I know it's hard to believe, but I have been serving in Kenya for 20 years as of February 10, 2009! Well I remember arriving in Kenya 20 years ago and being taken to language school to try to learn Kikamba, the local language of the first place I worked. I didn't succeed AT ALL in learning Kikamba!!! I was useless! Totally unmotivated, since I was to teach in the Bible school using English.

I'm not surprised I was a failure at Kikamba because the vernaculars are very difficult, but the national language of Kiswahili is a trade language and really isn't that hard. Much to my embarrassment, I've never really picked it up. So to celebrate 20 years in Kenya, I asked for permission to take four months to try and learn the language enough to use it, at least in some circumstances. So for the past 3 months, I have been attending a language school 3 hours each day during the week. For the first half, I was in a class with 4 other women who were beginners. I was a bit ahead of them, but it was fun to interact with them. Then the school had a two week term break, and the others did not want to continue. That means I am on my own, but it also means I an being pushed in areas where I really need pushing. I'm making progress, but the more I learn, the more I realize how difficult even a 'simple' trade language is. We are delving deep into all the alternative ways of saying things, and into idioms and such, and IT'S HARD! I keep getting brain freeze. It's funny how some words stick really easily and others remain a mystery after many attempts. Oh well, it's good I am trying and I certainly know much more than I used to know. I have 1 month to go.

Part of why I want to learn Kiswahili is that my job has changed. I am still the Children's Ministry Consultant, but only for the Eastern Region of Africa, which is comprised of Kenya and Tanzania. I will work with missionaries and national church planters in producing materials and training to help people reach children with the gospel. I am looking forward to producing some materials that will help Sunday School teachers teach the Bible better. I will be traveling a bit, but only in Kenya and Tanzania, so it shouldn't be as demanding as the old job of trying to cover all of Africa!

But before this job starts, I have home assignment from August 1 until December 26, 2009. I will be helping in Boston at Park Street Church with the 200th anniversary Missions Conference in November, doing whatever I can to help with the children's program at PSC, connecting with friends and supporters, and .... trying to keep up my Kiswahili! Fortunately there are Kenyans around to help.

Great trip to Sudan and Uganda

I was invited to Sudan to do Sunday School teacher training and thought it would be an easy trip to arrange. How wrong I was! I could not get a flight to Torit from the Kenya side at all for when I wanted to travel, so had to go through Uganda where there are regular flights twice a week. I was not happy because it meant I had to be in Sudan two whole weeks, and didn't really want to be there that long. But, as usual, God knew best... I needed that amount of time to get the training organized, do it, and then observe the teachers actually teach Sunday School. The church at Torit had let Sunday School slip, so bringing them some new materials and gearing up the teachers (all young men) revitalized their program. I also brought materials for the nursery school and did some training and modeling with the teachers there.

Torit is a very interesting place. It is growing daily as more people return to Southern Sudan to settle. There is tension between those who went into exile in Kenya or Uganda (better educated) and those who stayed behind (braver), so it's not easy in the church - especially among the women, who are finding it hard to work together. The older ones demand to be the leaders and want the respect, but the younger ones have all the ideas and know quite a bit more than the older ones. My missionary friends, Russ and Lyn Noble, sometimes feel stuck in the middle practicing diplomacy between the two groups. They are training literacy workers for the local vernacular language. Tough work. Lots of people, especially older women, can't read and want to learn how, but finding reliable literacy teachers is not easy.

I went to Sudan expecting to find little food or at least not much variety, but the food was fine. Lots more supplies are coming in from Kenya and Uganda so there is more in the market, plus Russ had planted a nice garden. The Sudanese like to cook with peanut sauces, and I really like that! The two weeks went by pleasantly and I was glad I was there that long.

Because I had to travel through Uganda, I decided to stop off for a week to visit a new missionary there who has taken on a large task. Sarah thought she was going to just be teaching in a school where nursery school teachers are trained, but when she arrived she found out she was to be the director of both the training program and the nursery school on campus! Bit of a big shock. She had a rocky start, but is finding her feet. She wanted me to help her redesign the curriculum for the training program, which I was happy to do and found it really interesting. I had to dredge up old memories of my own training a few hundred years ago. She is struggling with the nursery school because they don't teach the way she would like them to and how she would like to train the student teachers. In Africa, nursery school is seen as 'school-school', and if you're not teaching two year olds how to read and write, you're not really teaching them! She is trying to help her students see the importance of play for small children and how they should build up 'pre' reading and writing skills before trying to force the children to learn what will come very easily when they are a bit older. I had fun observing the children, speaking to the students and helping Sarah organize some of the donated books and supplies that are all just in a pile in her office.

It was also fun riding around Kampala on 'boda-bodas', the motorcycle taxis that are common there. I didn't go anywhere where the traffic was bad, so it was relatively safe! I also couldn't believe all the changes in the area around the AIM Uganda office. It used to be the office was up a dirt road in a wilderness area. Not anymore. The road is paved and there is a big shopping mall. I was horrified, but then I went to a great bakery in the mall and decided progress was good!

