening statement on this blog. The return has not been what I planned, that’s true. But maybe Someone else is in charge of this trip.
Like I say, life is what happens between the things you plan into your schedule.
OK—dinner’s over. Nap time. See ya!
P.S. Ellie and Jim Herrick did connect with me at Logan. Home Sweet Home! Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. Whenever you may travel in coming days, I pray you have those “journeying mercies.”
Friday, January 19, 2007
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
A Wee Woman from Scotland
Margaret is the widow then divorcee from Scotland who has come here to work with faculty children. Most foreign missionaries send their kids to Rift Valley Academy where they get a western education that is top-notch. RVA is three hours away on a good day. Okessons and Bonnells do not want to pack off their grade-schoolers to be brought up by strangers, no matter how competent.
And Margaret needs a new life. I think she will adjust and make this her true home.
But email woes have plagued her since she cam over a week ago. Yesterday she got through on a phone to her daughter and grandkids. What a difference even a brief ear to ear contact makes! She has secured email contact now as well and will be able to be in touch.
Since today is George Mitchell’s last day here, Margaret came to spend some time with a fellow Scot. You could tell she just wanted to hang out with her closest available link with home. Besides George and I josh with her and get laughing all around. I think she likes the male company. She says she will miss us.
All this impresses upon me how we reflect the relational imperative that goes back forever into the very nature of God. It is neither normal nor good for a person to be alone. We need fellowship with loving others. If one has no immediate family—or if the relationships are dysfunctional, great damage is done unless one can find a family of another sort. (Even gangs function as families in a sorry way.)
The philosophers I studied under at Boston University years ago were mostly of a school of philosophy that originated there, called Personalistic Idealism, or Personalism. (Now I am going to try hard not to lose you here. So stick with me.) The basic idea is that all of reality reflects the qualities found in persons. While not evangelicals, these men believed that God is the infinite Person who imbues all creation with signs of personality. The universe is more a gigantic Who than an It.
To me this is borne out in the idea of the Trinity—God is in essence a relational being. existing eternally in personal relationships. I find this essential to God being a God of love from eternity. Love is a relational word that is meaningless unless there is an object of love. So if God is a pure unity love is inexplicable. The One of eastern religions is non-relational and totally impersonal. The God of Islam is a person defined as a singularity. Thus for Allah love cannot be an eternal aspect of his being. He has no one to love until he creates personal spirits such an angels and humans.
Love requires an object. Our God is one in essence but three in persons. The object of the Father’s love is the Son and the Spirit. The object of the Son’s love is the Father and the Spirit. The object of the Spirit’s love is the Father and the Son.
That is why persons must be relational or skip down the slope toward the sub-human. Margaret will find love here among people whose first love is the Person Margaret loves most—Jesus Christ, Bwana Jesu. Margaret’s love for the parents, children and all the Scott community will reflect the love of God and be reciprocated from those who live and love here.
Wherever one goes one finds community among those who call God “Father.” This is the second greatest commandment. And it flows from the first. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Give the love you have received from God o others. The teaching is plain. “How can you say you love God whom you have never seen and not love your sister or brother?” Do you remember the praise chorus popular 20 years ago? We sang it in Spanish on our early mission trips to Latin America. “Love, love; love, love—Christian this is your song; love your neighbor as yourself, for God loves us all.”
When you come to the bottom of everything (and philosophers try to get to the bottom line), its love or nothing. Wealth, notoriety, wisdom and power—it’s all rubbish without love. And with love, not much else is required. God is love.
So I’m praying for Margaret Clark the lonely lady from Glasgow whom life has beat up. She has kids and grandkids who love her. But she needs a calling to use her gifts. She has come to Kenya to find and to give love.
I think she’ll be fine when George and I are both gone home.
And I, as you, know that existence is meaningless unless the foundation is love. And your reading this journal is a thread of love that I treasure.
God keep us all in his matchless love now and forever.
Amen!
And Margaret needs a new life. I think she will adjust and make this her true home.
But email woes have plagued her since she cam over a week ago. Yesterday she got through on a phone to her daughter and grandkids. What a difference even a brief ear to ear contact makes! She has secured email contact now as well and will be able to be in touch.
Since today is George Mitchell’s last day here, Margaret came to spend some time with a fellow Scot. You could tell she just wanted to hang out with her closest available link with home. Besides George and I josh with her and get laughing all around. I think she likes the male company. She says she will miss us.
All this impresses upon me how we reflect the relational imperative that goes back forever into the very nature of God. It is neither normal nor good for a person to be alone. We need fellowship with loving others. If one has no immediate family—or if the relationships are dysfunctional, great damage is done unless one can find a family of another sort. (Even gangs function as families in a sorry way.)
The philosophers I studied under at Boston University years ago were mostly of a school of philosophy that originated there, called Personalistic Idealism, or Personalism. (Now I am going to try hard not to lose you here. So stick with me.) The basic idea is that all of reality reflects the qualities found in persons. While not evangelicals, these men believed that God is the infinite Person who imbues all creation with signs of personality. The universe is more a gigantic Who than an It.
To me this is borne out in the idea of the Trinity—God is in essence a relational being. existing eternally in personal relationships. I find this essential to God being a God of love from eternity. Love is a relational word that is meaningless unless there is an object of love. So if God is a pure unity love is inexplicable. The One of eastern religions is non-relational and totally impersonal. The God of Islam is a person defined as a singularity. Thus for Allah love cannot be an eternal aspect of his being. He has no one to love until he creates personal spirits such an angels and humans.
Love requires an object. Our God is one in essence but three in persons. The object of the Father’s love is the Son and the Spirit. The object of the Son’s love is the Father and the Spirit. The object of the Spirit’s love is the Father and the Son.
That is why persons must be relational or skip down the slope toward the sub-human. Margaret will find love here among people whose first love is the Person Margaret loves most—Jesus Christ, Bwana Jesu. Margaret’s love for the parents, children and all the Scott community will reflect the love of God and be reciprocated from those who live and love here.
Wherever one goes one finds community among those who call God “Father.” This is the second greatest commandment. And it flows from the first. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Give the love you have received from God o others. The teaching is plain. “How can you say you love God whom you have never seen and not love your sister or brother?” Do you remember the praise chorus popular 20 years ago? We sang it in Spanish on our early mission trips to Latin America. “Love, love; love, love—Christian this is your song; love your neighbor as yourself, for God loves us all.”
When you come to the bottom of everything (and philosophers try to get to the bottom line), its love or nothing. Wealth, notoriety, wisdom and power—it’s all rubbish without love. And with love, not much else is required. God is love.
So I’m praying for Margaret Clark the lonely lady from Glasgow whom life has beat up. She has kids and grandkids who love her. But she needs a calling to use her gifts. She has come to Kenya to find and to give love.
I think she’ll be fine when George and I are both gone home.
And I, as you, know that existence is meaningless unless the foundation is love. And your reading this journal is a thread of love that I treasure.
God keep us all in his matchless love now and forever.
Amen!
Monday, January 15, 2007
Anna and Me as I Am
Sunday again. For me it has always been the best day the week. Even as a kid I felt good going to church, learning, singing, being with those of like mind. Later it was serving in various ways: teaching, playing piano and organ, and finally preaching and leading worship.
At breakfast George and I talk over our prospects for the day over the porridge he has cooked. We are not much interested in food—anything will do.
George is going with Vundi for a conference for older people. He will have an hour to present the power point he has prepared about growing old with grace and power. A smashing presentation, I must admit. I want to pirate it!
And I? I get to preach here at the Mumbuni AIC church, invited by former student Nicodemus Musila, now pastor. I will take my text from Luke 15. “Jesus befriends sinners and even eats with them—horrors!” Then on to the prodigal son. It's a great story. It’s my story. It’s every Christian’s story.
After the service the feedback is positive. And I had a great time delivering it. No higher privilege; no greater satisfaction.
However, life is what happens in between the things you plan for. So I will tell you about Anna.
One of the most satisfying “living-in-the-past” memories for me regards my precious grand-children. (Oh, no, I hear you thinking, here goes another tedious “let-me-show-you-the-latest-photos-of-my-grandchildren” episode that these doting codgers corner you with! If so, just skip down a ways.) Even though I have great times with them now that several are in (even out of) college, I remember when Eric and Sue Beth, Rachel and Dale, Lee and Heidi all lived close enough to come for Sunday dinner most weekends. And we could visit them easily also.
As church organist, I would sit on the front pew during the sermon, listening to David Midwood preach his wonderful sermons. Many time I sat through both morning services.
Often a grandkid would creep up the aisle and sit beside me, snuggling up to “Bubba” or “Farfar” as the case may be. What a wonderful feeling to be in the house of the One who gives every good and perfect gift from above and enjoy the pleasure of these little ones wriggling at your side with paper and crayon or little picture book.
Today Kim and Gregg Okesson sit in the same pew with me, with 8 year old Isaiah and 6 year old Anna. They are adopted children. Anna has brown eyes, while Kim and Gregg have blue eyes and fair hair from their Scotch-Irish and Scandinavian heritage. Anna is a brunette with “tanned” skin as though she might have come from parents in India.
Gregg told me that Anna thinks it unfair that there are millions of people in the world she has not met yet. Every person is a treasure waiting to be exploited. I had read a Dr. Seuss book to her the other evening after dinner at Okesson’s. Now I’m one of her countless pals!
As the service progresses she keeps moving closer to me, showing me pictures in her “we read this in church” book. Soon she snuggles up and puts her little hand in mine during a prayer. I give her squeezes and she returns the same. I get a lot out of that service, with a youth choir and the tall girl who sings like a bird and the prayers and hymns and the welcoming of guests. (Many of the latter are new missionaries coming to Scott for two weeks of Orientation to African Cultures.) But the thing that touches me most is innocent, open-hearted little Anna who unwittingly gives a great gift to a man far from his own grandkids. Do you have an Anna in your life? I hope so.
After a light pick-up lunch with Chuck and Sue Lewis, I chat with Gregg and Kim about their work here. Gregg has great ideas about creating distance education in cooperation with sister schools here in Anglophone Africa and India so professors can get American degrees (the most respected thing here) without spending a fortune and perhaps never coming back. America ruins so many dedicated Kenyans who go to study there for three or more years. Their kids become Americans and have no interest in returning home. The love of money and its lifestyle is too strong a temptation to all but the truly dedicated. It reminds me of the WWI song my folks’ generation used to sing. “How Can You Keep ‘em Down on the Farm after They’ve Seen Paree?” (Paris, that is.)
I’m on the front porch now with the laptop plugged in. A nice breeze sings in the treetops, Ibises squawk aloft, while a dozen boys and girls play soccer on the green, using two trees as a goal. Happy sounds—although George said they yesterday when the older kids were playing he had to break up a brewing fracas as two tangled, taking the game much too seriously. Human nature is the same everywhere. It’s interesting how the kids blend two languages without realizing it.
We have dinner at Rachel’s, a young national staffer recently on the Scott faculty. Georgette, a wee woman from Scotland with blond wavy hair joins us. As usual in Kenyan homes, there is no dining room with a table and chairs. The food is placed on the coffee table and you sit in the easy chairs with your plate in your lap. More ugali, chapattis, rice, and stew/soup. Bananas make a dessert. They are the bright green kind even though they are fully ripe. Chai tops it off.
George and I pick a lull in the rain showers and make for home. He will burn the midnight oil grading his papers. I am going upstairs to saw wood.
I’ll drop off to sleep easily. It’s been a high-powered weekend.
I smile as eyelids close.
Anna.
At breakfast George and I talk over our prospects for the day over the porridge he has cooked. We are not much interested in food—anything will do.
George is going with Vundi for a conference for older people. He will have an hour to present the power point he has prepared about growing old with grace and power. A smashing presentation, I must admit. I want to pirate it!
And I? I get to preach here at the Mumbuni AIC church, invited by former student Nicodemus Musila, now pastor. I will take my text from Luke 15. “Jesus befriends sinners and even eats with them—horrors!” Then on to the prodigal son. It's a great story. It’s my story. It’s every Christian’s story.
After the service the feedback is positive. And I had a great time delivering it. No higher privilege; no greater satisfaction.
However, life is what happens in between the things you plan for. So I will tell you about Anna.
One of the most satisfying “living-in-the-past” memories for me regards my precious grand-children. (Oh, no, I hear you thinking, here goes another tedious “let-me-show-you-the-latest-photos-of-my-grandchildren” episode that these doting codgers corner you with! If so, just skip down a ways.) Even though I have great times with them now that several are in (even out of) college, I remember when Eric and Sue Beth, Rachel and Dale, Lee and Heidi all lived close enough to come for Sunday dinner most weekends. And we could visit them easily also.
As church organist, I would sit on the front pew during the sermon, listening to David Midwood preach his wonderful sermons. Many time I sat through both morning services.
Often a grandkid would creep up the aisle and sit beside me, snuggling up to “Bubba” or “Farfar” as the case may be. What a wonderful feeling to be in the house of the One who gives every good and perfect gift from above and enjoy the pleasure of these little ones wriggling at your side with paper and crayon or little picture book.
Today Kim and Gregg Okesson sit in the same pew with me, with 8 year old Isaiah and 6 year old Anna. They are adopted children. Anna has brown eyes, while Kim and Gregg have blue eyes and fair hair from their Scotch-Irish and Scandinavian heritage. Anna is a brunette with “tanned” skin as though she might have come from parents in India.
Gregg told me that Anna thinks it unfair that there are millions of people in the world she has not met yet. Every person is a treasure waiting to be exploited. I had read a Dr. Seuss book to her the other evening after dinner at Okesson’s. Now I’m one of her countless pals!
As the service progresses she keeps moving closer to me, showing me pictures in her “we read this in church” book. Soon she snuggles up and puts her little hand in mine during a prayer. I give her squeezes and she returns the same. I get a lot out of that service, with a youth choir and the tall girl who sings like a bird and the prayers and hymns and the welcoming of guests. (Many of the latter are new missionaries coming to Scott for two weeks of Orientation to African Cultures.) But the thing that touches me most is innocent, open-hearted little Anna who unwittingly gives a great gift to a man far from his own grandkids. Do you have an Anna in your life? I hope so.
After a light pick-up lunch with Chuck and Sue Lewis, I chat with Gregg and Kim about their work here. Gregg has great ideas about creating distance education in cooperation with sister schools here in Anglophone Africa and India so professors can get American degrees (the most respected thing here) without spending a fortune and perhaps never coming back. America ruins so many dedicated Kenyans who go to study there for three or more years. Their kids become Americans and have no interest in returning home. The love of money and its lifestyle is too strong a temptation to all but the truly dedicated. It reminds me of the WWI song my folks’ generation used to sing. “How Can You Keep ‘em Down on the Farm after They’ve Seen Paree?” (Paris, that is.)
I’m on the front porch now with the laptop plugged in. A nice breeze sings in the treetops, Ibises squawk aloft, while a dozen boys and girls play soccer on the green, using two trees as a goal. Happy sounds—although George said they yesterday when the older kids were playing he had to break up a brewing fracas as two tangled, taking the game much too seriously. Human nature is the same everywhere. It’s interesting how the kids blend two languages without realizing it.
We have dinner at Rachel’s, a young national staffer recently on the Scott faculty. Georgette, a wee woman from Scotland with blond wavy hair joins us. As usual in Kenyan homes, there is no dining room with a table and chairs. The food is placed on the coffee table and you sit in the easy chairs with your plate in your lap. More ugali, chapattis, rice, and stew/soup. Bananas make a dessert. They are the bright green kind even though they are fully ripe. Chai tops it off.
George and I pick a lull in the rain showers and make for home. He will burn the midnight oil grading his papers. I am going upstairs to saw wood.
I’ll drop off to sleep easily. It’s been a high-powered weekend.
I smile as eyelids close.
Anna.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Making Bricks with (Almost) No Straw
It is Saturday January 13. A day I could use sleeping late and just catching my breath. But I had arranged to be picked up by Benson Peter Nzioka to travel to his place in Nairobi for a family get-together.
Ah! The sound of the tuk-tuk chugging up the drive, then up the walkway almost to the porch. Arms wide, Grace, a woman about my age and Peter’s mother, comes toward me chortling with glee at seeing again a long-time friend from the USA. Karibu sana! (Very welcome!)
Peter comes next carrying a big green plastic bag. In the living room he dumps out Grace’s handmade baskets. She is skilled at taking native grasses and weaving beautiful baskets. She has me pick out three for gifts to Lois (my sister), Ellie and Rachel. And two I had paid for ahead of time.
There are 10 left at $600 Ks apiece. George Mitchell says he’d like a couple for wife and daughter. Done. I give Grace $6000 Ks. She can use the cash. She has another 20 at Ebenezer (their small shamba out on the plain) but I can only pack so many. These are skillfully woven out of native local material. Would you like one?
The tuk-tuk is waiting. (Tuk rhymes with book). These tiny three wheelers put over the rubble surfaced road with bone-shattering emphasis. It’s a little smoother when we hit pavement. In the city of Machakos we meet Mweni and Daoudi, Peter’s older siblings and Nzomo, their nephew who is 17. Soon we are on the matatu and off for Nairobi.
Forget about conversation for the first 6 km. The road from Machakos to the Mombasa Road is under construction. We are shunted from a dirt by-pass on the right to one on the left several. At a place where a grader has just moved some material the Matatu scrapes bottom on several boulders. Did I tell you that a ma-TAH-too is a mini-van with shrunken seats that holds 15? Two up front with the driver. Four rows of 3 with an aisle down the middle as there is but one sliding side door. This is big improvement from 6 years ago before they passed a seat belt law. Then I went with Peter to see the seminary he graduated from. We got the two last seats. But soon I had grown woman on my knee as did Peter and a couple of others for a total of over twenty! To repeat, this is in a mini-van—not our monster maxi-vans 15-seaters.
