Reflections on Kenya Missions Trip

God is faithful, all the time.
 
As I reflect on the past month and prepare to return to work on Monday after 32 days off, I am grateful.
 
Grateful to God for this opportunity to serve Him alongside my family and friends.
 
Grateful to Naomi and Amanda for their love and support as we served God together in Kenya.
 
Grateful to Mary Ann and Lauren for their patience and understanding as I struggled to keep up with them in our travels together.
 
Grateful to Sarah, Kyle, Bekah, Becky, Judy, Tim, Joe and Susan for allowing me the privilege to serve the Lord with them in Kenya.
 
Grateful to the many prayer warriors who lifted me and the rest of our team up in prayer during our missions trip to Kenya.
 
Our mission was to care for the children of missionaries serving Wycliffe Bible Translators in Uganda and Tanzania while they attended a conference in Kenya.  We not only lovingly cared for their children, but we equipped them to put on the full armor of God every day.  We did this with scripture memorization, bible stories, songs, crafts, games, skits, and activities to support each piece of armor.  This also reminded each of us that we need to put on the full armor of God every day as well.
 
Mission accomplished!
 
Thank you for following our adventure and praying for us.
 
Blessings,
 
Joe W.

Slideshow of VBS

Here's a short slideshow that was presented to the parents during the kids program.

Group Two Arrived Home

Mary Ann, Lauren, Joe, Naomi & Amanda arrived home safely on Wednesday afternoon.  We are all trying to catch up on lost sleep.  We had a wonderful 3 day safari following the conference at Turtle Bay.  We caught up on our sleep AND got to see many of God’s wonderful creations in their natural habitat!  We also had dinner in the bush – that was a great experience.   Thank you for your prayers for safety.  We know they were answered.  Naomi

Back on US soil

Bekah, Kyle, Tim, Susan and Joe have now made it back to California. In a few minutes we should be at the gate, then it's time to get luggage, go through customs and find our welcoming committee. In a couple days after I get over the jetlag, I'll write up my closing remarks on the trip and it's impact.

Touch of Heaven

I'll admit it. I'm a bit of a primadonna when I travel. Over the past four years I've approached a half million miles in the air - hundreds of flights, many of them long international legs. I rarely sleep on these long flights like the current 24 hours of travel from Nairobi through London to Los Angeles. Kyle slept most of the flight, Susan slept over 5 pretty much uninterupted hours of the flight, and I got a couple hours of catnaps and felt really blessed to have gotten that much.

As a road warrier (I totally relate to the movie Up in the Air), I do get an occasional perk, like access to the British Airways lounge due to my American Airlines status (Over 60 flights last year on American). Today I tried getting Tim, my wife and myself into the lounge so Tim could check email, and my wife and I could get a shower. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way it's one guest only with me, and no substitutions of guests after the first one accompanies me. Other airlines two guests have not been a problem. So Tim checked his email, and Susan didn't get her shower.

The shower had to be one of the best I've ever had, and not just because it was after 9 hours in an airplane. British Airways has the high tech shower with a large overhead nozzle, six adjustable body nozzles, and a handheld nozzle. After God gets us a house of our own again, I hope to have one of these gizmos. It was also nice after two weeks to be able to rinse my toothbrush under running water, and be able to rinse my mouth out under the shower.

Well, time to board for the 11 hour flight to Los Angeles.

Safely in London

Bekah, Kyle, Tim, Susan and I arrived in London about 30 minutes ago. We've got about 3 hours to kill in the airport before our flight to Los Angeles.

Last Day in Nairobi

The first wave leaves Nairobi tonight. Kyle, Bekah, Susan and I got up early and went off to the Nairobi Game Park for a half day game drive. There were a few vans with safari tops in the parking lot when we paid our entrance fee, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I was hoping it wouldn't be an all day Nairobi traffic jam like this. Our driver was Martin, cousin of last night's driver.

Martin got us away from the crowd, and we saw some lion tracks in the road. A few minutes later we found the owner of the print. These two lions looked pretty hungry, and the right one had a big wound on her left shoulder.

They were pretty close - maybe 10-20 feet in front of the van. Eventually they decided to look for breakfast and took a walk by the van. This cat was maybe 3 feet below me and my camera - you don't get that close in the zoo.

If you look close at this picture, you can see one of the two girls looking off at a couple of zebras at about 9 o'clock in the picture. Click on the picture to see the full size photo. We watched the lions stalk the zebras for an hour or so, but eventually they gave up, not getting a good kill shot. As we looked at the zebras closer up, we found two of them that had pretty close calls at being breakfast recently.

We're now back at the hotel after having lunch in town, seeing the Garcia's former residence, Ndemi Manor. Tim has enjoyed many Stoney Tangawizi Ginger Beers while he was here, as you can see here. Stoney is about the strongest stuff Tim will drink, and after nearly two weeks here he can drink the whole bottle of soda without gagging.

