Tag Archives: Kenya

Jul 14

Gone fishin’

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From 2010-06-30

Hopefully, this will post about the time that Jan Schilling and I take off from Nashville International Airport. I’m not sure what my net access will be like, and with everything going on I haven’t had time to write a whole set of timed-release posts like the last couple of years, so this may be the last you see of me for a few days. Or not. Who knows?

Anyway, keep us in prayer as we are in ministry in Kakamega, Kenya. Jan, a good friend whom I knew through Mountain T.O.P. before either of us was involved with LEAMIS, will be teaching charcoal-making and pot-in-pot refrigeration, while I’ll be installing a water chlorinator and teaching SODIS, an easy way to disinfect water by placing plastic bottles in the sun.

May 25

Trip planning

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Well, now that the symphony concert, my niece’s graduation and a couple of special sections for the newspaper are behind me, it’s time to buckle down on some mission trip stuff.

LEAMIS co-founder and executive director Debra Snellen has been dealing with most of the Kenya team up to this point, as people were deciding whether to participate and as Debra was deciding what workshops we’d be conducting, but now I’m going to start functioning more actively as the team leader, and I was sending out e-mails and Skype friend requests to the team tonight.

This is our first trans-Atlantic team, with two of our five members from the U.K., which will present its own unique opportunities and challenges.

I think it’s going to be a great trip — and a unique one.

May 03

Mission trip update

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Here’s an e-mail I sent my partners a few days ago. I thought I’d reprint it here in case any of you are led to give:

Dear Mission Trip Partners:

Just a few updates about my mission trip preparations:

  • This will be a small team. A woman from Wisconsin … will go to Kenya a week early to do children’s ministry at Bishop Paul’s church in Nairobi. My long-time LEAMIS and Mountain T.O.P. pal Jan … and I will fly from Nashville on July 14, and we will be joined by two other team members … from the U.K.! This will be a first for LEAMIS. So there will be five of us total, plus several members of the church in Nairobi who will travel with us as our teammates to Kakamega.
  • We’re going to be installing a different type of water purification system this year than in the past, and I’m going to have to be trained on it later in May.
  • The airline tickets for Jan and me were purchased [last] week, and my passport is now on its way to the Kenyan embassy in Washington for the visa stamp. (You can get it at the airport in Nairobi, but it saves time to get it in advance.)
  • Because of the rising cost of the trip, which I’ll get to in a moment, we are doing our debrief at some sort of inexpensive guest house this year, not at a safari park as in the past. Our first-timers may be going on safari on their own, but Jan and I will be coming back to the U.S. on July 25, two days earlier than I first told you.
  • The airline tickets have gotten more expensive. My ticket was $2,315. The LEAMIS cost for the trip is $1,300, which means I need to turn in to LEAMIS a total of up to $3,615. (My LEAMIS cost may be reduced a little for being team leader, but not as much as I had hoped, because it’s such a small team.) So far, I’ve raised $750. My co-workers at the newspaper are holding a luncheon for me [this] week (the day before my birthday!), and I’m expecting my church to contribute, but I will still be in need of contributions. Anything you can do would be appreciated.

Contributions should be made out to LEAMIS International Ministries; checks made out to me are not tax-deductible. Put my name in the comment line. You can send them to me … [blog readers e-mail me for address] … or directly to LEAMIS (LEAMIS, P.O. Box 709, Monteagle TN 37356). Sending the money directly to LEAMIS is great, and in fact that’s what I recommend, but sometimes that means I don’t find out about your contribution immediately, and so I apologize if the thank-you card is delayed as a result.

For more information about LEAMIS, go to leamis.org.

Please, regardless of whether you can do (or already have done) anything financially, keep me and my teammates in prayer as we prepare for the work we’ll be doing in Kakamega.

Feb 27

Kenya 2010 planning

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From LEAMIS board

We had a LEAMIS International Ministries board meeting this weekend in Monteagle, and since Bishop Paul Mbithi is in the U.S. right now, he paid us a visit, and LEAMIS executive director / co-founder Debra Snellen and I took the chance to confer with Paul about some plans for this summer’s trip.

We are hopefully going to finalize our trip budget, and thus the individual participant cost, within the next week or two — that’s way behind schedule, and makes it harder for people to decide to make the trip.

Becauses costs (and airfare) continue to rise, we’re going to offer an option this year. The safari at the end of the trip will be optional, for the benefit of those (especially returning travelers) who want to save money and get back two days early. This means we’ll have to do some debrief with the full team at another location before we split up, since we won’t be able to do our debrief at the safari park as usual.

Jan 04

Sick transit, inglorious Monday

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There is a matatu strike in Kenya. This is huge news.
Matatus are white vans, with a yellow stripe down the side, which are used as public transit throughout the country. A matatu strike would, I’m guessing, have an enormous impact.
Apparently, the matatu drivers are protesting a police safety crackdown. That gives me an opening to retell one of my matatu stories; one day in 2006, when we were working at a church in Keumbu but staying at a hotel in Kisii, our scheduled rental van failed to arrive and Pastor Abel had to flag us down a couple of matatus. I was sitting in the front passenger seat (which is on the left, since Kenya drives on the left side of the road, in British fashion). When we arrived at the hotel, Bob Willems came up to me and said something like, “Let me show you what kind of tire you’ve been riding on.” Sure enough, the tire directly under my seat was as bald as Yul Brynner.
I smiled at Bob.
“God is my co-pilot,” I said.
While I’m repeating myself, I’ll retell another favorite matatu story. The year before, in 2005, we had finished work in Ndonyo. Our cross-country transportation had dropped us off at Nakumatt, the Kenyan equivalent of Walmart, but from there we had to find a way back to our nearby hotel. Our two oldest team members, one of whom suffered from fibromyalgia, and our two mission-trip rookies had all been stressed by the cross-country trip, and so Pastor Paul Mbithi (now a bishop) took them in his car in order to get them back to the hotel as quickly as possible. Paul left “Mama Church” — his wife Grace — to find transportation for the rest of us. We figured that process would take a while, but Grace strode out to the curb, extended her hand, and immediately, as if by magic, the only empty matatu I’ve ever seen pulled up. What Mama Church wants, Mama Church gets. We pulled away in a different direction and ended up back at the hotel two or three minutes before Paul. We stood out front and made a big show of looking at our watches as he pulled up.