The Mombasa Road is paved about the width of Liberty Street in Haverhill. It does have a dirt breakdown lane on each side. The traffic is heavy. I suck in my breath as the driver pulls out to pass a lorry going 5 mph up a 4% grade. Ongoing traffic is not apt to yield readily. There is a lot of light-flashing. Petrol tankers, gravel haulers, cargo semi’s spewing out black fumes. Some are in the breakdown lane with rocks chocking wheels while a naked axle awaits a repaired wheel. The sun is shining and the breeze helps a bit. Could be worse. Kenya is improving its infrastructure they say, but I don’t see much improvement from two years ago as far as roads go.
Ah! There to the east is the control tower of the airport. There the road is a dual carriageway into the capitol city. This is a typical developing world city of several millions. Most people on foot. Roadside dukas all grimy with soot and dust each about the size of a Topsfield Fair booth. Goods of all kinds out for view. Fruits and vegetables. Snacks and sodas. Clothing. Medicines and CDs. Metal ware from teapots to wheelbarrows. Roundabouts jostling with car horns. Stall and crawl. Yet the bus has a few stickers about John 3:16 and the like. The music is about serving Jesus in your home and neighborhood. I can pick out “hallelujah” and “Bwana Jesu” and of course hymns and praise songs in English.
Finally we are at a depot. We board another vehicle for the east side where Peter and Gladys live. “We alight here,” Peter informs me. Soon a young lad is coming across the road. It is my namesake, son James, aged 13. He will take grandma Grace, Dauodi and Mweni directly to the house while Peter and I continue to see his church and office. Catching the next matatu we see a sports stadium in the distance—the pride and joy of Kenya. It looks to hold about 50,000 more or less. This is to attract European teams and fans and boost the economy. We alight. “There it is,” says Peter, pointing over a grassy rolling plain to a stone building that looks like it was moved here from Dresden at the end of WWII. Its windows have been stolen. The roof over the second floor is gone. Thieves have chiseled many stones out. We walk in that direction.
As we do, Peter tells the history. Now, Peter is an honest wheeler-dealer who has a way of winning friends. He held an open air meeting here for weeks with his family and one or two locals who were recruited. “We cannot go inside until we have permission,” he told his flock, for we are Christians. He got his permission. He was told that this vast acreage had been taken corruptly from public lands, houses and this office built upon it. A later administration discovered this and reclaimed the land. Now people have garden plots on it, but the dwellings are derelict. Peter got permission to use the office building free for a church until the government razes it in favor a new golf course to go with the sports stadium, designed to attract people from the frozen north who want sunshine and pleasant temperatures. If days like this are the norm it should be jumping with tourists, since you can really stretch your Euros here in Kenya.
As we approach we see three people by the road. Who are these waving and smiling at us? “Those are my people—they saw us and want to meet you.” Instantly we know we are brothers and sister in the Lord. I shake hands. Big smiles, as Peter tells me one is a Sunday school teacher, another works with men and the third with women. I try two of the 12 words in my Kiswahili vocabulary. “Bwana Jesu.” Jesus is Lord. Heads nod vigorously.
Peter and I go ahead to the church. It is indeed a shell. Completely bare. But they meet on the first floor where it is dry (mostly) and carry two benches a few patio chairs and a pulpit back and forth each Sunday from the office a quarter mile hence. Peter has painted the front overhang white with these letters: LIFE ASSEMBLIES CHURCH INTERNATIONAL. Even with next to nothing, he does not think small. He told God he would do something with what is at hand. That was his family, his own voice, and a derelict stone building slated for demolition. Eventually he hopes to have impact on every continent! I am reminded of the green slogan: Act locally; think globally. In the church here that is changed to “glocalization” since the church is not a franchise cloning itself worldwide, but a creative work of the Holy Spirit indigenous in every tongue and culture. Peter has that mindset.
He shows me where stones were being hacked out of the back wall. He has notified police, who send an occasional patrol. Previously no one walked on the road here because of robbers lurking in the swales. Since the church has started that is no longer a problem.
Here’s the MO. He and Gladys go to houses or open areas and engage people in conversation. (He really needs a portable PA system as that always attracts lots of onlookers.) They invite people to come to the service to learn more. (Peter preaches well and goes on to train those converted to be leaders able to teach and counsel.) The people gather in their homes for prayer during the week. As in many areas of Africa (and India) God does signs. One woman said her husband was about to divorce her since she bore no children for him. (The one commandment all Kenyans agree is essential is “go forth and multiply.) So they prayed and prayed for her. She conceived! So that is a living testimony to the power of the Bwana Jesu. Another man had walked with a limp for decades. They prayed and prayed for him. Now he walks upright and no limp. If you are a Kenyan living in poverty with no hope of corrective surgery this is a huge witness to the love of God.
A five-minute ride on one of the ever-passing matatus and a five-minute walk down a dirt lane and we are at the four-story apartment complex. Just outside the gate is an area strewn with plastic bottles, wrapper and other refuse. At least today the trash is not burning. Inside the concrete floors are acceptably clean. Wash hangs on lines near the breezy edges.
“We have two bedrooms,” Peter tells me, “for about $20 a month.”
We enter their home, concrete walls painted beige tending toward yellow. Charcoal fires in hibachis in the entry hall. A kitchen room about 5x5 feet. Nothing but bare walls. The little hibachi and all the pots and pans and plastic basins sit on the floor. Janet, a new church friend is helping with cooking. She bends from the waist to roll out the flour, turn the chapattis, stir the stew and so on. Not a stick of furniture there.
Now to the living room, 10x10, crammed with a couch and two stuffed chairs and two coffee-type tables. But who cares? Here comes the family, many of whom I have not seen for at least six years. Besides those who came with us from Machakos there is mother Gladys, Peter’s wife, and children James, Lois, Grace, Peter (who calls himself the professor, as he wants to get two PhDs, John, and little Victor. They shake hands with Mzee and say their names, baptismal and Kenyan: “Grace Rahemma,” for example.
Mama Gladys thanks the family in the USA for the gift box of clothing sent. There were shirts and hats and stuff that will help a lot. She says that she has been telling her kids that she has a father in Heaven and a father in America—who has now come to see them. That’s not a bad deal since that means that if I really retire and show up in Kenya they will take care of me the rest of my life—and they would, too. But now it is my turn to help provide for them in a small way.
Soon bowls of salad and steaming rice, stew (with beef chunks and potatoes), baked chicken and barbecued chicken. Gladys prays for the meal and for our fellowship as a family. For me this is a good meal. For them it is like Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners combined. They seldom eat this well, especially having so much meat.
Soon the children disappear, I suppose into the bedrooms or the narrow storage room adjacent. They are bright lot, excelling in school. They speak Kiswahili, English and even Kikamba, enabling them to converse with grandma Grace and Uncle Daoudi and Aunt Mweni and their country cousins. Since there is no money to pay Mrs. Janet, the children have taught her to read and write both Kiswahili and English—these grade school children!
They soon present me with a letter, all neatly hand-written in English for Ellie, signed by each one able to write. They are a bit unsure of this tall, greying white man they have heard much too much about. But they smile shyly and say goodbye when the time comes. I ask all to gather so I could pray a blessing on the home and extended family and the ministry God has given them.
Gladys walks out with us to the road. I notice she is wearing Ellie’s old Reeboks. “These fit me right and are comfortable when we have to walk all the way to church,” she says. I give her hugs and kisses goodbye, knowing now how much I miss her—this fatherless girl from Kitale whom I had helped rescue from her greedy dowry-demanding uncles and had joined in marriage to Peter in 1993. Who knows, she may be related to Phillemon Busolo at West Church, whose name proves he is from Kitale also.
It’s another two hours back to Machakos and the college. But my heart is overflowing with the treasure of friendships I never dreamed would be mine—these precious folks 10,000 miles from Boston. My morning reluctance rewarded in good measure. And to seal the day, I see two twiga (giraffes) lunching on acacia trees as the slanting sun sets aglow the volcanic hills of the Kenyan plains.
I am 15 minutes late for supper at the home of Justus, the college bursar. “I am the bearer of bad news (yes, you must pay the fees before going to classes) yet they love me anyway.” His lovely wife brings out their 4 month old girl, who seldom makes a fuss, day or night. Soon I get to hold her. She eyes me warily. Glancing at mum and dad across the table, she is reassured and settles into my lap.
Yes, it has been a good day.
As I sink into bed with that “tired but good” feeling I wonder how I can help Peter and Gladys in the selfless work they have undertaken. Peter’s 8x8 office, built at the edge of the road by a sympathetic landlord has no water, no electricity. But its dream is painted on the door: Life Christian Assemblies International. It’s a dream that must bear fruit. How can I help him find a free Internet access, as he cannot afford the shillings for the Internet café? I want to help him create a blog to publish some of his ideas. How can I help him get a D.Min degree online? He needs this to open doors and he cannot leave Kenya to pursue it. How can I send him books as he teaches his new church members? How can I get Gideon New Testaments for him to pass out? I have much to pray about in the next months.
Yes, it is good to come here. To get a fresh perspective. To ponder the shallowness of much of my American spirituality. To be careful (as that eminent Scottish phrasemaker George Mitchell puts it) not to be “caught in the vortex of one’s own inadequacies.”
Thanks for reading.
Ah! The sound of the tuk-tuk chugging up the drive, then up the walkway almost to the porch. Arms wide, Grace, a woman about my age and Peter’s mother, comes toward me chortling with glee at seeing again a long-time friend from the USA. Karibu sana! (Very welcome!)
Peter comes next carrying a big green plastic bag. In the living room he dumps out Grace’s handmade baskets. She is skilled at taking native grasses and weaving beautiful baskets. She has me pick out three for gifts to Lois (my sister), Ellie and Rachel. And two I had paid for ahead of time.
There are 10 left at $600 Ks apiece. George Mitchell says he’d like a couple for wife and daughter. Done. I give Grace $6000 Ks. She can use the cash. She has another 20 at Ebenezer (their small shamba out on the plain) but I can only pack so many. These are skillfully woven out of native local material. Would you like one?
The tuk-tuk is waiting. (Tuk rhymes with book). These tiny three wheelers put over the rubble surfaced road with bone-shattering emphasis. It’s a little smoother when we hit pavement. In the city of Machakos we meet Mweni and Daoudi, Peter’s older siblings and Nzomo, their nephew who is 17. Soon we are on the matatu and off for Nairobi.
Forget about conversation for the first 6 km. The road from Machakos to the Mombasa Road is under construction. We are shunted from a dirt by-pass on the right to one on the left several. At a place where a grader has just moved some material the Matatu scrapes bottom on several boulders. Did I tell you that a ma-TAH-too is a mini-van with shrunken seats that holds 15? Two up front with the driver. Four rows of 3 with an aisle down the middle as there is but one sliding side door. This is big improvement from 6 years ago before they passed a seat belt law. Then I went with Peter to see the seminary he graduated from. We got the two last seats. But soon I had grown woman on my knee as did Peter and a couple of others for a total of over twenty! To repeat, this is in a mini-van—not our monster maxi-vans 15-seaters.
The Mombasa Road is paved about the width of Liberty Street in Haverhill. It does have a dirt breakdown lane on each side. The traffic is heavy. I suck in my breath as the driver pulls out to pass a lorry going 5 mph up a 4% grade. Ongoing traffic is not apt to yield readily. There is a lot of light-flashing. Petrol tankers, gravel haulers, cargo semi’s spewing out black fumes. Some are in the breakdown lane with rocks chocking wheels while a naked axle awaits a repaired wheel. The sun is shining and the breeze helps a bit. Could be worse. Kenya is improving its infrastructure they say, but I don’t see much improvement from two years ago as far as roads go.
Ah! There to the east is the control tower of the airport. There the road is a dual carriageway into the capitol city. This is a typical developing world city of several millions. Most people on foot. Roadside dukas all grimy with soot and dust each about the size of a Topsfield Fair booth. Goods of all kinds out for view. Fruits and vegetables. Snacks and sodas. Clothing. Medicines and CDs. Metal ware from teapots to wheelbarrows. Roundabouts jostling with car horns. Stall and crawl. Yet the bus has a few stickers about John 3:16 and the like. The music is about serving Jesus in your home and neighborhood. I can pick out “hallelujah” and “Bwana Jesu” and of course hymns and praise songs in English.
Finally we are at a depot. We board another vehicle for the east side where Peter and Gladys live. “We alight here,” Peter informs me. Soon a young lad is coming across the road. It is my namesake, son James, aged 13. He will take grandma Grace, Dauodi and Mweni directly to the house while Peter and I continue to see his church and office. Catching the next matatu we see a sports stadium in the distance—the pride and joy of Kenya. It looks to hold about 50,000 more or less. This is to attract European teams and fans and boost the economy. We alight. “There it is,” says Peter, pointing over a grassy rolling plain to a stone building that looks like it was moved here from Dresden at the end of WWII. Its windows have been stolen. The roof over the second floor is gone. Thieves have chiseled many stones out. We walk in that direction.
As we do, Peter tells the history. Now, Peter is an honest wheeler-dealer who has a way of winning friends. He held an open air meeting here for weeks with his family and one or two locals who were recruited. “We cannot go inside until we have permission,” he told his flock, for we are Christians. He got his permission. He was told that this vast acreage had been taken corruptly from public lands, houses and this office built upon it. A later administration discovered this and reclaimed the land. Now people have garden plots on it, but the dwellings are derelict. Peter got permission to use the office building free for a church until the government razes it in favor a new golf course to go with the sports stadium, designed to attract people from the frozen north who want sunshine and pleasant temperatures. If days like this are the norm it should be jumping with tourists, since you can really stretch your Euros here in Kenya.
As we approach we see three people by the road. Who are these waving and smiling at us? “Those are my people—they saw us and want to meet you.” Instantly we know we are brothers and sister in the Lord. I shake hands. Big smiles, as Peter tells me one is a Sunday school teacher, another works with men and the third with women. I try two of the 12 words in my Kiswahili vocabulary. “Bwana Jesu.” Jesus is Lord. Heads nod vigorously.
Peter and I go ahead to the church. It is indeed a shell. Completely bare. But they meet on the first floor where it is dry (mostly) and carry two benches a few patio chairs and a pulpit back and forth each Sunday from the office a quarter mile hence. Peter has painted the front overhang white with these letters: LIFE ASSEMBLIES CHURCH INTERNATIONAL. Even with next to nothing, he does not think small. He told God he would do something with what is at hand. That was his family, his own voice, and a derelict stone building slated for demolition. Eventually he hopes to have impact on every continent! I am reminded of the green slogan: Act locally; think globally. In the church here that is changed to “glocalization” since the church is not a franchise cloning itself worldwide, but a creative work of the Holy Spirit indigenous in every tongue and culture. Peter has that mindset.
He shows me where stones were being hacked out of the back wall. He has notified police, who send an occasional patrol. Previously no one walked on the road here because of robbers lurking in the swales. Since the church has started that is no longer a problem.
Here’s the MO. He and Gladys go to houses or open areas and engage people in conversation. (He really needs a portable PA system as that always attracts lots of onlookers.) They invite people to come to the service to learn more. (Peter preaches well and goes on to train those converted to be leaders able to teach and counsel.) The people gather in their homes for prayer during the week. As in many areas of Africa (and India) God does signs. One woman said her husband was about to divorce her since she bore no children for him. (The one commandment all Kenyans agree is essential is “go forth and multiply.) So they prayed and prayed for her. She conceived! So that is a living testimony to the power of the Bwana Jesu. Another man had walked with a limp for decades. They prayed and prayed for him. Now he walks upright and no limp. If you are a Kenyan living in poverty with no hope of corrective surgery this is a huge witness to the love of God.
A five-minute ride on one of the ever-passing matatus and a five-minute walk down a dirt lane and we are at the four-story apartment complex. Just outside the gate is an area strewn with plastic bottles, wrapper and other refuse. At least today the trash is not burning. Inside the concrete floors are acceptably clean. Wash hangs on lines near the breezy edges.
“We have two bedrooms,” Peter tells me, “for about $20 a month.”
We enter their home, concrete walls painted beige tending toward yellow. Charcoal fires in hibachis in the entry hall. A kitchen room about 5x5 feet. Nothing but bare walls. The little hibachi and all the pots and pans and plastic basins sit on the floor. Janet, a new church friend is helping with cooking. She bends from the waist to roll out the flour, turn the chapattis, stir the stew and so on. Not a stick of furniture there.
Now to the living room, 10x10, crammed with a couch and two stuffed chairs and two coffee-type tables. But who cares? Here comes the family, many of whom I have not seen for at least six years. Besides those who came with us from Machakos there is mother Gladys, Peter’s wife, and children James, Lois, Grace, Peter (who calls himself the professor, as he wants to get two PhDs, John, and little Victor. They shake hands with Mzee and say their names, baptismal and Kenyan: “Grace Rahemma,” for example.
Mama Gladys thanks the family in the USA for the gift box of clothing sent. There were shirts and hats and stuff that will help a lot. She says that she has been telling her kids that she has a father in Heaven and a father in America—who has now come to see them. That’s not a bad deal since that means that if I really retire and show up in Kenya they will take care of me the rest of my life—and they would, too. But now it is my turn to help provide for them in a small way.
Soon bowls of salad and steaming rice, stew (with beef chunks and potatoes), baked chicken and barbecued chicken. Gladys prays for the meal and for our fellowship as a family. For me this is a good meal. For them it is like Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners combined. They seldom eat this well, especially having so much meat.
Soon the children disappear, I suppose into the bedrooms or the narrow storage room adjacent. They are bright lot, excelling in school. They speak Kiswahili, English and even Kikamba, enabling them to converse with grandma Grace and Uncle Daoudi and Aunt Mweni and their country cousins. Since there is no money to pay Mrs. Janet, the children have taught her to read and write both Kiswahili and English—these grade school children!
