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."