Starting Home

The first wave of our team left the hotel at 7:30 this morning via hotel taxi to the Malindi airport. Wave two left at noon. Sarah leaves tomorrow with the Wicks.

With a few extra hours in Watamu this morning, Kyle, Sarah, Susan and I hired our bird guide Jonathan again to take us to the Mida Creek Reserve. Mida Creek is a large Mangrove forest surrounding this creek that flows out to the Indian Ocean. The tidal plain gets about a meter deep in the area of this suspended walkway that we took out to a larger open expanse to view the birds. The walkway is nearly the length of three football fields.

Susan, Sarah and I tried this dugout canoe to get out around the Mangroves and get a better view of the birds. The canoe wasn’t really necessary – the water was 6-12 inches deep with the tide going out.

Here’s some Sacred Ibis in flight. We saw some Yellow Bill Storks, Pink Flamingos, and a few other species in our time out at the marine sanctuary. Like many of the local eco-projects, part of our tourism dollar goes to help kids get an education.

We made sure our luggage made it on the flight. We should have balanced the luggage better between the two teams – the five of us had about 23 kilos to spare on our 100 kilo allowance, and the other team was about 40 kilos overweight. Malindi airport has a highly automated baggage system – the baggage handler pushed the cart by hand to the aircraft. Once again, only one ID was checked for the entire group of us. Being a satellite airport and not the main regional airport in Nairobi, the boarding passes were hand written, not printed.

Tonight the group of us in Nairobi went to Carnivore for dinner. This is a 30 year old restaurant in Nairobi that served exotic meats like Zebra until 5 years ago when it was banned. Today it’s much like a Brazilian barbeque, but serves farmed crocodile and ostrich. It was still a nice experience.

Here’s a shot of the barbeque pit where the meat is grilled. I think after dinner tonight, and the excellent food at Turtle Bay, many of us will be swearing off meat and dessert for some time to come.

VBS Final Day

Today was the last day of VBS. Part of today’s activity was rehearsing for the show for the parents. I skipped that – I got tasked with taking the two thousand plus pictures we’ve taken on this trip and distilling it down into a 3 ½ minute slide show for the parents. Kyle and I both subscribe to the shot early and shoot often school of digital photography. We’ll put pictures up on Flicker later so parents can get at them, and I’ll post the slide show when I have more bandwidth.

Here’s the kids singing one of their songs for the parents – making a pretty mean crocodile at this point. In the background is a painting of a rock memorial God helped Cindy McGarvie paint – she told Kyle and I the story of how she went to an art shop to paint it, and got all this “random” help painting it.

The hotel did a special dinner for all the UTB Conference participants, and the weather cooperated, giving us a nice candlelight dinner, since power was out for a good portion of dinner. This was a rainbow from a couple days ago, but could have been tonight with the storm we had this afternoon. I had a pair of pants drying on my balcony and now I have to repeat the process – they were nearly dry before the storm came through.
Tomorrow morning we start going our separate ways. Half the group leaves the hotel at 7:30, the rest of us at noon after a local excursion. Most of us with the exception of Sarah will reunite in Nairobi, but from there we scatter in three different directions until we all get back to Orange County over the next two and a half weeks. Sarah is headed to Uganda to do a VBS there with the Wicks, and help them finish their packing for their move back to the United States.

VBS Day 5

Susan and I ran into Tim at the beach for sunrise this morning. Not quite the colors of a Pacific Sunset, but pretty nice just the same. Here’s a reflection off the beach just after daybreak.

The MK siblings are pretty inseparable. Here’s brothers Noah and Levi sharing one chair and Jono and Aaron sharing the next chair. Sisters Elisa and Michaja two rows back are another inseparable pair.

The Junior High and High School kids did the object lesson today on right and wrong. It was pretty comical, and kept the younger kids engaged.

We had low tide at lunch, so several of us ventured out to the tide pools to check out the sea life.

Here’s a good size sea clam. It's a marine sanctuary, so all the sea life is protected. With all the eel we saw in the water, swimming in the ocean didn’t seem as attractive.

Recreation in the afternoon included the normal men’s water polo, but also included the UTB women also competing in water polo.

After water polo, half our team ventured into the village with their guides/trinket salespeople. Here’s Mary Ann supporting the economy by purchasing candy to give to the children.

They got to see the local bar in action. Susan should have gone with them. Later in the evening at the hotel bar, she asked for palm wine, and had the bartender in stitches – while it is the local alcoholic beverage of choice, no respectable bar serves it – it’s sort of like walking into a southern bar and ordering moonshine.

Phoebe’s Baptism

This afternoon Phoebe was baptized in the Indian Ocean behind the hotel. Here’s the Wicks before the ceremony.

Here’s Phoebe giving her testimony.

The ceremony was to be videotaped, but Naomi told me to take lots of pictures. Turns out the photographer didn’t check his memory card before the ceremony and needed to grab an empty one. Kyle and I had to get the lowdown on his camera lens collection after the cerimony – both of us need to repent our lust for all the glass he owns.