They soon present me with a letter, all neatly hand-written in English for Ellie, signed by each one able to write. They are a bit unsure of this tall, greying white man they have heard much too much about. But they smile shyly and say goodbye when the time comes. I ask all to gather so I could pray a blessing on the home and extended family and the ministry God has given them.
Gladys walks out with us to the road. I notice she is wearing Ellie’s old Reeboks. “These fit me right and are comfortable when we have to walk all the way to church,” she says. I give her hugs and kisses goodbye, knowing now how much I miss her—this fatherless girl from Kitale whom I had helped rescue from her greedy dowry-demanding uncles and had joined in marriage to Peter in 1993. Who knows, she may be related to Phillemon Busolo at West Church, whose name proves he is from Kitale also.
It’s another two hours back to Machakos and the college. But my heart is overflowing with the treasure of friendships I never dreamed would be mine—these precious folks 10,000 miles from Boston. My morning reluctance rewarded in good measure. And to seal the day, I see two twiga (giraffes) lunching on acacia trees as the slanting sun sets aglow the volcanic hills of the Kenyan plains.
I am 15 minutes late for supper at the home of Justus, the college bursar. “I am the bearer of bad news (yes, you must pay the fees before going to classes) yet they love me anyway.” His lovely wife brings out their 4 month old girl, who seldom makes a fuss, day or night. Soon I get to hold her. She eyes me warily. Glancing at mum and dad across the table, she is reassured and settles into my lap.
Yes, it has been a good day.
As I sink into bed with that “tired but good” feeling I wonder how I can help Peter and Gladys in the selfless work they have undertaken. Peter’s 8x8 office, built at the edge of the road by a sympathetic landlord has no water, no electricity. But its dream is painted on the door: Life Christian Assemblies International. It’s a dream that must bear fruit. How can I help him find a free Internet access, as he cannot afford the shillings for the Internet café? I want to help him create a blog to publish some of his ideas. How can I help him get a D.Min degree online? He needs this to open doors and he cannot leave Kenya to pursue it. How can I send him books as he teaches his new church members? How can I get Gideon New Testaments for him to pass out? I have much to pray about in the next months.
Yes, it is good to come here. To get a fresh perspective. To ponder the shallowness of much of my American spirituality. To be careful (as that eminent Scottish phrasemaker George Mitchell puts it) not to be “caught in the vortex of one’s own inadequacies.”
Thanks for reading.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Potpourri
This was a great day. I am settling in to the routine and feel less like a guest, more like a staffer.
In class today I gave back the mid-terms. Some fine, some OK, some not good. I encourage them with this story.
Timothy M (previous blog) told me how philosophy helped him a year after he took the class. He was in Nairobi chatting with someone who was attending the Jomo Kenyatta University who began to say how he was learning philosophy. Timothy just listened while he went on about Hume and Kant and Descartes and so on. Then Timothy began to correct his misunderstanding of these philosophers. “What—you study philosophy in that little college in Machakos?” “O yes,” Timothy beams, “We have a solid curriculum under the finest faculty teachers.”
Hopefully something good will show up for my present students, laboring in a tough discipline that sorely stretches their minds. Most of them are entering an entirely new world of the mind.
But there is much more than learning going on here. There is a community building up.
As Kim Okesson put it when she came by with more groceries for the odd couple (George Mitchell and me), this life is in community, whereas in the States we live in our separate cubicles with little contact within anyone outside our immediate family each day. Here we see our neighboring couples and their kids on the walk or on their porch or playing on the green just outside. We meet our colleagues not merely in their offices or in the hall but at chapel and the teatime that follows. We who are adjuncts eat meals with the various families, both nationals and ex-pats.
For example, George and I along with Chuck and Sue Lewis had supper with the Ndebe family. Joseph and Anne have been here since 1985—longer than anyone else except the Kibors (Jacob is the Principal coming in 1982.) So most of the six or eight Ndebe kids have grown up here. When Ellie and I came here to visit Bob and Lois (my sister) in 1992 the Ndebe children were just wee ones. Now Samuel is in my philosophy class, while Sarah and Lois are out of high school and Eunice has given up a counseling practice in Nikuru to become dean of students here at Scott.
Anne came out of the dining area to announce that everything was ready. As the custom is she offered prayer for the meal. We filed into the dining room where Sarah was holding the basin and pouring warm water over our hands and offering a towel to dry. Sitting at a table set with place mats, sage cloth napkins, a fork on left of the china, a knife on the right and a soup spoon at the top near the over-turned water glass. Hot mats were in the center, laden with steaming brown rice, beef stew, a mixed salad of raw vegetables, and of course chapattis.
After eating, we are invited back to the living room. Song books are provided and we sing How Great Thou Art in both Kiswahili and English at once. Samuel has a guitar and sets the key. Next the Ndebes (Dad, Mom, Sarah, Lois, Samuel and six-year old Solomon) sing a capella lovely song about Jesus preparing a home for us and how it will be too bad if we are not qualified to enter there. The next song is one in English that I have never heard. “Is He Satisfied with Me?” Harmonies are true and Sam has a deep bass voice. The blend is sweet. After that Chuck Lewis is asked to offer prayer before they thank us for coming to their home and send us on our way. I wish you had been there to sense the warm love and true joy of this family.
The previous evening George and I were trying to find the house of Joshua and Zipporah, who still live in the apartment at the back of campus where they dwelt when students.
They were both in my class several years back. He sat over by the windows and she on the opposite side of the room by the door and it was nearly a week before I discovered they were man and wife. Now they have two children, Kind—a boy in standard three and a girl, Love, is in first standard.
As is often the case, they had relatives (two girl cousins) living with them and going to school hereabouts. (You can just show up at a relative’s house and stay as long as you like and they will house and feed you. Kenyan tribal life is all about hospitality. That custom is eroding somewhat nowadays.)
Joshua is the first PR man for Scott Theological College and is doing a skillful job the brass say. Zipporah was very good in philosophy, BTW. And she loves to cook. We had quite a feast. Then Joshua asked if one of us would pray before leaving. So I got the nod from George and prayed a warm blessing on their home, family, and ministries. We say goodbye to the kids.
But Joshua and Zipporah say it is a custom when guests live close by to walk them home. Torches in hand we step out under the blackest spangled sky and stroll along the new pathways that have some walk lighting on posts topped by beautiful glowing lamps. As Zipporah pairs with me she says, “You know, when an old person like yourself prays a blessing on us it is very powerful to us.” I did not know that. It is sobering and touching at the same time. This kind of community living is so enriching that one could imagine making one’s home among them, as Margaret, newly here from Glasgow (earlier blog) is doing.
Today was Gregg Okesson’s day off. Since classes have not started for the regular term, he plans the First Annual Block Head Golfing Tournament. It’s to be the block course teachers (George and me) against the full-timers. We came up with that moniker, naming it after the golf meets at the famed Hilton Head in America.
We drive the two miles to the local course. Two or three young guys leap out to meet our car by the time it comes to rest in a parking space. Business is slow today so our fears about not calling for a tee time are allayed. Into the clubhouse. An Indian man in a turban (he must be a Sikh) and two suited businessmen are in the bar area. No one is golfing today—the course is not ready. It has been too wet to mow the fairways. “We are mostly out for the exercise,” Gregg assures him. “Maybe you can charge us a reduced fee and we’ll take our chances.” OK So we pay our 150 shillings ($2.10) each.
The caddies grab two bags of old clubs we have and off we go.
The tees are like a lawn at home when it hasn’t been cut for two weeks—a bit shaggy. The fairways have mangy grass, on the thin side, with tops that can reach almost to the knee.
We send one caddy down the fairway to spot where the balls enter the rough (deep grass knee to waist high). We keep lost balls down to under a dozen and our caddies found a couple for us. All of us are rusty.
The first hole (450 yards) takes 40 minutes as we zigzag down the links from east rough to west rough. Now we are approaching the green. Only here the greens are packed dirt raked smooth (more or less) with a cup that is not sunk below ground level but flush with the surface. Your ball can bump the lip and go aglay. So we freely take mulligans and free lifts out of deep grass and mucky spots and re-spot the ball on the “brown.”
I’m keeping score—in a loose sort of way. We get off some really nice shots—the exception more than the rule. And putting is mostly luck, for pebbles and other minute debris can slow down your ball or move it off course.
On the fourth hole Gregg grabs the leg of his trousers (you never call them pants here—that has a meaning you do not want to convey) and yells “Ouch!” Then George does the same. Next is young John Bonnell. I had already flicked off an ant biting my finger.
Army ants have decided to punish us mightily for trespass. Soon the pain is mingled with fits of laughter. These ants are no joke, however. They crawl upward until they find the tenderloins that will inflict the most pain. Soon trousers are down around ankles showing hairy legs. I am thinking it is a good thing there no other golfers around. Luckily the ladies tees look like they have not been visited for many weeks.
So this is how the First Annual Block Head Golf Tournament sets the pace for the future!
It’s three hours for nine holes. Laughing and joking and insulting the other guy for his antics. Although I must say the younger two (33 and 40 years of tender age) show promise and would be a credit on a proper golf course.
On the 7th we have to drive 100 yards to clear a small pond with lovely lilies blooming on one end. George and I decide it’s time to switch to the ladies’ tee. I get over fine. George hits a nice straight ball but a wee bit soft. Plinck! Right in the pond. The caddies shake their heads. “Come on, man,” George hollers out in his Glasgow brogue, “where’s your commitment? Take off your clothes and go get it!”
As we give generous tips to the caddies for putting up with us, I ask George how he liked being a pioneer on the First Annual Block Head Golf Tournament. “It’s awful,” he groans. “My golf reputation has been sullied, my privacy invaded, and my pride humiliated. I could do without the honour!”
The Chapel message today by Chuck Lewis was about how we cope with difficulties and tragedies that come to us, much more serioous than ant attacks on a golf course. And many of these students have monumental issues to deal with—family troubles, no money for fees, books, and transport, not to mention being sick and often lonely in this foreign land. Chuck pointed out how it is OK to ask for deliverance, even if it takes a miracle—God’s Intervention. And that does happen sometimes.
Often, however, we receive “Innervention” as St. Paul did when God did not heal him of his thorn in the flesh but gave him inner grace to bear it for God’s glory. Chuck showed a photo of Barbara being hugged by someone. You could not see her face. You would not want to see her face. You see, she has a disease that only about a dozen people in the world have, where the bones of the head slowly grow together, squeezing the brain. Big time headaches every single day. Eyes bulge out from the pressure and the face is grotesque. Boils cover most of your body.
Most who suffer this malady die by age 15—and that is a blessing since nothing can be done to fix the condition. Barbara is now 60. If God takes her to glory she would be grateful. Yet Barbara is full of love for Jesus and joy in God, even though she has every “right” humanly speaking to be bitter. So no matter what we face God can give us grace to endure as he creates an “inner-vention.”
Next point under “Interaction” he mentions Russ, who is seen smiling in a photo with Lori, taken at Wheaton College 10 years ago. Christmas was coming and Russ needed to get ready to go home. So he consulted Dr. Lewis in the college counseling center.
“Looking forward to the holiday, Russ?” “No.” “Why not?”
It turns out that Russ is going home at time when his mother is expected to die within days, probably on Christmas Day. His natural father had left home when he was a child. His stepfather drinks and regularly beats him up in the mornings. His older brothers have escaped their California dysfunctional setting and have lots of money. They are about to sell the family home even though they could easily pay the taxes and utilities. And his sister is pregnant. Chuck somehow checks himself from saying there is at least one bright spot. But it’s not a happy event. The sister is 16 and having her second fatherless baby.
How do you cope with a crushing load like that Chuck asks.
I have Lori. She keeps me going.
A day later Chuck looks up this classmate of Russ and mentions that she is making all the difference to his coping with horrendous circumstances. What is your secret?
Lori says it’s nothing, really.
Well whbatever you are doing is keeping a guy going under a load that would sink most people.
Well, we go to the grade school playground and swing on the swings. Sometimes we walk along the prairie path on the old railroad bed. Sometimes we just sit and hold hands, not saying all that much. Lori is just a friend to Russ. But it makes all the difference.
Chuck sums it up. It’s nice to sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” But sometimes it’s “what a Jesus we have in friends.”
Good message!
Scott Theological College is a community of friends. I am privileged to be here.
In class today I gave back the mid-terms. Some fine, some OK, some not good. I encourage them with this story.
Timothy M (previous blog) told me how philosophy helped him a year after he took the class. He was in Nairobi chatting with someone who was attending the Jomo Kenyatta University who began to say how he was learning philosophy. Timothy just listened while he went on about Hume and Kant and Descartes and so on. Then Timothy began to correct his misunderstanding of these philosophers. “What—you study philosophy in that little college in Machakos?” “O yes,” Timothy beams, “We have a solid curriculum under the finest faculty teachers.”
Hopefully something good will show up for my present students, laboring in a tough discipline that sorely stretches their minds. Most of them are entering an entirely new world of the mind.
But there is much more than learning going on here. There is a community building up.
As Kim Okesson put it when she came by with more groceries for the odd couple (George Mitchell and me), this life is in community, whereas in the States we live in our separate cubicles with little contact within anyone outside our immediate family each day. Here we see our neighboring couples and their kids on the walk or on their porch or playing on the green just outside. We meet our colleagues not merely in their offices or in the hall but at chapel and the teatime that follows. We who are adjuncts eat meals with the various families, both nationals and ex-pats.
For example, George and I along with Chuck and Sue Lewis had supper with the Ndebe family. Joseph and Anne have been here since 1985—longer than anyone else except the Kibors (Jacob is the Principal coming in 1982.) So most of the six or eight Ndebe kids have grown up here. When Ellie and I came here to visit Bob and Lois (my sister) in 1992 the Ndebe children were just wee ones. Now Samuel is in my philosophy class, while Sarah and Lois are out of high school and Eunice has given up a counseling practice in Nikuru to become dean of students here at Scott.
Anne came out of the dining area to announce that everything was ready. As the custom is she offered prayer for the meal. We filed into the dining room where Sarah was holding the basin and pouring warm water over our hands and offering a towel to dry. Sitting at a table set with place mats, sage cloth napkins, a fork on left of the china, a knife on the right and a soup spoon at the top near the over-turned water glass. Hot mats were in the center, laden with steaming brown rice, beef stew, a mixed salad of raw vegetables, and of course chapattis.
After eating, we are invited back to the living room. Song books are provided and we sing How Great Thou Art in both Kiswahili and English at once. Samuel has a guitar and sets the key. Next the Ndebes (Dad, Mom, Sarah, Lois, Samuel and six-year old Solomon) sing a capella lovely song about Jesus preparing a home for us and how it will be too bad if we are not qualified to enter there. The next song is one in English that I have never heard. “Is He Satisfied with Me?” Harmonies are true and Sam has a deep bass voice. The blend is sweet. After that Chuck Lewis is asked to offer prayer before they thank us for coming to their home and send us on our way. I wish you had been there to sense the warm love and true joy of this family.
The previous evening George and I were trying to find the house of Joshua and Zipporah, who still live in the apartment at the back of campus where they dwelt when students.
They were both in my class several years back. He sat over by the windows and she on the opposite side of the room by the door and it was nearly a week before I discovered they were man and wife. Now they have two children, Kind—a boy in standard three and a girl, Love, is in first standard.
As is often the case, they had relatives (two girl cousins) living with them and going to school hereabouts. (You can just show up at a relative’s house and stay as long as you like and they will house and feed you. Kenyan tribal life is all about hospitality. That custom is eroding somewhat nowadays.)
Joshua is the first PR man for Scott Theological College and is doing a skillful job the brass say. Zipporah was very good in philosophy, BTW. And she loves to cook. We had quite a feast. Then Joshua asked if one of us would pray before leaving. So I got the nod from George and prayed a warm blessing on their home, family, and ministries. We say goodbye to the kids.
But Joshua and Zipporah say it is a custom when guests live close by to walk them home. Torches in hand we step out under the blackest spangled sky and stroll along the new pathways that have some walk lighting on posts topped by beautiful glowing lamps. As Zipporah pairs with me she says, “You know, when an old person like yourself prays a blessing on us it is very powerful to us.” I did not know that. It is sobering and touching at the same time. This kind of community living is so enriching that one could imagine making one’s home among them, as Margaret, newly here from Glasgow (earlier blog) is doing.
Today was Gregg Okesson’s day off. Since classes have not started for the regular term, he plans the First Annual Block Head Golfing Tournament. It’s to be the block course teachers (George and me) against the full-timers. We came up with that moniker, naming it after the golf meets at the famed Hilton Head in America.
We drive the two miles to the local course. Two or three young guys leap out to meet our car by the time it comes to rest in a parking space. Business is slow today so our fears about not calling for a tee time are allayed. Into the clubhouse. An Indian man in a turban (he must be a Sikh) and two suited businessmen are in the bar area. No one is golfing today—the course is not ready. It has been too wet to mow the fairways. “We are mostly out for the exercise,” Gregg assures him. “Maybe you can charge us a reduced fee and we’ll take our chances.” OK So we pay our 150 shillings ($2.10) each.
The caddies grab two bags of old clubs we have and off we go.
The tees are like a lawn at home when it hasn’t been cut for two weeks—a bit shaggy. The fairways have mangy grass, on the thin side, with tops that can reach almost to the knee.
We send one caddy down the fairway to spot where the balls enter the rough (deep grass knee to waist high). We keep lost balls down to under a dozen and our caddies found a couple for us. All of us are rusty.
