The Wonderful Ms. Caroline

I have come to a conclusion that  it would be a shame if I didn’t  start introducing you to people I know and work with. Especially after living in Kitale for a year! SoI will begin with one of the most important people in my life: Ms Caroline.

Caroline was the first African lady I met when I moved out here. She was cleaning house and doing laundry for my two roommates when we first met. We quickly became friends and she quickly became my biggest help. She is the one that takes care of me when I am sick, keeps my house smelling good when I am overworked,  and has taken care of many of Mattaw’s children. Not only that, but she left Mattaw about a month before me and is back under my employment.

Jobs are very hard to find these days in Kenya, so I have been taking Mondays off to teach Caroline how to cook. My hope is that as she learns how to make Amreican food, she will be able to find better job opportunities than cleaning house and doing laundry.

To celebrate her achievements (and taunt you Americans who constantly torture me with pictures of your food on Facebook) I will be dedicating Tuesdays on this blog to Caroline’s Kitchen Updates. Yes, that is right, every Tuesday I will be posting a picture of something Caroline has learned to bake. Below are Jimmy Dean Egg McMuffins with Gouda cheese. Might I also mention that both English Muffins and Jimmy Dean Sausage are unheard of on this Continent. We had to make the sausage from scratch.

Meetings, Meetings, and more Meetings

Well, the power is out and I am making a blog post using my nifty battery operated internet modem.

My classes were cancelled this week because of conferences, but I should start teaching again next Sunday. Having a week away from teaching has been a good thing for me. It has given me time to evaluate how all my classes are doing and plan ahead for opening new classes.

I have spent the whole week having meetings, meetings, and more meetings. I will catch you up on what is going on out here. I can’t believe it has been a week since I’ve blogged!

  • Two of my good friends are starting a new ministry which will train Africans in professionalism. It will serve as a resource center for Kenyan men and women to learn life skills. I am greatly honored that they have asked me to be their treasurer. Please pray that God would provide the government approval needed for this ministry to begin , that God would lead us to the right students, and that this would be an opportunity for us to equip the body of Christ.
  • I will be teaching a new bible class on Wednesdays at the Lumberyard for widows. Please keep this in your prayers, I will be meeting them all this next coming week.
  • I met with a doctor from Uganda. They wish for me to come and spend a week with them soon. They have been taking LRA kids abducted by Kony and rehabilitating them. He is very interested in teaching the Bible Training Courses that my organization uses. I am still in prayer whether or not to go and visit them. Please keep this couple in your prayers.
  • I also just found out that one of the young men my organization has been praying earnestly for just got saved. He had been involved in a Islamic Terrorist group since childhood and escaped to Kitale. I was asked to go through the foundation course with him, but am looking for a young man to do so. Please pray that I find someone. I would love to teach him about Christ, but men need men to teach them how to be men, so I am trying to find him a man before I commit to helping.

Enjoying Fellowship

I had a wonderful time this week meeting 15 of BTC’s newest teachers. Greg and Beverly, the missionary couple I work for, had a conference at their home to encourage and equip these men and women before giving them their certifications so they may begin teaching the BTC material.

I always love going over to Greg and Beverly’s house because their is inevitably someone interesting to meet or something interesting going on. It was so encouraging for me to meet all of these indigenous missionaries who are eager to take the word of God back to their people and hear their stories.

The BTC course is basically all the classes and textbooks that a student would receive throughout a four year seminary degree only it is intensified so that the information is covered within 1 to 2 years. I was so encouraged by what I saw that I asked if I could start the training myself while I continue teaching the foundation courses.

Average Town in Africa

Below are pictures of Saboti. This is where I travel to teach class on Friday. It’s a good example of the average looking town in Africa. I don’t know why, but sometimes when I am here I feel like I’m in an old Western. 

How To and How Not To

One of the hardest things about being here is wanting to help and not knowing how. If I leave someone in a state of starvation, how on earth am I representing Christ? If I fill someones belly, give their kids medicine, and pay for their kid’s school, and then share the gospel, why is it that they don’t accept Christ? It is a very complicated thing. It is almost impossible to reach someone with the gospel if they have ever met foreigners before because the previous foreigners spoiled them with gifts. You go to them and say, “I come to tell you about the Risen Lord and Savior,” and they look at you like “ok, yes, yes, we know about that, now give us our free stuff,” all the while never grasping that their filled out decisions card won’t get them to heaven and that they are still very lost.

Point being, it can be a very frustrating thing when all you want to do is tell someone about Jesus and all they can think about is the color of your skin and how much money you must have brought for them.

Because of this, I could not tell you how much I have enjoyed working in ministry in rural areas. These places have received the gospel from real missionaries who take the word of God and then don’t leave the people behind with a message of materialism. Because of this, you can go there and find churches, hungry for God’s Word, ready to receive Him and those in His name and also ready to send people out to reach those who don’t know Him.

Book Binding

Hefty duty stapler! Who would have ever guessed that the small paper supply shack here in town would have had one of these things. I am now able to bind textbooks together, which means my students now pay 100 ksh for their textbooks instead of 300. It is Amazing how expensive Kitale Printers has become over the past few  months.

At first this sounded like a great Idea, but 30 textbooks into this project and I am feeling like it was more of a brain fail. Lot’s of labor, trips to town and no pay.

Buying Maize

Kitale and its surrounding areas are the number one maize producers in all of East Africa. We feed the nation with its most common meal, ugali. [Maize is white corn.]

This week, I found myself down town at the maize mill buying a sack of ugali flour for an orphanage. I took some pictures on my phone so I could share the process with you.

First, you have to look through the sacks of maize to find one free of impurities.

One by one you open the bags until you find one of quality. Less debris and more kernels equals a high quality sack of maize.

Then you empty the the sack into a sifting table. The metal bottom has holes. As you rub the corn back and forth against the table, debris fall through to the floor. The debris are later sold as chicken feed.

Next the maize kernels are poured into a side compartment on the grinder. This is what the inside looks like (they had to repair it while we were waiting).

As the petrol operated grinder goes to work, maize flour comes out the other end. The flour is examined using a sifter to insure proper quality. The flour is then taken to a scale and measured by kg. The bag of Maize flour pictured below is worth around 2,500 shillings.

 

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  • Sharing God's Love in East Africa