The big dunk.

Born again.

VBS Day 4

Time is moving so quickly. Today we worked on the shield of faith, and talked about God’s promise to Abraham about his descendants. The kids love craft time. They also enjoy the chant Joel Garcia wrote for them.

Another favorite activity is hamming it up for the camera. JS hardly sits still, but he did for this. His family is one of the first Wycliffe Africa families to go to the field from Africa.
















Keep praying for God to guide us as we teach the children. Also pray for Sarah, she was a bit under the weather today.

Recreation

 Yesterday Naomi, Mary Ann and Susan went to the local mall to do some shopping. I didn’t get a shot yesterday, since it was high tide, and the water was ankle deep at the front side of the mall (this is the back side).

Every day there's a schedule of activities. Last night the schedule said there would be Pagan Show Acrobats. 

During dinner, a 20 foot or so high pole was installed, by lashing four ropes to four columns around the pool. Here’s one of the complex acrobatics, using most of the seven performers.

 Here’s one maneuver with most of the troupe.

 There were several rounds of the eye of the tiger – diving through these tubes and onto the concrete pool deck. No mats or other safety equipment was used for any of the tricks. 

How low can you go? I certainly can’t do this. 

This young man was referred to as plastic man. They say he has no bones. I say he has more flexibility than anyone should have. At one point he had his the bottom of his foot flat on the top of his head.

The hotel offers free windsurfing. Here's one of the UTB members out on a windsurf board this afternoon.

VBS Day Three

Last night during dinner this Christian Choir came down and sang a few songs at the pool. Later before the World Cup finale, there was a dance troupe that performed a few numbers, even pulling Lauren and Bekah up for one of the dances. I think Judy got a picture of that – my camera was in my room. After they finished they pulled out their Africraft to see if any of us wanted souvenirs. It was funny – this one woman was negotiating, trying to get this carved animal for 600 shillings (about $7.50), and was having a hard time getting the seller to agree to that price. After she bought her animal, the seller started bringing his stuff over to our table, and because we weren’t buying, the animal he just sold at a hard 600 shilling bargain, his opening offer was 500 shillings. Lots of folks watched the world cup game out by the pool.

I understand there was some bombings in Kampala, Uganda during the world cup game last night. One of our team members will be going to Uganda with the Wicks after the conference, but not to Kampala. Pray for the safety of the UTB members from Uganda, the Wicks and Sarah, but know that the Wicks and Sarah won’t be in the capital city of Uganda.

Day three went smoothly. Today’s lesson was on shielding your heart. Following the morning session, we closed up with some songs as we were waiting for the parents.

Because adults were in session this afternoon, we had 18 kids that wanted to go to the pool for afternoon recreation time. They love the water. Tim does too – it gives him lots to moan about –games the younger kids like playing like dunk Tim.

Today is your birthday

Bekah was the birthday girl today. We ordered her cake for lunch rather than dinner so we could have participation with her cousins, since the younger kids eat dinner separate from the adults. Lunch is served poolside, and though I bet Bekah knew it was coming, because it was a surprise, they delivered her floral throne with the cake.

We had the Wicks, our group, and the hotel staff sing Bekah happy birthday. Probably different than being home with her family, but her extended family certainly enjoyed celebrating with her.

Here are the cousins getting ready to dive in and cut the cake. Levi and Noah are on the left, and Phoebe is to the right of her cousin Bekah.

VBS Day Two

Today was a short day with it being Sunday. We started VBS at 10:30 with worship with just the young ones. Junior and Senior High were in with the adults for worship. The kids especially liked the participatory songs.

Someone needs to tell Jerry that the puppets were really a hit. The kids love them.

We took our group to the beach volleyball court for recreation and the daily bible story. Solicitors weren’t far away, wanting to sell us camel rides and other recreation to supplement our simple games with the kids.

Jonathan was our little one in the 4-6 year olds who suffered the most severe separation anxiety yesterday. Today he was an entirely different child, and even strung his own penne pasta beads on his belt of truth each of the younger children made today. We had a two year old that joined the 4-6 year olds today as well. Mary Ann walked with her all day yesterday, and started again this morning, but when she joined her older sister (sitting to the right of Jonathan), she was much more settled.

After the morning VBS, the group got together in front of the hotel for the Uganda Tanzania Branch Group Photo. Casual affair, gathering the group up, and having the photographer stand on someone’s vehicle to take the shot.

Internet connectivity continues to be a challenge. The hotel occasionally loses power, the hotel internet loses connectivity to the outside world daily it seems, from the public computer folks have been having trouble getting to Gmail, and we buy wifi in hour-long blocks for 200 shillings (about $2.50) and the block seem to expire after a single 20 minute usage when the business center is closed – it’s just been a challenge. We’re trying our best to keep everyone informed, but we aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.







Becky was back among us today after two days down with food poisoning. I think we’re all doing pretty well right now, but keep praying for us to keep our health, flexibility and patience, and teaching ability.