The first hole (450 yards) takes 40 minutes as we zigzag down the links from east rough to west rough. Now we are approaching the green. Only here the greens are packed dirt raked smooth (more or less) with a cup that is not sunk below ground level but flush with the surface. Your ball can bump the lip and go aglay. So we freely take mulligans and free lifts out of deep grass and mucky spots and re-spot the ball on the “brown.”
I’m keeping score—in a loose sort of way. We get off some really nice shots—the exception more than the rule. And putting is mostly luck, for pebbles and other minute debris can slow down your ball or move it off course.
On the fourth hole Gregg grabs the leg of his trousers (you never call them pants here—that has a meaning you do not want to convey) and yells “Ouch!” Then George does the same. Next is young John Bonnell. I had already flicked off an ant biting my finger.
Army ants have decided to punish us mightily for trespass. Soon the pain is mingled with fits of laughter. These ants are no joke, however. They crawl upward until they find the tenderloins that will inflict the most pain. Soon trousers are down around ankles showing hairy legs. I am thinking it is a good thing there no other golfers around. Luckily the ladies tees look like they have not been visited for many weeks.
So this is how the First Annual Block Head Golf Tournament sets the pace for the future!
It’s three hours for nine holes. Laughing and joking and insulting the other guy for his antics. Although I must say the younger two (33 and 40 years of tender age) show promise and would be a credit on a proper golf course.
On the 7th we have to drive 100 yards to clear a small pond with lovely lilies blooming on one end. George and I decide it’s time to switch to the ladies’ tee. I get over fine. George hits a nice straight ball but a wee bit soft. Plinck! Right in the pond. The caddies shake their heads. “Come on, man,” George hollers out in his Glasgow brogue, “where’s your commitment? Take off your clothes and go get it!”
As we give generous tips to the caddies for putting up with us, I ask George how he liked being a pioneer on the First Annual Block Head Golf Tournament. “It’s awful,” he groans. “My golf reputation has been sullied, my privacy invaded, and my pride humiliated. I could do without the honour!”
The Chapel message today by Chuck Lewis was about how we cope with difficulties and tragedies that come to us, much more serioous than ant attacks on a golf course. And many of these students have monumental issues to deal with—family troubles, no money for fees, books, and transport, not to mention being sick and often lonely in this foreign land. Chuck pointed out how it is OK to ask for deliverance, even if it takes a miracle—God’s Intervention. And that does happen sometimes.
Often, however, we receive “Innervention” as St. Paul did when God did not heal him of his thorn in the flesh but gave him inner grace to bear it for God’s glory. Chuck showed a photo of Barbara being hugged by someone. You could not see her face. You would not want to see her face. You see, she has a disease that only about a dozen people in the world have, where the bones of the head slowly grow together, squeezing the brain. Big time headaches every single day. Eyes bulge out from the pressure and the face is grotesque. Boils cover most of your body.
Most who suffer this malady die by age 15—and that is a blessing since nothing can be done to fix the condition. Barbara is now 60. If God takes her to glory she would be grateful. Yet Barbara is full of love for Jesus and joy in God, even though she has every “right” humanly speaking to be bitter. So no matter what we face God can give us grace to endure as he creates an “inner-vention.”
Next point under “Interaction” he mentions Russ, who is seen smiling in a photo with Lori, taken at Wheaton College 10 years ago. Christmas was coming and Russ needed to get ready to go home. So he consulted Dr. Lewis in the college counseling center.
“Looking forward to the holiday, Russ?” “No.” “Why not?”
It turns out that Russ is going home at time when his mother is expected to die within days, probably on Christmas Day. His natural father had left home when he was a child. His stepfather drinks and regularly beats him up in the mornings. His older brothers have escaped their California dysfunctional setting and have lots of money. They are about to sell the family home even though they could easily pay the taxes and utilities. And his sister is pregnant. Chuck somehow checks himself from saying there is at least one bright spot. But it’s not a happy event. The sister is 16 and having her second fatherless baby.
How do you cope with a crushing load like that Chuck asks.
I have Lori. She keeps me going.
A day later Chuck looks up this classmate of Russ and mentions that she is making all the difference to his coping with horrendous circumstances. What is your secret?
Lori says it’s nothing, really.
Well whbatever you are doing is keeping a guy going under a load that would sink most people.
Well, we go to the grade school playground and swing on the swings. Sometimes we walk along the prairie path on the old railroad bed. Sometimes we just sit and hold hands, not saying all that much. Lori is just a friend to Russ. But it makes all the difference.
Chuck sums it up. It’s nice to sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” But sometimes it’s “what a Jesus we have in friends.”
Good message!
Scott Theological College is a community of friends. I am privileged to be here.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
Doing It the Right Way
Today is another day in paradise. The short rains this season may have been long by a month but the sunny weather since is all the sweeter. Sunshine all day. Low humidity. Just a zephyr of breeze. Birds sing. Flowers bloom. Kids play—girls dress up in fancy clothes and boys kick balls or ride bikes. No bugs to speak of. Mmmmmmmm!
But at times there can be trouble in Paradise. Our Chapel speaker today, psychologist Chuck Lewis, parsed the book of Job. This oldest of biblical sagas shows a prosperous man of faith and decency upon whom disasters fall without warning, though not without purpose.
Behind the scenes God and Satan are in combat. Job has a letter of recommendation signed by God. Satan impugns Job’s motives as merely that of a gold-digger. The gauntlet is thrown down. Job will be tested.
Disasters from the Enemy of God and strip this hapless man of the stuff he has worked so hard for. Even worse, those beloved children he has brought into the world and prayed over so faithfully are killed. His health collapses under the sting of boils covering his entire body so he gets no relief day or night, sitting or standing. His psychological support evaporates as his wife, seeing his misery can only say he may as well give up on God and die.
Yet Job does not cave in. God gives all; therefore it is his to take away.
Those famed friends come, showing they have hearts of compassion. And they don’t try to trivialize Job’s situation. They sit with him seven days in silent support. Finally they try to say something to explain the unexplainable. Job must have sinned or done something to bring this on. But in the end Job gets his letter of recommendation from God as a righteous man through it all. And God, angry with the four sincere but foolish friends, has Job pray for them. God then restores to Job his health and provides new wealth and children, including those girls of whom it is said, “There are none fairer than Job’s daughters.”
For lunch today I visited the home of a typical African couple. They have also been robbed by the Enemy of God’s people. Would you like to go along?
Timothy meets me at the college gate. He has a big smile and gives a cheery “Karibu!” (Welcome!) He takes my laptop in hand and we walk over hard-packed footpath/car road. He is telling me how glad he is to see his former Mwalimu (Teacher). I mention I just gave the mid-term exam. “O, I remember. Do you know what I got on that exam six years ago? 100%. A straight A!” I confess I had forgotten that, but I knew he got an A for the course and talked excitedly in those days how he was going to use philosophy in his ministry.
We turn off the main path onto a single-file track through a small plantation of coffee trees and maize. The goats—kids really—baa at us as we pass.
I think of how I interviewed him with my camcorder several years ago. He was so excited. Philosophy was his cup of chai. He would use it in ministry with university students and witness for the Gospel, taking a church in an urban setting.
We go by a building whose walls and roof are of corrugated roofing. “That’s an African Independent Church. You can hear some in there singing.” As we turn at the corner we step alongside an adobe building.
Timothy explains that the African Inland Church (AIC) that the College here is connected with had some problems that were unresolved for a long time. Some congregations grew so frustrated that they broke away and formed their own association—keeping the same (hence confusing) initials: AIC
I can’t help but wonder if Satan is still trying to derail God’s people. The church on earth is no paradise. That awaits the church in glory.
We duck through a narrow door in a gate that could swing open wide enough for a vehicle. This opens upon a modest courtyard, perhaps 15 feet wide and 30 feet long. On each side there are doorless openings to one room and two room apartments. We greet a woman who is sitting in the only chair in view with a plump boy of perhaps a year on her lap. Above the sky is blue with a few friendly puffs of clouds.
On the right we stoop a bit to enter the home of Timothy and Peninah. Peninah comes forth in a sage green outfit, kerchief folded up into a hat that sweeps aloft with her hairdo. She is all smiles. “Please sit down.” There is one four person couch in this 10x10 room. A tiny wood table is the only other furniture piece—the size of a milking stool.
“This is Elizabeth, Mwalimu…”
I find that she is a student at Scott in her second year. She is an orphan and comes to visit Peninah often. Sweet girl and very shy. She wants to serve God now that some have come forward from her church to provide school fees. I think of the countless orphans in Africa who are as destitute as Job unless some Good Samaritan intervenes.
Peninah busies herself in the kitchen. I peek in for a nanosecond so as not to stare. It is like other kitchens in these rental cubes for the poor. A room empty of cabinets. No furniture. No appliances. A small charcoal hibachi on the floor. A few pans and pots. No table. She squats near the floor to prep the rice and vegetables.
So Timothy and I talk of how things are going. While they were engaged, Timothy and Peninah made what we euphemistically call in the States “a mistake.” They made some “bad decisions.” They ended up marrying hastily, incurring a mountain of debt, and under discipline by the church and the College. Friends forsake them. They are crushed.
But like Job they refuse to curse God and cave in. Like King David they confess their sin and seek reconciliation, after first trying to hidehave it all. For over a year they have worked through a difficult situation with church elders and college officials. Now the dark cloud is breaking. They know the Lord has forgiven them and the slate is wiped clean. They have been restored to fellowship and cleared for ministry. They feel the burden is lifted and are rejoicing in the sunshine again and eager to do ministry. This is their passion.
Elizabeth brings an empty basin and a jug of warm water. I swish my hands in it, shake off the drops, and let them air dry.
Peninah brings in a soup bowl filled with rice, peas & carrots, and some chopped meat (probably goat). She sets it in front of me with a soup spoon. Elizabeth gets a smaller helping, while the couple shares a bowl the size of mine. Water and pineapple flavored juice make up our drinks. Peninah prays for the meal—this seems to be the custom in all the local homes that the woman prays.
After lunch I try to use my laptop to show them some slides. But the software is missing and since the power is out (usual during daylight) the batteries are about to shut down we give up on showing slides of India.
Timothy tells me that Elizabeth slipped a note under the door early this morning to the effect that church of 700 in Mombasa needs a pastor and that Timothy would be perfect. So he is to call them ASAP to seize the opportunity. While he and Peninah have jobs at a local school, that is not what God has called them to. They each earn 600 shillings a month ($9). But their rent is 500 shillings. And even though the landlord took a shine to them, they have trouble finding money for food. They pray daily for what they need. And God is faithful. Not ahead of time, but on time, enough for a day or two comes along when they have more month than money. I realize that they have spent everything to feed me this simple meal.
I find that Timothy is praying fervently that the church will accept him. The fact that it is 300 miles from here is good—a fresh start away from any gossiping tongues. God may forget our sins, but often people do not.
Elizabeth excuses herself to go back to campus.
Timothy asks me if I know that Peninah is expecting. “Yes,” I reply, “but I am waiting for you to tell me.” A baby is coming within a month or two and they are so happy! In Kenya you have kids even if you have nothing. And God does provide. They show me an outfit that says “I am a happy boy—my mum and dad love God.”
We join hands and I pray that God will open a door. I give thanks that they have handled their sin properly and are even more equipped to minister than ever. I ask that the Lord will restore what the “locusts have eaten” and make them mighty in ministry.
Peninah walks as far as the turn in the trail. Timothy walks with me the five minutes back to campus. I ask him to wait a minute since I have something for him. Suspecting that he has been trusting God for money to call Mombasa since they likely have spent their last shilling to feed me, I “bless him” with a couple of notes.
I fully expect our prayers to be answered. They are trusting to God to open or close the door. Timothy is an extremely intelligent man with a good heart. They will accomplish an immense amount of good once in ministry. He will grow and deepen his church. He will maintain integrity in his life. He will reach out to university people and engage the many Muslims in that city.
It will never be paradise again. But the sun will shine and bring forth much good fruit.
Thanks for coming with me.
Today is another day in paradise. The short rains this season may have been long by a month but the sunny weather since is all the sweeter. Sunshine all day. Low humidity. Just a zephyr of breeze. Birds sing. Flowers bloom. Kids play—girls dress up in fancy clothes and boys kick balls or ride bikes. No bugs to speak of. Mmmmmmmm!
But at times there can be trouble in Paradise. Our Chapel speaker today, psychologist Chuck Lewis, parsed the book of Job. This oldest of biblical sagas shows a prosperous man of faith and decency upon whom disasters fall without warning, though not without purpose.
Behind the scenes God and Satan are in combat. Job has a letter of recommendation signed by God. Satan impugns Job’s motives as merely that of a gold-digger. The gauntlet is thrown down. Job will be tested.
Disasters from the Enemy of God and strip this hapless man of the stuff he has worked so hard for. Even worse, those beloved children he has brought into the world and prayed over so faithfully are killed. His health collapses under the sting of boils covering his entire body so he gets no relief day or night, sitting or standing. His psychological support evaporates as his wife, seeing his misery can only say he may as well give up on God and die.
Yet Job does not cave in. God gives all; therefore it is his to take away.
Those famed friends come, showing they have hearts of compassion. And they don’t try to trivialize Job’s situation. They sit with him seven days in silent support. Finally they try to say something to explain the unexplainable. Job must have sinned or done something to bring this on. But in the end Job gets his letter of recommendation from God as a righteous man through it all. And God, angry with the four sincere but foolish friends, has Job pray for them. God then restores to Job his health and provides new wealth and children, including those girls of whom it is said, “There are none fairer than Job’s daughters.”
For lunch today I visited the home of a typical African couple. They have also been robbed by the Enemy of God’s people. Would you like to go along?
Timothy meets me at the college gate. He has a big smile and gives a cheery “Karibu!” (Welcome!) He takes my laptop in hand and we walk over hard-packed footpath/car road. He is telling me how glad he is to see his former Mwalimu (Teacher). I mention I just gave the mid-term exam. “O, I remember. Do you know what I got on that exam six years ago? 100%. A straight A!” I confess I had forgotten that, but I knew he got an A for the course and talked excitedly in those days how he was going to use philosophy in his ministry.
We turn off the main path onto a single-file track through a small plantation of coffee trees and maize. The goats—kids really—baa at us as we pass.
I think of how I interviewed him with my camcorder several years ago. He was so excited. Philosophy was his cup of chai. He would use it in ministry with university students and witness for the Gospel, taking a church in an urban setting.
We go by a building whose walls and roof are of corrugated roofing. “That’s an African Independent Church. You can hear some in there singing.” As we turn at the corner we step alongside an adobe building.
Timothy explains that the African Inland Church (AIC) that the College here is connected with had some problems that were unresolved for a long time. Some congregations grew so frustrated that they broke away and formed their own association—keeping the same (hence confusing) initials: AIC
I can’t help but wonder if Satan is still trying to derail God’s people. The church on earth is no paradise. That awaits the church in glory.
We duck through a narrow door in a gate that could swing open wide enough for a vehicle. This opens upon a modest courtyard, perhaps 15 feet wide and 30 feet long. On each side there are doorless openings to one room and two room apartments. We greet a woman who is sitting in the only chair in view with a plump boy of perhaps a year on her lap. Above the sky is blue with a few friendly puffs of clouds.
On the right we stoop a bit to enter the home of Timothy and Peninah. Peninah comes forth in a sage green outfit, kerchief folded up into a hat that sweeps aloft with her hairdo. She is all smiles. “Please sit down.” There is one four person couch in this 10x10 room. A tiny wood table is the only other furniture piece—the size of a milking stool.
“This is Elizabeth, Mwalimu…”
I find that she is a student at Scott in her second year. She is an orphan and comes to visit Peninah often. Sweet girl and very shy. She wants to serve God now that some have come forward from her church to provide school fees. I think of the countless orphans in Africa who are as destitute as Job unless some Good Samaritan intervenes.
Peninah busies herself in the kitchen. I peek in for a nanosecond so as not to stare. It is like other kitchens in these rental cubes for the poor. A room empty of cabinets. No furniture. No appliances. A small charcoal hibachi on the floor. A few pans and pots. No table. She squats near the floor to prep the rice and vegetables.
So Timothy and I talk of how things are going. While they were engaged, Timothy and Peninah made what we euphemistically call in the States “a mistake.” They made some “bad decisions.” They ended up marrying hastily, incurring a mountain of debt, and under discipline by the church and the College. Friends forsake them. They are crushed.
But like Job they refuse to curse God and cave in. Like King David they confess their sin and seek reconciliation, after first trying to hidehave it all. For over a year they have worked through a difficult situation with church elders and college officials. Now the dark cloud is breaking. They know the Lord has forgiven them and the slate is wiped clean. They have been restored to fellowship and cleared for ministry. They feel the burden is lifted and are rejoicing in the sunshine again and eager to do ministry. This is their passion.
Elizabeth brings an empty basin and a jug of warm water. I swish my hands in it, shake off the drops, and let them air dry.
Peninah brings in a soup bowl filled with rice, peas & carrots, and some chopped meat (probably goat). She sets it in front of me with a soup spoon. Elizabeth gets a smaller helping, while the couple shares a bowl the size of mine. Water and pineapple flavored juice make up our drinks. Peninah prays for the meal—this seems to be the custom in all the local homes that the woman prays.
After lunch I try to use my laptop to show them some slides. But the software is missing and since the power is out (usual during daylight) the batteries are about to shut down we give up on showing slides of India.
Timothy tells me that Elizabeth slipped a note under the door early this morning to the effect that church of 700 in Mombasa needs a pastor and that Timothy would be perfect. So he is to call them ASAP to seize the opportunity. While he and Peninah have jobs at a local school, that is not what God has called them to. They each earn 600 shillings a month ($9). But their rent is 500 shillings. And even though the landlord took a shine to them, they have trouble finding money for food. They pray daily for what they need. And God is faithful. Not ahead of time, but on time, enough for a day or two comes along when they have more month than money. I realize that they have spent everything to feed me this simple meal.