Fun Times at ABO

"One way to keep kids happy is to shake them up in a parachute"


One of the kids dressed up as a Maasai

Africa Based Orientation

Three times a year, for three weeks at a time, I help out at our orientation school for new missionaries by taking care of their children. Usually, this is quite a strain as children in major life transitions are a bit out of whack. But this group of nine children was really fantastic, very easy to work with, and that in spite of an 11 year spread from 22 months to 13 years old. I couldn't believe how the baby and the two year old were able to sit through lessons without being disruptive at all (and they even learned something). We have a great time learning about African animals, African countries, and some insight into why their looney parents have dragged them off to this continent, far from friends and doting grandparents. We made lots of neat things, went on many an excellent outing, learned some Kiswahili (Jambo and all that...) and played interesting games about Africa and with new African friends. Fortunately the oldest child, a boy, was very willing to help with the little ones and only snuck off to his room occasionally. I wish the program was a bit more engaging for young teenagers, will try and work on that before the next ABO, in October.

Fun Time in Madagascar

Back in May I made a trip to the island of Madagascar to visit AIM people doing children's ministry. It was my first time to Mada, home of lemurs, fossa, and other weird animals. There are a lot of differences between Madagascar and the rest of Africa, like the architcture, which is more European, the rice paddies, which are more like Southeast Asia, and the people, who are Malagasy from Southeast Asia mixed with African. But as far as attitudes and worldview, it was a lot like Africa.

I visited an AIM couple who live in Mahajanga on the west coast of Mada. Their ministry is in a village 3 hours from town where they rent a room and live for the week, then retreat to the town for the weekend. They are building relationships in the village with a view to starting a church. Besides visiting people, they have a children's club once a week at the local school. I went with them and had a great time singing, telling a story and playing a game with the kids. There were about 80 of them, which made things a little wild, but fun. The club has only just started so the children are very excitable and hard to control. I'm sure over time they will settle down so real relationships and discipling can take place.

That evening I settled into my cot in the corner of the room with a mosquito net around me to protect me mainly from the flying cockroaches. One night the husband had awoken to a back covered with roaches, not an experience I wished to have. I fell asleep, but was awoken by a nip on my big toe. I would have thought it a dream if the rotten creature, a rat, hadn't then run up the edge of the bed towards my head! I had to bat it off with my hand, which upset me more than my bit toe because it meant I had rat cooties on me. Of course I yelped (screamed my head off actually), which woke everyone up. After I got completely tucked back in (moquito net and sheet tight around me, despite the heat) I did eventually fall asleep and made it through the night.

My other animal experience in the village, much more fun, was to pet a tame lemur that belonged to a neighbor. It was really friendly, really cute and very soft. Back in Mahajanga I had another animal experience, of a very different kind. We ate frogs legs in a seaside restaurant. They were really good, although anything breaded and deep fried is going to taste good. The scary part is that they were massively big legs and I was not at all anxious to meet up with a live counterpart to these legs. Yuck.

Other adventures in Madagascar included being schlepped around the town of Antsirabe in a 'pousse pousse', which is French for rickshaw. It's a fun way to see a town and I only felt slightly bad for the poor guy pulling us when we went uphill. He was very, very strong.

It was great to see our people in action with the children... loving them, teaching them, helping to know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Welcome to my blog

Hi Everyone. Here it is... my blog! Don't know how often I will be updating it, but at least I'm doing something new.



I have just returned from a 4 day meeting with AIM people who are working either with children or in AIDS ministries. We do these meetings together because there is so much overlap between the two ministries. There were 26 of us and we met in Nakuru, Kenya, because there is a good partnership there between local Africa Inland Churches and Wheaton Bible Church. I wanted to highlight for people the positives and negatives of working with Western churches. It was inspiring to see the local church leadership really working hard to help children and adults affected by AIDS. We highlighted the issue by visiting a project called "Hope for Life'' where children and fed and sent to school, youth are trained in various skills, caregivers are encouraged and helped with microfinance schemes, and people affected by AIDS are given counseling and helped through home-based care groups. It was great to see the things like clothes and jewelry that the people are making and to see the children sing and recited poems for us.



To help us understand more about AIDS, one of our doctors from Kijabe gave a great presentation about how ARVs work, how mother-to-child transmission can be reduced, and how children infected with AIDS can be cared for. It was some amazing information.



We also had sessions on writing Vision and Strategy Papers and Memoranda of Understanding, two things the mission is wanting from every ministry. We also delved into the issues of short-term liability and child safety policies... topics that aren't much fun but very important. I was exhausted after the meetings were over, but very glad to get everyone together. It seemed people enjoyed the time together and got a lot out of the sessions.