I find that Timothy is praying fervently that the church will accept him. The fact that it is 300 miles from here is good—a fresh start away from any gossiping tongues. God may forget our sins, but often people do not.
Elizabeth excuses herself to go back to campus.
Timothy asks me if I know that Peninah is expecting. “Yes,” I reply, “but I am waiting for you to tell me.” A baby is coming within a month or two and they are so happy! In Kenya you have kids even if you have nothing. And God does provide. They show me an outfit that says “I am a happy boy—my mum and dad love God.”
We join hands and I pray that God will open a door. I give thanks that they have handled their sin properly and are even more equipped to minister than ever. I ask that the Lord will restore what the “locusts have eaten” and make them mighty in ministry.
Peninah walks as far as the turn in the trail. Timothy walks with me the five minutes back to campus. I ask him to wait a minute since I have something for him. Suspecting that he has been trusting God for money to call Mombasa since they likely have spent their last shilling to feed me, I “bless him” with a couple of notes.
I fully expect our prayers to be answered. They are trusting to God to open or close the door. Timothy is an extremely intelligent man with a good heart. They will accomplish an immense amount of good once in ministry. He will grow and deepen his church. He will maintain integrity in his life. He will reach out to university people and engage the many Muslims in that city.
It will never be paradise again. But the sun will shine and bring forth much good fruit.
Thanks for coming with me.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Hiking the Hills
Hello again
I gave a mid-term today. I'm braced for disappointment. : )
I had a great response to my Chapel message, despite it's challenging nature. I include it here in case you are interested. Several have asked me for copies and/or came to consult with me about it. The day is not lost!
A Pilgrim’s Guide
Hiking the Hills of Holiness with Jesus at Your Side
Dr. James W. Gustafson
Key verse: I Peter 1:16 You must he holy for I am holy, says the Lord.
Jesus lived a perfectly holy life. We are destined to be like him when we see him as he is. Meanwhile we must strive to be different from this unholy world.
“Holiness” means “set apart for special use.” We are set apart for God’s use. Holiness is that attribute that applies to all the other attributes of God. His power is a holy power, his love an holy love, his justice an holy justice and so on. God gave an example of how he looks at our unholiness when Ananias and Sapphire conspired to lie to the Holy Spirit.
I have been a Christian for about 50 years. I entered by the narrow gate and began to hike the narrow way with Jesus many years ago. By now I should be nearing the summit where the Father’s House beckons me. But I am still in foothills. My progress is so slow. Why am I not more holy?
A.W. Tozer once said that we are each as holy as we want to be. In other words we have no excuse. God is willing. It is we who allow distractions. The world is too much with us.
Augustine said “Make me holy—but not yet.” He was enjoying the “pleasures of sin for a season.” So often we are settling for the paltry pleasures of this world when we could reach for the lasting satisfactions of the spirit. Bonhoeffer said that as Christians we have already forsaken the world. We live in the world but must not be of the world. This world is not my home, I’m just a –passing through, says the songwriter.
Too many of us say, “I prayer the sinners prayer. I accepted Jesus. When I sin (and that’s not all that often) I have access to forgiveness 24/7 I have my ticket for the heavenly banquet that Jesus purchased and gave me.”
Really? God accepted me—and only because Jesus stood in my place. And I am ver fortunate that God looks in favor upon me and delights in me. I signed on to God’s program. It’s more like joining the army. You belong to the commanders, who tell me when to arise, when to eat, when to march in parade and train on the field. And it may cost me my life! We do not become Christians to lounge in the Officer’s Club sipping chai! We are in the trenches getting dirty and bruised and wounded.
What a mess our world is in. War, genocide, immorality, people proud of their sins. And even in the Bible churches, leaders fall into disgrace through sexual sin or a greedy exploitation of those who trust them. I pray that if ever I fall into public disgrace God will take me off the field at once lest I do more damage to the cause of my Lord.
Some say that I don’t understand how hard it is to be holy these days. Temptations come to us all the time through TV, ads, movies, news. Society tolerates depravity more than in the past? Really? The church flourished in the Roman world which was even more degraded than today. We can have no excuses.
I Corinthians 6:19 says my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in me and I must honor God with my body. Think of it, everywhere I go everything I think and do, God has to be there because he is in me. That should motivate me to better effort.
Ephesians 4:21-24 to put off the old self and to put on the new self created to be like God in holiness.
Colossians 3:5-10 commands me to put to death sexual lusts and greed for money which is idolatry.
I Thessalonians 4:3-8 tells me not to let lust control my body but to live a holy life.
And especially Galatians 5:19-25 lists sins having to do with sex, those having to do with attempts to control events by witchcraft and the power of idols, those having to with nasty relationships with other people. People living that way “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” We are to show the fruit of the Holy Spirit—love, joy , peace, and so on.
This is repeated so often we must take it more seriously. Our God is a consuming fire. He has high expectations. He provides all the assistance we need—his own being within us. I need to be more serious about this.
How can I make more progress, hiking in the hills of holiness toward the Holy City?
Monitor your mind when it is idling, that is, when you are not concentrating on anything in particular. What does my mind drift to? Is it pleasure, money, ambition, worldly dreams, comfort, escape? Am I rummaging through the garbage of life?
When I am out on the trail and a bug flies into my mouth, I just spit it into the bushes. But if it happens in your house or in a cathedral, I won’t just spit it on the floor? Why not? Because your house is special, a church is holy ground. But Scripture says inside me is God’s holy presence. How often do I keep this before my eyes?
When I was courting Ellie many years ago, did I have to write notes to myself to be sure not to forget about her during the day? Of course not. I thought about her every time my mind relaxed from a task I had to do. Why? I loved her; I was crazy about her. I thought about her all the time! Do I love God? Is he the default position in m mind? Do my thoughts go readily to him? Philippians 4 tells that keep thinking about things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy? I have a long way to go on the hills of holiness.
When someone cuts in front of me in the queue at the bank or the market, I find myself judging that person—what’s wrong with that so and so? Do I think maybe he has just lost a child in death or that she may have lost her job or gotten bad news, so that I give them a break? Why am I not more like Jesus in this? I am not as holy as I should be.
What about time? Is it harder for me to pray and read my Bible than it is to watch TV, chatter on the phone, gossip with friends, follow sports, surf the Internet? What is it that will satisfy my heart? The things of this world? No—I am happy when I ma making a difference for God.
What about money? I am strategizing how get more? Am I dreaming about a fancier lifestyle? Greed is idolatry. Covetousness is sin. I should be content with what God provides. All in this world is rubbish or destined to be rubble. Why do I divert my focus?
What about home? A Christian home should not b like a typical home in the culture. Is it a god-filled home, where we live in humility, mutual forgiveness and love? How do I judge my spouse, parents or siblings? Do I want God to judge me that way? As a husband am I to expect her to serve me? My job as a husband is to help my wife fulfill the gifts and calling has given her, to build her up. Her job is to do the same for me. We live not to be served but to serve.
What about my goals. What do you want to be when you have walked on the trail with Jesus for 50 years or more? The key question every day is this: will what I am doing advance my progress upward in holiness?
The world flatters us: “It’s all about you!” God says “it’s all about me. In me alone is life, health, shalom.” All who are godly in Christ Jesus will suffer. Am I lounging in the officers club or fighting in the trenches? Watts wrote this hymn: Must I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, while other fought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas?
And when the Holy Spirit comes in power, changes are astonishing.
Peter was an “I don’t” person. I don’t eat unclean food; I don’t’ go into Gentile houses. God dragged him kicking and screaming into the house of Cornelius, a gentile. God humbled him so that would accept the rebuke of Paul when he drew back from fellowship with Gentile believers.
Paul was an “I do” person—a religious terrorist, rounding up infidels and putting them to death. He had to become blind so he could see Jesus. And he used his energy to reach the Gentiles. He was willing to be reconciled to John Mark after their falling out.
John, brother of James was a son of thunder. But wanting to have power at Jesus right hand so as to lord it over others, he was cowardly enough to get his mom to ask Jesus for the seats of power. But when God was through him he was in a prison camp on Patmos, powerless and gentle as a lamb.
You may say with me, “I am not good at this holiness program!”
Question: is you heart in it? If you want to be good at football, your heart must be in it. Or music, you must devote yourself day and night. Or to paint or cook or parent or write.
You belong 100% to God. Is he your passion? Am I yielding to the Holy Spirit, concentrating on that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
As we pray now, close the eyes. Let us each give God permission to be the Commander not only of the Hosts of Heaven but of our lives. Are we willing for God to deploy us anywhere He knows we can help the kingdom cause? Is it OK if he takes me or my loved ones home to his headquarters?
Truth is, I do not need to be wealthy. I do not need to be healthy. I don’t need my prestige, my position, my respect. I don’t need to be smart. I don’t need my family and loved ones. I don’t even need to live—if I have God and God has me. Jesus is all I need. Like Jesus is all I want to be. Jesus is holy. And holiness is all I long for, holiness is all I want to achieve.
Be holy, for I am holy, says the Lord.
Benediction: Now unto him who is able to present you faultless before His throne, to the only God our Savior, be glory and majesty authority and power through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I gave a mid-term today. I'm braced for disappointment. : )
I had a great response to my Chapel message, despite it's challenging nature. I include it here in case you are interested. Several have asked me for copies and/or came to consult with me about it. The day is not lost!
A Pilgrim’s Guide
Hiking the Hills of Holiness with Jesus at Your Side
Dr. James W. Gustafson
Key verse: I Peter 1:16 You must he holy for I am holy, says the Lord.
Jesus lived a perfectly holy life. We are destined to be like him when we see him as he is. Meanwhile we must strive to be different from this unholy world.
“Holiness” means “set apart for special use.” We are set apart for God’s use. Holiness is that attribute that applies to all the other attributes of God. His power is a holy power, his love an holy love, his justice an holy justice and so on. God gave an example of how he looks at our unholiness when Ananias and Sapphire conspired to lie to the Holy Spirit.
I have been a Christian for about 50 years. I entered by the narrow gate and began to hike the narrow way with Jesus many years ago. By now I should be nearing the summit where the Father’s House beckons me. But I am still in foothills. My progress is so slow. Why am I not more holy?
A.W. Tozer once said that we are each as holy as we want to be. In other words we have no excuse. God is willing. It is we who allow distractions. The world is too much with us.
Augustine said “Make me holy—but not yet.” He was enjoying the “pleasures of sin for a season.” So often we are settling for the paltry pleasures of this world when we could reach for the lasting satisfactions of the spirit. Bonhoeffer said that as Christians we have already forsaken the world. We live in the world but must not be of the world. This world is not my home, I’m just a –passing through, says the songwriter.
Too many of us say, “I prayer the sinners prayer. I accepted Jesus. When I sin (and that’s not all that often) I have access to forgiveness 24/7 I have my ticket for the heavenly banquet that Jesus purchased and gave me.”
Really? God accepted me—and only because Jesus stood in my place. And I am ver fortunate that God looks in favor upon me and delights in me. I signed on to God’s program. It’s more like joining the army. You belong to the commanders, who tell me when to arise, when to eat, when to march in parade and train on the field. And it may cost me my life! We do not become Christians to lounge in the Officer’s Club sipping chai! We are in the trenches getting dirty and bruised and wounded.
What a mess our world is in. War, genocide, immorality, people proud of their sins. And even in the Bible churches, leaders fall into disgrace through sexual sin or a greedy exploitation of those who trust them. I pray that if ever I fall into public disgrace God will take me off the field at once lest I do more damage to the cause of my Lord.
Some say that I don’t understand how hard it is to be holy these days. Temptations come to us all the time through TV, ads, movies, news. Society tolerates depravity more than in the past? Really? The church flourished in the Roman world which was even more degraded than today. We can have no excuses.
I Corinthians 6:19 says my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in me and I must honor God with my body. Think of it, everywhere I go everything I think and do, God has to be there because he is in me. That should motivate me to better effort.
Ephesians 4:21-24 to put off the old self and to put on the new self created to be like God in holiness.
Colossians 3:5-10 commands me to put to death sexual lusts and greed for money which is idolatry.
I Thessalonians 4:3-8 tells me not to let lust control my body but to live a holy life.
And especially Galatians 5:19-25 lists sins having to do with sex, those having to do with attempts to control events by witchcraft and the power of idols, those having to with nasty relationships with other people. People living that way “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” We are to show the fruit of the Holy Spirit—love, joy , peace, and so on.
This is repeated so often we must take it more seriously. Our God is a consuming fire. He has high expectations. He provides all the assistance we need—his own being within us. I need to be more serious about this.
How can I make more progress, hiking in the hills of holiness toward the Holy City?
Monitor your mind when it is idling, that is, when you are not concentrating on anything in particular. What does my mind drift to? Is it pleasure, money, ambition, worldly dreams, comfort, escape? Am I rummaging through the garbage of life?
When I am out on the trail and a bug flies into my mouth, I just spit it into the bushes. But if it happens in your house or in a cathedral, I won’t just spit it on the floor? Why not? Because your house is special, a church is holy ground. But Scripture says inside me is God’s holy presence. How often do I keep this before my eyes?
When I was courting Ellie many years ago, did I have to write notes to myself to be sure not to forget about her during the day? Of course not. I thought about her every time my mind relaxed from a task I had to do. Why? I loved her; I was crazy about her. I thought about her all the time! Do I love God? Is he the default position in m mind? Do my thoughts go readily to him? Philippians 4 tells that keep thinking about things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy? I have a long way to go on the hills of holiness.
When someone cuts in front of me in the queue at the bank or the market, I find myself judging that person—what’s wrong with that so and so? Do I think maybe he has just lost a child in death or that she may have lost her job or gotten bad news, so that I give them a break? Why am I not more like Jesus in this? I am not as holy as I should be.
What about time? Is it harder for me to pray and read my Bible than it is to watch TV, chatter on the phone, gossip with friends, follow sports, surf the Internet? What is it that will satisfy my heart? The things of this world? No—I am happy when I ma making a difference for God.
What about money? I am strategizing how get more? Am I dreaming about a fancier lifestyle? Greed is idolatry. Covetousness is sin. I should be content with what God provides. All in this world is rubbish or destined to be rubble. Why do I divert my focus?
What about home? A Christian home should not b like a typical home in the culture. Is it a god-filled home, where we live in humility, mutual forgiveness and love? How do I judge my spouse, parents or siblings? Do I want God to judge me that way? As a husband am I to expect her to serve me? My job as a husband is to help my wife fulfill the gifts and calling has given her, to build her up. Her job is to do the same for me. We live not to be served but to serve.
What about my goals. What do you want to be when you have walked on the trail with Jesus for 50 years or more? The key question every day is this: will what I am doing advance my progress upward in holiness?
The world flatters us: “It’s all about you!” God says “it’s all about me. In me alone is life, health, shalom.” All who are godly in Christ Jesus will suffer. Am I lounging in the officers club or fighting in the trenches? Watts wrote this hymn: Must I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, while other fought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas?
And when the Holy Spirit comes in power, changes are astonishing.
Peter was an “I don’t” person. I don’t eat unclean food; I don’t’ go into Gentile houses. God dragged him kicking and screaming into the house of Cornelius, a gentile. God humbled him so that would accept the rebuke of Paul when he drew back from fellowship with Gentile believers.
Paul was an “I do” person—a religious terrorist, rounding up infidels and putting them to death. He had to become blind so he could see Jesus. And he used his energy to reach the Gentiles. He was willing to be reconciled to John Mark after their falling out.
John, brother of James was a son of thunder. But wanting to have power at Jesus right hand so as to lord it over others, he was cowardly enough to get his mom to ask Jesus for the seats of power. But when God was through him he was in a prison camp on Patmos, powerless and gentle as a lamb.
You may say with me, “I am not good at this holiness program!”
Question: is you heart in it? If you want to be good at football, your heart must be in it. Or music, you must devote yourself day and night. Or to paint or cook or parent or write.
You belong 100% to God. Is he your passion? Am I yielding to the Holy Spirit, concentrating on that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
As we pray now, close the eyes. Let us each give God permission to be the Commander not only of the Hosts of Heaven but of our lives. Are we willing for God to deploy us anywhere He knows we can help the kingdom cause? Is it OK if he takes me or my loved ones home to his headquarters?
Truth is, I do not need to be wealthy. I do not need to be healthy. I don’t need my prestige, my position, my respect. I don’t need to be smart. I don’t need my family and loved ones. I don’t even need to live—if I have God and God has me. Jesus is all I need. Like Jesus is all I want to be. Jesus is holy. And holiness is all I long for, holiness is all I want to achieve.
Be holy, for I am holy, says the Lord.
Benediction: Now unto him who is able to present you faultless before His throne, to the only God our Savior, be glory and majesty authority and power through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Losses
“I write off all my achievements as losses in order that I might win Christ.”
That is my paraphrase of Philippians 3:8 and the theme of this post.
Our lives have been shifted from the loss column to the win column in the standings. The heavenly playoff season is underway. The stakes are high. It’s all or nothing, do or die.
The other team seemed assured of victory by a lopsided score. The commentators acted a bit embarrassed as the team in black forced their opponents to fumble, to choke, to lose ground on almost every play.
But then the player from nowhere was sent in to substitute for an ineffective QB. “Who is this guy?” Nobody seemed to know. Someone suggested Carpenter U. “Nobody’s ever gotten to the Cosmic Bowl from Carpenter! Whoever he is he won’t last long. They’ll chew him up."
But it ain’t over ‘til its over as the saying goes.
The team in black roughed him up pretty bad. The white jerseys even got blood stains you could see from the stands. But the mystery man pulled off a miracle turn-around. Carpenter had done the impossible. “It’s a miracle.” “We’ve never seen anything like it in all our years of covering these events.” The presses had to be stopped; the story re-written. Our team had moved from the loss column to the win column.
This week at Scott the Carpenter’s team got thrown for a loss. On Wednesday in Chapel the second year student leader announced that he had a call at four a.m. from one of the class members asking for prayer for his boy who was ill and getting worse as the night had worn on. The father called back at dawn to say the Lord had taken his son.
It was a time to “weep with those who weep.” Africans are used to grieving. They experience the raw fragility of humanity. Starvation is not unknown. Accidents happen all the time that are preventable with better roads and safety equipment. Medical care is spotty – and in some remote areas non-existent. Disease picks off the weak ones in the countless herd of humanity here.
Many prayers went up and a coin collection was taken in chapel today to help the family with funeral expenses. We sang Spafford’s stirring hymn: It Is Well with My Soul. I asked my students later if they knew the story of that hymn. Most of them did. William Spafford, his wife, and two daughters planned to sail to England about 100 years ago. His Chicago business required him to delay a week, so his wife and girls sailed without him, ready to re-unite in England a week later. Spafford got a terse telegram a few days later from his wife. “Ship sank STOP I alone survive STOP.”
On his passage to join his wife in Europe he asked the steward to awaken him when the steamer got to the place where the tragedy had occurred. There in the night he tossed two wreaths into the sea, returned to his cabin and wrote these inspired words.
“When peace like a river attendeth my way; when sorrows like sea-billows role; whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say: “It is well, it is well with my soul.”
“Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control: The Lord has regarded my helpless estate. It is well; it is well with my soul.”
Today we learned that the boy’s sister had been shielded at first from what had happened. But she demanded to know why she couldn’t go in to see her sick brother. When they told her he was dead she wept uncontrollably for a long time and would not be comforted.
In class today we were dealing with the problem of evil in philosophy of religion. All religions are attempts to explain why suffering, pain and death are our constant companions. Mr. Spafford embraced the Christian explanation. This world is out of whack, but only temporarily. The carpenter has come and everything in the loss column will be shifted to the win column. The outcome of the Cosmic Bowl has been settled, but we are still waiting for the winning team to get back for the hometown celebration.
The dean told me today that we would likely have to adjust our schedule, for most of the students will go the funeral for their colleague's son, and it is a four hour journey each way. So for Wednesday next we ask for a banner of prayer to be lifted before the Throne of Grace. Please stand with this community in this time of sadness and vulnerability.
Now there is Margaret, who came today from Scotland to help teach several faculty kids being home-schooled.
We were all at the Principal’s house for dinner – Jacob and Esther Kibor’s. Margaret is woman about fifty. She is a lively conversationalist.
Sue Lewis was asking Jacob about his story. And Jacob has a fascinating story, having grown up in a desert area in north Kenya, living in a small skin covered hut about 12 feet in diameter. His mother slept on one side of the floor with the sisters; his father on the other with Jacob and his brothers. It being very hot most of the time the kids were not into clothes very much. Why bother? And they were too poor anyway.
His father somehow heard the Gospel and decided to move to where he could learn more and maybe better their lives. But mother would not budge. So Dad took Jacob and headed out to a small city. None of them were literate. But Jacob found a way to learn to read and thus educated his father by the dim light of a campfire every night. Soon his mother came with the rest of the children and over time they converted from tribal animistic religion to embrace Jesus. Everything began to change because, having no resources whatsoever they had to depend on the Lord. And the Lord took care of them. Jacob now has a PhD as does Esther his wife. Both are at the top both in intellectual firepower and Christ-like living.
Then Margaret began to tell her story. Her husband died quite a few years back, leaving her to raise their three children. Through many years of hard work she launched them into adulthood. She found herself soon after in a relationship with a young man not much older than her son. She was 36 and he 22 when he asked her to marry him. After consulting her pastor, who probed her heart, she accepted the proposal and they were married and soon had two children.
Moving from Glasgow to London to find better employment, her new husband, offered a job, accepted the opportunity to work for high pay in Canada. He would work two weeks and the company would fly him back for a week at home every month.
On one visit home he took her to dinner and ended the evening by saying he had met a younger woman in Canada and he wanted a divorce.
Margaret was devastated. She said as a Christian she didn’t accept divorce. So if he wanted to leave he would have to carry everything through, which he did. She sank into a deep depression. George Mitchell and others were concerned she would take her life to end the pain of her rejection and loss.
In the Psalms, which John Calvin called the “anatomy of the soul,” it mentions those who “wandered in desert wastelands” or “sat in darkness and deepest gloom” until they “cried out to the Lord and he delivered them from their distress.” (Psalm 107) To give the screw another turn, a few days prior to her young husband’s announcement, Margaret had realized that even though she had given her life to God at age 13 and had felt that she was to serve him as a missionary, she was no longer as committed as once she was. She had gone into her bedroom, gotten on her knees and had made a covenant with God, giving him total control over the rest of her life. Then the bombshell had come.
Gradually God lifted her spirits and she applied to serve God in Africa in fidelity to her covenant. But as a now divorced woman, she was disqualified by the mission. Undaunted she wrote to a mission executive who knew her character. He wrote to Jacob Kibor. And today was her first day at Scott Theological College. She had a wee bit of a cry when she was hanging pictures of her kids and grandchildren on the wall. But as she walked about campus she felt totally at home. This was her new home that God had provided and she would love the children here and teach them, assured that God would help her.
A story of loss. But we all were wiping our eyes along with Margaret as she “gave thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love.” (Psalm 107:8)
On a lighter note, George was quoting an obscure Danish theologian in his chapel message. Johannes Pedersen. Looking out at me he asked “Did I pronounce it correctly?” I gave a thumbs up. “I’m glad to be supported by my ex-Scandinavian friend.” Gregg Okesson, another Swede, sitting behind me, whispered "I didn’t know you could lose your ethnicity!” That would indeed be another loss. Just what George had in mind is a matter for speculation. I hope he didn't meam ex-friend!
But George lost a wee bit this week, too. He had come with a suitcase of clothes to give away: football shirts and a pair of canvass shoes and lots of ties. Getting dressed for class after George had gone out this morning, I realized the two ties I had with me clashed with the shirt for the day. “I’ll look at those ties,” I says to myself, says I. Splendid – here’s one with right colors. George won’t object if I wear it today. Well at lunch I was in love with that tie. It had airplanes and maps of the northeast USA and northeast Europe in the design. So I asked George if he would let me have it. “Sure,” he says, it’s one of my favorites but I can get another when I get home.” “No, no, no – I thought it was one of your giveaways. I’m not going to take your tie.” “Yes you will – I want you to have as memento of our friendship.”
So George lost his favorite tie.
Later he asks me what size neck I have. 16.5 or 17. He comes back with a new shirt Jean had bought at a thrift shop but it’s too small at the neck. I try it on. The sleeves are long enough for a Maasai’s arms! "No, no – you fold them back and put links in them!" "O, I see! Perfect!"
I used to wear French cuffs a lot when I was in my teens and twenties. And I still have cuff links, one set given to me for being a groomsman when Bob Draper married my sister, Lois. That was 1950.
So now George will no doubt say that he met me and lost his shirt!
Enough! I’ll speak no more of losses!
(BTW, thanks for reading this. It is nice to have someone with whom to share these experiences. Asante sana!)
That is my paraphrase of Philippians 3:8 and the theme of this post.
Our lives have been shifted from the loss column to the win column in the standings. The heavenly playoff season is underway. The stakes are high. It’s all or nothing, do or die.
The other team seemed assured of victory by a lopsided score. The commentators acted a bit embarrassed as the team in black forced their opponents to fumble, to choke, to lose ground on almost every play.
But then the player from nowhere was sent in to substitute for an ineffective QB. “Who is this guy?” Nobody seemed to know. Someone suggested Carpenter U. “Nobody’s ever gotten to the Cosmic Bowl from Carpenter! Whoever he is he won’t last long. They’ll chew him up."
But it ain’t over ‘til its over as the saying goes.
The team in black roughed him up pretty bad. The white jerseys even got blood stains you could see from the stands. But the mystery man pulled off a miracle turn-around. Carpenter had done the impossible. “It’s a miracle.” “We’ve never seen anything like it in all our years of covering these events.” The presses had to be stopped; the story re-written. Our team had moved from the loss column to the win column.
This week at Scott the Carpenter’s team got thrown for a loss. On Wednesday in Chapel the second year student leader announced that he had a call at four a.m. from one of the class members asking for prayer for his boy who was ill and getting worse as the night had worn on. The father called back at dawn to say the Lord had taken his son.
It was a time to “weep with those who weep.” Africans are used to grieving. They experience the raw fragility of humanity. Starvation is not unknown. Accidents happen all the time that are preventable with better roads and safety equipment. Medical care is spotty – and in some remote areas non-existent. Disease picks off the weak ones in the countless herd of humanity here.
Many prayers went up and a coin collection was taken in chapel today to help the family with funeral expenses. We sang Spafford’s stirring hymn: It Is Well with My Soul. I asked my students later if they knew the story of that hymn. Most of them did. William Spafford, his wife, and two daughters planned to sail to England about 100 years ago. His Chicago business required him to delay a week, so his wife and girls sailed without him, ready to re-unite in England a week later. Spafford got a terse telegram a few days later from his wife. “Ship sank STOP I alone survive STOP.”
On his passage to join his wife in Europe he asked the steward to awaken him when the steamer got to the place where the tragedy had occurred. There in the night he tossed two wreaths into the sea, returned to his cabin and wrote these inspired words.
“When peace like a river attendeth my way; when sorrows like sea-billows role; whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say: “It is well, it is well with my soul.”
“Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control: The Lord has regarded my helpless estate. It is well; it is well with my soul.”
Today we learned that the boy’s sister had been shielded at first from what had happened. But she demanded to know why she couldn’t go in to see her sick brother. When they told her he was dead she wept uncontrollably for a long time and would not be comforted.
In class today we were dealing with the problem of evil in philosophy of religion. All religions are attempts to explain why suffering, pain and death are our constant companions. Mr. Spafford embraced the Christian explanation. This world is out of whack, but only temporarily. The carpenter has come and everything in the loss column will be shifted to the win column. The outcome of the Cosmic Bowl has been settled, but we are still waiting for the winning team to get back for the hometown celebration.
The dean told me today that we would likely have to adjust our schedule, for most of the students will go the funeral for their colleague's son, and it is a four hour journey each way. So for Wednesday next we ask for a banner of prayer to be lifted before the Throne of Grace. Please stand with this community in this time of sadness and vulnerability.
Now there is Margaret, who came today from Scotland to help teach several faculty kids being home-schooled.
We were all at the Principal’s house for dinner – Jacob and Esther Kibor’s. Margaret is woman about fifty. She is a lively conversationalist.
Sue Lewis was asking Jacob about his story. And Jacob has a fascinating story, having grown up in a desert area in north Kenya, living in a small skin covered hut about 12 feet in diameter. His mother slept on one side of the floor with the sisters; his father on the other with Jacob and his brothers. It being very hot most of the time the kids were not into clothes very much. Why bother? And they were too poor anyway.
His father somehow heard the Gospel and decided to move to where he could learn more and maybe better their lives. But mother would not budge. So Dad took Jacob and headed out to a small city. None of them were literate. But Jacob found a way to learn to read and thus educated his father by the dim light of a campfire every night. Soon his mother came with the rest of the children and over time they converted from tribal animistic religion to embrace Jesus. Everything began to change because, having no resources whatsoever they had to depend on the Lord. And the Lord took care of them. Jacob now has a PhD as does Esther his wife. Both are at the top both in intellectual firepower and Christ-like living.
Then Margaret began to tell her story. Her husband died quite a few years back, leaving her to raise their three children. Through many years of hard work she launched them into adulthood. She found herself soon after in a relationship with a young man not much older than her son. She was 36 and he 22 when he asked her to marry him. After consulting her pastor, who probed her heart, she accepted the proposal and they were married and soon had two children.
Moving from Glasgow to London to find better employment, her new husband, offered a job, accepted the opportunity to work for high pay in Canada. He would work two weeks and the company would fly him back for a week at home every month.
On one visit home he took her to dinner and ended the evening by saying he had met a younger woman in Canada and he wanted a divorce.
Margaret was devastated. She said as a Christian she didn’t accept divorce. So if he wanted to leave he would have to carry everything through, which he did. She sank into a deep depression. George Mitchell and others were concerned she would take her life to end the pain of her rejection and loss.
In the Psalms, which John Calvin called the “anatomy of the soul,” it mentions those who “wandered in desert wastelands” or “sat in darkness and deepest gloom” until they “cried out to the Lord and he delivered them from their distress.” (Psalm 107) To give the screw another turn, a few days prior to her young husband’s announcement, Margaret had realized that even though she had given her life to God at age 13 and had felt that she was to serve him as a missionary, she was no longer as committed as once she was. She had gone into her bedroom, gotten on her knees and had made a covenant with God, giving him total control over the rest of her life. Then the bombshell had come.
Gradually God lifted her spirits and she applied to serve God in Africa in fidelity to her covenant. But as a now divorced woman, she was disqualified by the mission. Undaunted she wrote to a mission executive who knew her character. He wrote to Jacob Kibor. And today was her first day at Scott Theological College. She had a wee bit of a cry when she was hanging pictures of her kids and grandchildren on the wall. But as she walked about campus she felt totally at home. This was her new home that God had provided and she would love the children here and teach them, assured that God would help her.
A story of loss. But we all were wiping our eyes along with Margaret as she “gave thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love.” (Psalm 107:8)
On a lighter note, George was quoting an obscure Danish theologian in his chapel message. Johannes Pedersen. Looking out at me he asked “Did I pronounce it correctly?” I gave a thumbs up. “I’m glad to be supported by my ex-Scandinavian friend.” Gregg Okesson, another Swede, sitting behind me, whispered "I didn’t know you could lose your ethnicity!” That would indeed be another loss. Just what George had in mind is a matter for speculation. I hope he didn't meam ex-friend!
But George lost a wee bit this week, too. He had come with a suitcase of clothes to give away: football shirts and a pair of canvass shoes and lots of ties. Getting dressed for class after George had gone out this morning, I realized the two ties I had with me clashed with the shirt for the day. “I’ll look at those ties,” I says to myself, says I. Splendid – here’s one with right colors. George won’t object if I wear it today. Well at lunch I was in love with that tie. It had airplanes and maps of the northeast USA and northeast Europe in the design. So I asked George if he would let me have it. “Sure,” he says, it’s one of my favorites but I can get another when I get home.” “No, no, no – I thought it was one of your giveaways. I’m not going to take your tie.” “Yes you will – I want you to have as memento of our friendship.”
So George lost his favorite tie.
Later he asks me what size neck I have. 16.5 or 17. He comes back with a new shirt Jean had bought at a thrift shop but it’s too small at the neck. I try it on. The sleeves are long enough for a Maasai’s arms! "No, no – you fold them back and put links in them!" "O, I see! Perfect!"
I used to wear French cuffs a lot when I was in my teens and twenties. And I still have cuff links, one set given to me for being a groomsman when Bob Draper married my sister, Lois. That was 1950.
So now George will no doubt say that he met me and lost his shirt!
Enough! I’ll speak no more of losses!
(BTW, thanks for reading this. It is nice to have someone with whom to share these experiences. Asante sana!)
Patience is a virtue
Pastor David Midwood advised us never to pray for more patience—because the only way patience can be achieved is through times of frustration and trials.
This is one of those days.
On the “mission field” one has to find a way to absorb frustrations. They arise when the things we think should be easy and/or reliable have a way of slipping off the table.
Take my poor colleague, Dr. “Jolly” George Mitchell. The rota has him preaching in chapel today at 10:40. This is the day that started with the power outage and hurricane lantern fiasco. To our delight, we found that the trusty old Scott generator had kicked in, providing power to the chapel and to the administration building. So George has his power point pictures loaded into his laptop and is ready to go. He asks the staff to set it up with the projector in the chapel so he’ll be all set when classes pause for the daily assembly period.
So the hard-working adjuncts all head off to their classes. Power is on, overhead projectors are shining. Things look good. While the rains of the night are generously blessing the land all morning and we have to shout to be heard above the din of the dewy damp drops on the metal roofs, it’s nothing we cannot take in stride. We are seasoned cross-cultural teachers!
Chapel is full house today, for late arriving students have taken residence. Ken Hall (of the incredible Tanzania army ant story), a diminutive man, is chapel leader. But his mousy voice is no match for the drumbeat on the roof. I try to read his lips and catch the occasional phrase. But where’s George, our morning speaker?
Ah! Here he comes, panting, all bedraggled from the rain assaulting him on the walk from his classroom to chapel. He has the biggest classroom on campus but it’s also the farthest away. He starts to rummage through his backpack, moaning and groaning in muted tones.
“What’s the matter, George?” I ask. “Someone loaned the connector cord that links the laptop to the projector to a student, who passed it on to another and it’s nowhere to be found! So without the PowerPoint I’ll need my Bible for the notes in it, and I can’ find it! They’re singing the hymn and I’ll be on straightaway after the prayer!”
So I notice one of the many compartments in his bag is still shut. I unzip. “Is this it, George?” I ask, handing him what looks like a well worn Bible, worthy of an elderly Scotch divine. “O praise God—you’ve saved me!” “No, George—get this straight: Jesus saved you. I only found your Bible. Now go preach and don’t hold back.”
Of course, as a seasoned preacher, he does a fine job without the visual show. But it is frustrating all the same. Learning patience—it’s a huge learning curve.
In my philosophy class all 26 students are present for the first time. Two had missed the first day (which is equal to a week of class time). Maybe they had traveling delays, as some are in transit several days to get here, hop scotching from bus to matatu (mini-van) to tuk-tuk (a tiny 3-three-wheeled conveyance, a sort of motorized rickshaw) as need dictates. Some are from Sudan or Uganda or Rwanda or Tanzania perhaps. (Ten countries are represented on campus now, including Laura, a lovely blond 19 year old from Holland taking a “break year” after High School.) Some have been sent home to raise their tuition fees, for Africans are culturally used to just showing up, expecting to be taken in and provided for if they have inadequate resources to pay their freight. That’s the way it is in the tribal life many have come from.
Some are now handing in questions for me to answer. I was astounded by the first one, from Milka, who is enrolled in the less ambitious Diploma Programme:
“Post modernity challenges every discipline of education and generally all meta-narratives. It does not give any answer to whatever controversy it creates. To my opinion philosophy is a discipline which sort of is similar to this. Please respond.”
This is a graduate level question! Or at least a senior bachelor-of-arts student’s question. You don’t expect that from a Diploma student.
Several others wonder why they should study European philosophy if they are going to minister the Gospel in African churches. I hope I gave a satisfactory answer. Other students seem to be engrossed already. The deputy principal told me some in the class, when asked, said “we are getting into deep things.”
This is why I love to teach in Kenya. I don’t have to raise the (brain) dead before I can teach them—not here. They are eager to have me stretch their minds.
Just as we break for lunch, a familiar face smiles at me from the doorway. It is Benson Peter Nzioka, a local Akamba (tribe) man our family is linked to. A relationship somewhat similar to a “sister-city” compact between cities on different continents.
Peter will take some lunch in the dining hall while I eat with the faculty family that is hosting me and George, along with Chuck and Sue Lewis (teaching a course in counseling). So an hour later I invite Peter to come the guest house. I remind him that this new house I’m staying in is where the Draper’s house once stood. “O, yes,” he replies, “as a 12-year-old lad I used to come here to find yard work so our family could have food.”
That’s how my sister and her husband met this boy when they were teaching back in the 1980s. They soon noticed that Peter was honest, hard-working and very bright. So they began to send little things home with him for his "poorest of the poor" fatherless family. Soon they met his mother and sisters and brothers and decided they should encourage Peter to go to university. To abbreviate a long and stirring story, Peter got a degree in social studies from a Kenyan university and began to take on the role of head-of-the-household, looking out for his mother, Grace, especially. But grinding poverty was eating up every advance. They could not afford $5.00 a month rent in the mud brick shack and were being evicted. At that time my sister Lois approached our extended family to see if we could do something for this worthy Kenyan family. With but little sacrifice on our part we raised the small amount needed to buy them an acre of land and build a stone house. Grace is ambitious, weaving and selling baskets and growing corn, cowpeas and fruit trees on the land, as well as chickens and sometimes a goat. They are still scraping by but are slowly lifting themselves with somehwhat better-paying jobs and the next generation will be able to go on to college. I had the honor of marrying Peter and Gladys here in 1993. That saga will have wait for another blog.
I show Peter the box of clothing I brought over for the family—mainly for the kids. We bought most of it at Building 19. He is so grateful for the socks, knit hats, shirts and sweaters, etc. We arrange for me to go to Nairobi next week to have a feast that Gladys (his wife) will prepare for the 15 or more of us. They are so excited to have anyone of our family come to see them.
Peter and Gladys work with the “nobodies” living in a slum area of Nairobi—a typical modern city that daily receives country folks looking for a job instead of scraping a living from field and forest in the back country. I had advised Peter two years ago to get a part-time job so he could feed his family properly because these people cannot pay him anything.
Gladys once gave their food to a needier family and told the kids they would have to pray to their Heavenly Father to feed them, since they had nothing left for themselves. They don’t eat every day often-times. Peter explains that he is convinced that as long as God gives him strength he is going to devote himself to the needs of the people in his little barrio church, for that’s what he is called to do. No part-time job. I decide not to challenge a commitment like that. So I give him enough cash to cover his transport and the food Gladys will need to buy for the meal next week on Saturday the 13th.
I think sometimes that I have troubles! Peter and Gladys must have the patience of Job!
Just as Peter is getting into the car taking him downtown, another face appears. It is Timothy Muthusi, one of my star students of a few years ago. He is determined to write the great African philosophy some day. Timothy married another of my former students, Peninah. They had a rocky start from some decisions they made at the time they were about to marry. But the clouds are now lifting for them and they feel a new joy in the Lord and a new welcome in their restored church ministry. Patiently waiting for God to restore their confidence and joy has deepened their lives. They are living next door to the campus and will give me lunch next Wednesday in their home. Patience.
All day it has been raining. The locals love all the rain they can get—it’s better than the drought they often suffer. But Ken Hall tells me there’s too much rain and that can damage crops as badly as drought.
It’s not too bad to be a little frustrated because you are running behind when the interruptions are so beautiful. Who is it who said that life is what happens during the interruptions you never planned for?
An item you may be wondering about. Have you noticed all these African students have a Bible name? Shadrack, Festus, Solomon, Zechariah, Peninah and so on. In the Christian community a child is given his tribal name and also a baptismal name, usually from the Bible (no Herod or Judas as yet). And when we get a class roster the alphabetical list is by their baptismal name because most tribal surnames begin with M or N making it very difficult to make a manageable set of grade records.
As a gale force wind (at least it sounds like one) clears the storm clouds out, I think how people never seem to know that too much rain can be bad for harvests. November “short rains” should be over by Christmas. Not this season. As kids we used to sing “It ain’t gonna rain no mo’, no mo’ It ain’t gone rain no mo’! How the heck can I wash my neck if ain’t gonna rain no mo’?” The first time Ellie and I came here every roof had gutters directing rain water to a cistern to save for the two dry seasons. That precious water had to be boiled before use and when the supply ran out water had to be trucked in at great cost. But now Scott has a fine deep well. So we don’t mind so much if it ain’t gonna rain no mo’!
Weather can teach us patience, too. Patience, they say, is a virtue. And all virtues accumulate slowly over time, often at a glacial pace. No short-cuts possible. Don't buy any book titled "Ten Quick Steps to Patience."
This is one of those days.
On the “mission field” one has to find a way to absorb frustrations. They arise when the things we think should be easy and/or reliable have a way of slipping off the table.
Take my poor colleague, Dr. “Jolly” George Mitchell. The rota has him preaching in chapel today at 10:40. This is the day that started with the power outage and hurricane lantern fiasco. To our delight, we found that the trusty old Scott generator had kicked in, providing power to the chapel and to the administration building. So George has his power point pictures loaded into his laptop and is ready to go. He asks the staff to set it up with the projector in the chapel so he’ll be all set when classes pause for the daily assembly period.
So the hard-working adjuncts all head off to their classes. Power is on, overhead projectors are shining. Things look good. While the rains of the night are generously blessing the land all morning and we have to shout to be heard above the din of the dewy damp drops on the metal roofs, it’s nothing we cannot take in stride. We are seasoned cross-cultural teachers!
Chapel is full house today, for late arriving students have taken residence. Ken Hall (of the incredible Tanzania army ant story), a diminutive man, is chapel leader. But his mousy voice is no match for the drumbeat on the roof. I try to read his lips and catch the occasional phrase. But where’s George, our morning speaker?
Ah! Here he comes, panting, all bedraggled from the rain assaulting him on the walk from his classroom to chapel. He has the biggest classroom on campus but it’s also the farthest away. He starts to rummage through his backpack, moaning and groaning in muted tones.
“What’s the matter, George?” I ask. “Someone loaned the connector cord that links the laptop to the projector to a student, who passed it on to another and it’s nowhere to be found! So without the PowerPoint I’ll need my Bible for the notes in it, and I can’ find it! They’re singing the hymn and I’ll be on straightaway after the prayer!”
So I notice one of the many compartments in his bag is still shut. I unzip. “Is this it, George?” I ask, handing him what looks like a well worn Bible, worthy of an elderly Scotch divine. “O praise God—you’ve saved me!” “No, George—get this straight: Jesus saved you. I only found your Bible. Now go preach and don’t hold back.”
Of course, as a seasoned preacher, he does a fine job without the visual show. But it is frustrating all the same. Learning patience—it’s a huge learning curve.
In my philosophy class all 26 students are present for the first time. Two had missed the first day (which is equal to a week of class time). Maybe they had traveling delays, as some are in transit several days to get here, hop scotching from bus to matatu (mini-van) to tuk-tuk (a tiny 3-three-wheeled conveyance, a sort of motorized rickshaw) as need dictates. Some are from Sudan or Uganda or Rwanda or Tanzania perhaps. (Ten countries are represented on campus now, including Laura, a lovely blond 19 year old from Holland taking a “break year” after High School.) Some have been sent home to raise their tuition fees, for Africans are culturally used to just showing up, expecting to be taken in and provided for if they have inadequate resources to pay their freight. That’s the way it is in the tribal life many have come from.
Some are now handing in questions for me to answer. I was astounded by the first one, from Milka, who is enrolled in the less ambitious Diploma Programme:
“Post modernity challenges every discipline of education and generally all meta-narratives. It does not give any answer to whatever controversy it creates. To my opinion philosophy is a discipline which sort of is similar to this. Please respond.”
This is a graduate level question! Or at least a senior bachelor-of-arts student’s question. You don’t expect that from a Diploma student.
Several others wonder why they should study European philosophy if they are going to minister the Gospel in African churches. I hope I gave a satisfactory answer. Other students seem to be engrossed already. The deputy principal told me some in the class, when asked, said “we are getting into deep things.”
This is why I love to teach in Kenya. I don’t have to raise the (brain) dead before I can teach them—not here. They are eager to have me stretch their minds.
Just as we break for lunch, a familiar face smiles at me from the doorway. It is Benson Peter Nzioka, a local Akamba (tribe) man our family is linked to. A relationship somewhat similar to a “sister-city” compact between cities on different continents.
Peter will take some lunch in the dining hall while I eat with the faculty family that is hosting me and George, along with Chuck and Sue Lewis (teaching a course in counseling). So an hour later I invite Peter to come the guest house. I remind him that this new house I’m staying in is where the Draper’s house once stood. “O, yes,” he replies, “as a 12-year-old lad I used to come here to find yard work so our family could have food.”
That’s how my sister and her husband met this boy when they were teaching back in the 1980s. They soon noticed that Peter was honest, hard-working and very bright. So they began to send little things home with him for his "poorest of the poor" fatherless family. Soon they met his mother and sisters and brothers and decided they should encourage Peter to go to university. To abbreviate a long and stirring story, Peter got a degree in social studies from a Kenyan university and began to take on the role of head-of-the-household, looking out for his mother, Grace, especially. But grinding poverty was eating up every advance. They could not afford $5.00 a month rent in the mud brick shack and were being evicted. At that time my sister Lois approached our extended family to see if we could do something for this worthy Kenyan family. With but little sacrifice on our part we raised the small amount needed to buy them an acre of land and build a stone house. Grace is ambitious, weaving and selling baskets and growing corn, cowpeas and fruit trees on the land, as well as chickens and sometimes a goat. They are still scraping by but are slowly lifting themselves with somehwhat better-paying jobs and the next generation will be able to go on to college. I had the honor of marrying Peter and Gladys here in 1993. That saga will have wait for another blog.
I show Peter the box of clothing I brought over for the family—mainly for the kids. We bought most of it at Building 19. He is so grateful for the socks, knit hats, shirts and sweaters, etc. We arrange for me to go to Nairobi next week to have a feast that Gladys (his wife) will prepare for the 15 or more of us. They are so excited to have anyone of our family come to see them.
Peter and Gladys work with the “nobodies” living in a slum area of Nairobi—a typical modern city that daily receives country folks looking for a job instead of scraping a living from field and forest in the back country. I had advised Peter two years ago to get a part-time job so he could feed his family properly because these people cannot pay him anything.
Gladys once gave their food to a needier family and told the kids they would have to pray to their Heavenly Father to feed them, since they had nothing left for themselves. They don’t eat every day often-times. Peter explains that he is convinced that as long as God gives him strength he is going to devote himself to the needs of the people in his little barrio church, for that’s what he is called to do. No part-time job. I decide not to challenge a commitment like that. So I give him enough cash to cover his transport and the food Gladys will need to buy for the meal next week on Saturday the 13th.
I think sometimes that I have troubles! Peter and Gladys must have the patience of Job!
Just as Peter is getting into the car taking him downtown, another face appears. It is Timothy Muthusi, one of my star students of a few years ago. He is determined to write the great African philosophy some day. Timothy married another of my former students, Peninah. They had a rocky start from some decisions they made at the time they were about to marry. But the clouds are now lifting for them and they feel a new joy in the Lord and a new welcome in their restored church ministry. Patiently waiting for God to restore their confidence and joy has deepened their lives. They are living next door to the campus and will give me lunch next Wednesday in their home. Patience.
All day it has been raining. The locals love all the rain they can get—it’s better than the drought they often suffer. But Ken Hall tells me there’s too much rain and that can damage crops as badly as drought.
It’s not too bad to be a little frustrated because you are running behind when the interruptions are so beautiful. Who is it who said that life is what happens during the interruptions you never planned for?
An item you may be wondering about. Have you noticed all these African students have a Bible name? Shadrack, Festus, Solomon, Zechariah, Peninah and so on. In the Christian community a child is given his tribal name and also a baptismal name, usually from the Bible (no Herod or Judas as yet). And when we get a class roster the alphabetical list is by their baptismal name because most tribal surnames begin with M or N making it very difficult to make a manageable set of grade records.
As a gale force wind (at least it sounds like one) clears the storm clouds out, I think how people never seem to know that too much rain can be bad for harvests. November “short rains” should be over by Christmas. Not this season. As kids we used to sing “It ain’t gonna rain no mo’, no mo’ It ain’t gone rain no mo’! How the heck can I wash my neck if ain’t gonna rain no mo’?” The first time Ellie and I came here every roof had gutters directing rain water to a cistern to save for the two dry seasons. That precious water had to be boiled before use and when the supply ran out water had to be trucked in at great cost. But now Scott has a fine deep well. So we don’t mind so much if it ain’t gonna rain no mo’!
Weather can teach us patience, too. Patience, they say, is a virtue. And all virtues accumulate slowly over time, often at a glacial pace. No short-cuts possible. Don't buy any book titled "Ten Quick Steps to Patience."
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Life with Jolly George
Now that my roommate has come things are a bit lively. Dr. George Mitchell is a pastor and Bible scholar from Glasgow. You can tell by his brogue. When Greg Okesson, dean at the college here, announced that George was coming back, the students clapped. He asked some of them, “What do you like about Dr. Mitchell?” “His jokes.” “Can you understand them?” “No—but they are funny and we laugh with him.” Some guys get all the breaks.
George always has a story. And he always has a handout. He gives the kids balloons. He collects scarves and ladies head scarves and men’s ties and all sorts of bric-a-brac that he gives to students, faculty and wives, to gatekeepers and grounds men and the like. He brings Gideon Testaments and Bible study guides—just about anything that can be used. And in Kenya everything can be used (even if it is used) and given a lot of mileage.
He even brought a bunch of books by a world renowned AIDS specialist. And that reminded Gregg that some doctor from the USA left 200 condoms at Scott for the new clinic on campus. Hold on! This is a Christian college training pastors and church workers. But these students go out on the field every weekend and over semester breaks. And we all know about Africa’s AIDS problem and the thousands of kids either diseased or orphaned.
But this is a shame culture. There are things that go on you don’t acknowledge and certainly you don’t talk about. This contributes to the epidemic. Gregg decides to take them to the clinic guy. “Here’s a box of 200 condoms.” No reply. Just a fleeting bulging of the eyes. Pause. “OK, you can put them over there.” This man is not about to discuss it. Will these just sit there for years? Will someone discuss it at a pastor’s conference and see them go to where they can do some good? Stay tuned.
Here’s George again dispensing joy wherever he goes. And he has a big challenge, teaching the first years (freshmen) the Gospels. A big class of over 40 students. I think he’ll handle it OK.
He handed out the Gideon books – a nice leatherette version with gilt edges and a place ribbon: New Testament and Psalms—to his class. (More bribery?) When some straggle in late he says, “Sorry you’re coming in late—I’ve just given out the last of the Bibles. I expect you to be here on time.” Atta boy, George. You tell ‘em. But he says everything with that big toothy smile and lovely brogue. He’s built like Santa Claus—not for speed but for comfort, as portly Brinley Evans used to say. (Brinley was a West Church missionary from England serving in Nigeria who used to teach our kids “Jesus loves me” in Hausa, supported by his violin. My children and I can still sing it, some 40 years later!)
So here is one of George’s stories.
A lad in Glasgow, Gordon Thompson, has an alcoholic mum and no father at home. Living in worst areas of Glasgow, he drops out of school at age 14. With help of his brother he talks his way into being a dishwasher at a restaurant with permission to sleep on the floor. He’s not going home again. This is in a notoriously bad side of the tracks.
He’s a good worker and over time he learns all the jobs in the restaurant and ends up being the chef! Now he is making money for the first time and he decides to go buy his first suit of clothes.
He asks a waitress where he should go to show off his new suit. “O,” she says, “when people want to show of their clothes they go to church. You can go to the one right down the street.”
So Gordon goes to the Baptist Church, hears the Gospel and gets saved. He decides to go back to school. He goes to a Bible College and has a hard time due to “poor learning skills.” Enter George Mitchell who teaches Bible, Hebrew and Greek in a nearby seminary. Testing Gordon they find he is dyslexic—and no one in the Bible College caught it despite several years of his study there. Now George has lectures on a CD. “Here,” he says, “play this over and over until you have in down pat.”
Eventually Gordon graduates and is ordained a pastor in a church in the tough district that no one will take on. He gets a car and puts a big cross on the boot (trunk) so in a few months every one knows the Baptist pastor’s car. He dives into the problems with the Gospel message and people get converted and baptized. George keeps contact and brings in clothing for Gordon to give out. One was a fur coat someone donated. So a woman in that neighborhood is walking around in a fur coat.
“Can you use a wedding dress, Gordon?” “Oh yes—some of the couples I marry use borrowed clothes for their wedding.” So a wedding dress gets recycled gain and again.
But the church is being vandalized. He goes to a man in the tenement that overlooks the church property. “John, where did you get those running shoes?” “From you, Pastor.” “And what about that suit over in the closet there?” “From you.” “OK—do you think you can help me?” “I’ll see what I can do.”
This man finds a woman there who is mostly at home. She gets involved in the church. So whenever she spots hooligans in the area she throws the window up, sticks out her head and yells at them: “you’re not invisible—I know what you’re up to.” No more vandalism.
But the flat roof of the church leaks. Gordon starts a fund to raise the 75 thousand quid needed for a pitched roof. Lady X often plays the national bingo. She calls Gordon: “I’ve just won 120,000 pounds. Can you use it even if it comes from gambling?” “If you want to donate it, just put it in the offering when you are ready.” So next Sunday Gordon has the money for the roof repair.
By now Gordon is getting calls from other churches, upscale. But he sees that the deacons are fighting the pastor and the pastor is fighting the flock. “I want no part of it. This is where God is doing a work!”
So tomorrow when George preaches in chapel no one will fall asleep. No way!
Speaking of chapel, the opening of the term today was graced by a fine message by Gregg Okesson on II Peter 1:3-4. “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…. Through these he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them we may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”
African theologians make a lot of the idea of participation. Rather than seeking knowledge through detached objective analysis as westerners do, they stress that we learn by participation in the lives of other people as well as in nature (through working in the fields and forests or herding animals). Life is relational. And that includes participating in the divine nature of God, the creator of all that is. God came into the fragility of humanity (where life is threatened by powerful forces we have little power over) in order to redeem us and ultimately deliver us from our vulnerability. The incarnation exposed God to the vulnerability of being a helpless baby, a country rabbi, and a condemned malefactor. Thus God is able to provide all we need until we share his glory in the resurrection to come. Our humanity is no barrier between us and God but is rather the vehicle by which we come to share in God’s divine nature. In Him we live and move and have our being!
This is another example of how we can learn from another cultural perspective and enrich our understanding of the life God has given us.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch….
It’s 5 am Thursday January 5. A voice in the wilderness calls from the next room. “Brother Jim? I canna find me torrrch and there’s no power. Can you help me?”
My trusty shake and bake flash at the ready, we stumble downstairs. “George,” says I, “we are like the foolish virgins—we forgot to get oil and trim our lamps!” “Aye, you are spot on, brother,” says he.
George remembered there were two candles on the coffee table. “Do we even have matches?” I tell him where they are in the kitchen. So that’s a start. We unwrap the shrink-package from the brand new hurricane lanterns and go to the porch to pour in some kerosene. Soon we have two lanterns aglow.
But there’s no power and George is preaching chapel today, hoping to use PowerPoint. Plan B?
So it’s a cold shave and shower today. No tea either as the pot is electric. Thankfully, Kim Okesson gave us some hard boiled eggs yesterday.
So I’m up stairs doing Bodylastics exercise. George is in the lav singing from the Messiah the aria “The People Who Walk in Darkness Have Seen a Great Light.” So I join in a bit. In these concrete houses we sound like a couple of basso profundos at the Met.
As I said, it’s always an adventure with Jolly George—Dr Mitchell the Glaswegian scholar.
George always has a story. And he always has a handout. He gives the kids balloons. He collects scarves and ladies head scarves and men’s ties and all sorts of bric-a-brac that he gives to students, faculty and wives, to gatekeepers and grounds men and the like. He brings Gideon Testaments and Bible study guides—just about anything that can be used. And in Kenya everything can be used (even if it is used) and given a lot of mileage.
He even brought a bunch of books by a world renowned AIDS specialist. And that reminded Gregg that some doctor from the USA left 200 condoms at Scott for the new clinic on campus. Hold on! This is a Christian college training pastors and church workers. But these students go out on the field every weekend and over semester breaks. And we all know about Africa’s AIDS problem and the thousands of kids either diseased or orphaned.
But this is a shame culture. There are things that go on you don’t acknowledge and certainly you don’t talk about. This contributes to the epidemic. Gregg decides to take them to the clinic guy. “Here’s a box of 200 condoms.” No reply. Just a fleeting bulging of the eyes. Pause. “OK, you can put them over there.” This man is not about to discuss it. Will these just sit there for years? Will someone discuss it at a pastor’s conference and see them go to where they can do some good? Stay tuned.
Here’s George again dispensing joy wherever he goes. And he has a big challenge, teaching the first years (freshmen) the Gospels. A big class of over 40 students. I think he’ll handle it OK.
He handed out the Gideon books – a nice leatherette version with gilt edges and a place ribbon: New Testament and Psalms—to his class. (More bribery?) When some straggle in late he says, “Sorry you’re coming in late—I’ve just given out the last of the Bibles. I expect you to be here on time.” Atta boy, George. You tell ‘em. But he says everything with that big toothy smile and lovely brogue. He’s built like Santa Claus—not for speed but for comfort, as portly Brinley Evans used to say. (Brinley was a West Church missionary from England serving in Nigeria who used to teach our kids “Jesus loves me” in Hausa, supported by his violin. My children and I can still sing it, some 40 years later!)
So here is one of George’s stories.
A lad in Glasgow, Gordon Thompson, has an alcoholic mum and no father at home. Living in worst areas of Glasgow, he drops out of school at age 14. With help of his brother he talks his way into being a dishwasher at a restaurant with permission to sleep on the floor. He’s not going home again. This is in a notoriously bad side of the tracks.
He’s a good worker and over time he learns all the jobs in the restaurant and ends up being the chef! Now he is making money for the first time and he decides to go buy his first suit of clothes.
He asks a waitress where he should go to show off his new suit. “O,” she says, “when people want to show of their clothes they go to church. You can go to the one right down the street.”
So Gordon goes to the Baptist Church, hears the Gospel and gets saved. He decides to go back to school. He goes to a Bible College and has a hard time due to “poor learning skills.” Enter George Mitchell who teaches Bible, Hebrew and Greek in a nearby seminary. Testing Gordon they find he is dyslexic—and no one in the Bible College caught it despite several years of his study there. Now George has lectures on a CD. “Here,” he says, “play this over and over until you have in down pat.”
Eventually Gordon graduates and is ordained a pastor in a church in the tough district that no one will take on. He gets a car and puts a big cross on the boot (trunk) so in a few months every one knows the Baptist pastor’s car. He dives into the problems with the Gospel message and people get converted and baptized. George keeps contact and brings in clothing for Gordon to give out. One was a fur coat someone donated. So a woman in that neighborhood is walking around in a fur coat.
“Can you use a wedding dress, Gordon?” “Oh yes—some of the couples I marry use borrowed clothes for their wedding.” So a wedding dress gets recycled gain and again.
But the church is being vandalized. He goes to a man in the tenement that overlooks the church property. “John, where did you get those running shoes?” “From you, Pastor.” “And what about that suit over in the closet there?” “From you.” “OK—do you think you can help me?” “I’ll see what I can do.”
This man finds a woman there who is mostly at home. She gets involved in the church. So whenever she spots hooligans in the area she throws the window up, sticks out her head and yells at them: “you’re not invisible—I know what you’re up to.” No more vandalism.
But the flat roof of the church leaks. Gordon starts a fund to raise the 75 thousand quid needed for a pitched roof. Lady X often plays the national bingo. She calls Gordon: “I’ve just won 120,000 pounds. Can you use it even if it comes from gambling?” “If you want to donate it, just put it in the offering when you are ready.” So next Sunday Gordon has the money for the roof repair.
By now Gordon is getting calls from other churches, upscale. But he sees that the deacons are fighting the pastor and the pastor is fighting the flock. “I want no part of it. This is where God is doing a work!”
So tomorrow when George preaches in chapel no one will fall asleep. No way!
Speaking of chapel, the opening of the term today was graced by a fine message by Gregg Okesson on II Peter 1:3-4. “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…. Through these he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them we may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”
African theologians make a lot of the idea of participation. Rather than seeking knowledge through detached objective analysis as westerners do, they stress that we learn by participation in the lives of other people as well as in nature (through working in the fields and forests or herding animals). Life is relational. And that includes participating in the divine nature of God, the creator of all that is. God came into the fragility of humanity (where life is threatened by powerful forces we have little power over) in order to redeem us and ultimately deliver us from our vulnerability. The incarnation exposed God to the vulnerability of being a helpless baby, a country rabbi, and a condemned malefactor. Thus God is able to provide all we need until we share his glory in the resurrection to come. Our humanity is no barrier between us and God but is rather the vehicle by which we come to share in God’s divine nature. In Him we live and move and have our being!
This is another example of how we can learn from another cultural perspective and enrich our understanding of the life God has given us.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch….
It’s 5 am Thursday January 5. A voice in the wilderness calls from the next room. “Brother Jim? I canna find me torrrch and there’s no power. Can you help me?”
My trusty shake and bake flash at the ready, we stumble downstairs. “George,” says I, “we are like the foolish virgins—we forgot to get oil and trim our lamps!” “Aye, you are spot on, brother,” says he.
George remembered there were two candles on the coffee table. “Do we even have matches?” I tell him where they are in the kitchen. So that’s a start. We unwrap the shrink-package from the brand new hurricane lanterns and go to the porch to pour in some kerosene. Soon we have two lanterns aglow.
But there’s no power and George is preaching chapel today, hoping to use PowerPoint. Plan B?
So it’s a cold shave and shower today. No tea either as the pot is electric. Thankfully, Kim Okesson gave us some hard boiled eggs yesterday.
So I’m up stairs doing Bodylastics exercise. George is in the lav singing from the Messiah the aria “The People Who Walk in Darkness Have Seen a Great Light.” So I join in a bit. In these concrete houses we sound like a couple of basso profundos at the Met.
As I said, it’s always an adventure with Jolly George—Dr Mitchell the Glaswegian scholar.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Sleeping Alone
Sleeping lone in a new house in a strange land is new one for me. My to-be-housemate is still in Scotland, snuggled tight in his bed while visions of sugar plums dance in his head. No one has ever stayed here in this four bedroom, three bath house, perfumed with the taint of fresh concrete and enamel paint. It’s 1:30 at night. Spreading the netting over the bed, I’m too tired to care about ghosts or goblins. Using my “shake and shine” no-batteries flashlight, I flip of the bare bulb ceiling light and shove off to dreamland.
Seven hours later the cry of the Ibis jolts me awake. Tuesday, January 02, and no classes. This is shake-down day. No rush—I’ll just steal a few more winks. Soon it’s nine and I haul myself out of bed. A good sleep is the best cure for jetlag. Sleepily I switch on the water heater and go down to raid the brand new fridge. Milk and passion fruit juice – that’s nice. Open the brand new cupboard. A brand new set of dishes for four. Granola and Wheetabix and bread for the brand new toaster. Open a shrink wrapped set of brand new silverware. Do up the dishes in a brand new sink with a brand new bottle of detergent. You get the picture. I’ll wait another day to try out the brand new stove, coffee maker and teapot.
At 10 Gregg Okesson gives me the tour of campus. (He is a grandson of Cecil Petrie and his late wife Victoria who WCC supported since the 1960s until their retirement. Cecil grew up in Lowell and served in Tanzania when it was Tanganyika)
I try to remember the names of families in the faculty houses. Some are the same as ten years ago. But most are new to me. I am glad to learn that Scott has its largest and best-trained faculty ever with 70% nationals. The library building is under expansion, incorporating several seminar rooms and large multi-media lecture hall. Two faculty houses has been converted—one to a faculty office complex and the other to a medical clinic, now served by a staff member with some medical training short of MD.
Actually the national ministry of education on a certification visit asked, “how can you be a leading university and have no clinic and a shortage of faculty offices?” Scott Theological College, though only having 130 students is one of only three colleges in Kenya to have a full accreditation from the government. And it is the only Christian college in that number. Small, yes, but on the cutting edge. So thanks to our computer team for boosting them into the tech era—and to many other churches that have sent money to make good things happen here. Under Gregg’s deanship Scott is soon to become the first to dive into web-based education here in Kenya.
But we’ll talk about that later. Now it’s on to the scramble to get an updated syllabus ready in time for classes tomorrow. John Kimani adjusts the setting on my laptop so I can get email from home.
Students are straggling in. Warm “karibu” from those who were year two years ago, not to mention the many faculty and staff who are so welcoming. Makes me feel at home.
After supper at Karen and John Bonnell’s (more Wheaton graduates!) we head for home. “Forgot my torch,” says George. “Me, too,” says I. So we pick our way through the darkness the 300 yards. No sooner am I in the house when I remember I needed to borrow some AC/DC adapters and I head back, this time with my flashlight. What’s that sound? Sprinkles, too. Better grab my folding umbrella before I dash back to Bonnell’s.
The return trip this time gets me in the teeth of a gale pelting down big gum-drops of rain. What good is this doll-sized folding umbrella? Three short minutes across the green and I in—soaked in sneakers and slacks up to my waist!
But that’s why things are so green this year. Usually the November rains are over before Christmas. But not this season. Rain most days. Rained all day Christmas, I’m told. So there should be good crops. That means less hunger for the country poor who try to raise what they can. Poverty here is a big problem. It’s even worse in drier areas and in neighboring Tanzania where many eat once a day and not much at that. Gregg tells of visiting people in areas where the nearest road is many miles away. A village they lived seemed almost urban even though it was 6 hours to the nearest small city where you could actually buy stuff and visit a doctor.
Maybe if I go to the local golf course there will be grass on the “greens.” I kid you not. I played there once 10 years ago. You need caddy, not to carry your rented bag of 5 clubs, but to find your ball in the weeds and bushes. No mowing here except by the odd wandering cow or goat. And the cup is in the middle a square of dirt that is raked free of weeds—to some extent. After a few holes in the baking sun you are ready for the “19th” hole and something at least liquid even if not green.
Although in Kenya sometimes that is green, too.
Seven hours later the cry of the Ibis jolts me awake. Tuesday, January 02, and no classes. This is shake-down day. No rush—I’ll just steal a few more winks. Soon it’s nine and I haul myself out of bed. A good sleep is the best cure for jetlag. Sleepily I switch on the water heater and go down to raid the brand new fridge. Milk and passion fruit juice – that’s nice. Open the brand new cupboard. A brand new set of dishes for four. Granola and Wheetabix and bread for the brand new toaster. Open a shrink wrapped set of brand new silverware. Do up the dishes in a brand new sink with a brand new bottle of detergent. You get the picture. I’ll wait another day to try out the brand new stove, coffee maker and teapot.
At 10 Gregg Okesson gives me the tour of campus. (He is a grandson of Cecil Petrie and his late wife Victoria who WCC supported since the 1960s until their retirement. Cecil grew up in Lowell and served in Tanzania when it was Tanganyika)
I try to remember the names of families in the faculty houses. Some are the same as ten years ago. But most are new to me. I am glad to learn that Scott has its largest and best-trained faculty ever with 70% nationals. The library building is under expansion, incorporating several seminar rooms and large multi-media lecture hall. Two faculty houses has been converted—one to a faculty office complex and the other to a medical clinic, now served by a staff member with some medical training short of MD.
Actually the national ministry of education on a certification visit asked, “how can you be a leading university and have no clinic and a shortage of faculty offices?” Scott Theological College, though only having 130 students is one of only three colleges in Kenya to have a full accreditation from the government. And it is the only Christian college in that number. Small, yes, but on the cutting edge. So thanks to our computer team for boosting them into the tech era—and to many other churches that have sent money to make good things happen here. Under Gregg’s deanship Scott is soon to become the first to dive into web-based education here in Kenya.
But we’ll talk about that later. Now it’s on to the scramble to get an updated syllabus ready in time for classes tomorrow. John Kimani adjusts the setting on my laptop so I can get email from home.
Students are straggling in. Warm “karibu” from those who were year two years ago, not to mention the many faculty and staff who are so welcoming. Makes me feel at home.
After supper at Karen and John Bonnell’s (more Wheaton graduates!) we head for home. “Forgot my torch,” says George. “Me, too,” says I. So we pick our way through the darkness the 300 yards. No sooner am I in the house when I remember I needed to borrow some AC/DC adapters and I head back, this time with my flashlight. What’s that sound? Sprinkles, too. Better grab my folding umbrella before I dash back to Bonnell’s.
The return trip this time gets me in the teeth of a gale pelting down big gum-drops of rain. What good is this doll-sized folding umbrella? Three short minutes across the green and I in—soaked in sneakers and slacks up to my waist!
But that’s why things are so green this year. Usually the November rains are over before Christmas. But not this season. Rain most days. Rained all day Christmas, I’m told. So there should be good crops. That means less hunger for the country poor who try to raise what they can. Poverty here is a big problem. It’s even worse in drier areas and in neighboring Tanzania where many eat once a day and not much at that. Gregg tells of visiting people in areas where the nearest road is many miles away. A village they lived seemed almost urban even though it was 6 hours to the nearest small city where you could actually buy stuff and visit a doctor.
Maybe if I go to the local golf course there will be grass on the “greens.” I kid you not. I played there once 10 years ago. You need caddy, not to carry your rented bag of 5 clubs, but to find your ball in the weeds and bushes. No mowing here except by the odd wandering cow or goat. And the cup is in the middle a square of dirt that is raked free of weeds—to some extent. After a few holes in the baking sun you are ready for the “19th” hole and something at least liquid even if not green.
Although in Kenya sometimes that is green, too.
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