As we traveled back to the village on Monday, tracking a flight going in the opposite direction, and as we go about our weekly schedule, I am grateful to my God for the incredible blessing to share the last 10 weeks with Terry Combs and the last two with our friends Chris Black & George Kleer, along with our son, Ryan. To actually share what has become our life in this season that God has placed us here… Well, honestly, I have no words to describe.

Terry came the end of June and started this term with us, assisting in our 4 weekly classes. She would do the story each week and helped me in the administration, attendance taking and distributing class material. The first week the guys were here, we just dragged them along with us on our regular schedule. They each taught a portion in our study of Romans. It was great to hear their teaching and for our students to see that verse by verse example.

Dennis, the young man who interprets for us and the one we see God raising up, had his challenges trying to understand the slang of three more wazunga! Especially as Ryan tried to work in “Hakuna Matada” as often as possible, even when it didn’t fit. We had fun!

In the village, Terry was quickly embraced by all our friends and will be missed greatly! As she slipped right into our routine, she shared our load amazingly and we have already, when asking if something had been done (like taking mandazi to the jikoni or giving cookies to the children), we’ve both said, Terry always did that! I suspect we will be discovering more and more which will lead us to further thank God for the blessing of sharing in the work with Terry.

The guys from the Hen Project spent lots of time with our guys from back home. This was a blessing to the guys here, to be so involved with the “visitors”, the fellowship and encouragement. A blessing to the team, to see the work God is doing in these lives, both the struggles and the victories. And a blessing to us, to share the two lives together…. Pamoja!

We had a few days in the village and then headed to the Mara! It was spectacular as we saw one of God’s great display of the work of His fingertips… the great migration across the Serengeti. It truly was amazing! In addition to the 100s of 1000s of wildebeest, we saw a Rhino, lions, hippos, cheetahs, a hyena, elephants, giraffes, zebras… Many other animals… AND… Our first leopard!!! Wow, what a work of our God!

Overall, the greatest blessing has truly been the coming together of our two lives. To share one with the other. To have some of our team and family from back home connect with the work and our family here is an answer to prayer!

Which came first???

What a celebration an egg brings!! Yep, our first egg came on September 1st and the excitement of the guys was priceless!! Dancing, singing and praising God!! So much fun!,

And tonight…. We sold our first flat of eggs!! Bam!

These guys have worked so hard, not only on the project, but also in their spiritual walk!

Randy is now meeting with them every night, sharing scripture and praying together! Moses, the last to return from UTurn, has dramatically been transformed! His wife, Mary shared that “God had helped the family so much”, Moses now stays home at night and works around their home and for the first time in all their married life, when the kids needed school fees, he reached in his pocket, gave them what they needed and sent them back to school! He listens to the audio Bible every night and his entire countenance has changed! He is a brilliant trophy of God’s sweet redeeming grace!

Last night, Wilma visited me and told me that Meshack is reading the Bible every night and praying with her before they go to bed!! Hezborn, a new daddy, is constantly being encouraged to lean on Christ and walk for Him.

The guys desperately need your prayers. The struggle is real and it can be vicious! But when we were invited to Otara’s, the village supplier of the local brew, these guys didn’t know what to expect. Last night, as we all walked over there, we laid it on the line…. “Otara, you need Jesus”. We shared the Gospel and Randy prayed with him to receive Christ!!! Oh how we are praying!!! This is huge and will be a major testimony!! My women’s Thursday night study has focused much prayer for just this!! God is rescuing this village, one heart at a time!

This brings us to a need… Please be praying as this village needs a good Bible Teaching church!! We need a pastor! And as we continue to pray for God to raise someone up, we will begin again with a Bible Study on Sundays. We did this last year, but lost our location when we came back. Well…. God recently provided for us to build a car park for the car. This was necessary for several reasons, but now I see even more clearly… On Sundays, we will move the car out and the car park will now be our church!!! Can you stand it?? I know, right? God is just amazing!

I recently looked at discipleship in my quiet time. How God has called us to go and make disciples. This has been our focus since coming to Kenya, but now… After considering the impact of multiplication, the impact of making disciples who will make disciples who will make disciples… Yep, God is working the harvest for sure!

One of the things our village friends love to do is take pictures. “Take me a foto!” they ask in their broken English. ( By the way, they have learned MUCH more English than I have Swahili!)

When we first got here they would ask for the picture. They would look at my phone or camera and expect me to give that picture to them. Now they know that’s not possible. But I have printed a few through the year and presented a small picture that absolutely LIGHTS their eyes.

This week, after being asked to take a picture, I announced that on Thursday I would bring out my camera and everyone was to gather their families and get dressed for pictures. THIS was a BLAST!!! They had so much fun! There were lots of laughter and lots of posing and lots of smiles. And THAT’s a big deal. Africans don’t smile for pictures. We call it “stone face”. But you know me… SMILE!!!!!

Well, here are a few of the photos from that day… and I can NOT wait to get some of them printed and bless these sweet people with a small gift such as a 8 cent picture!

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I don’t know, something about white that shouts…. CLEAN!!!!!

So, I brought with me to Africa my set of 1500 thread count Egyptian Cotton WHITE King size sheets, the white duvet cover, duvet, and about 20 soft white wash cloths.

Did I mention I am living in Africa, in Kenya, in a village up a mountain in the Highlands where there are TWO fantastic raining seasons with lots and lots of red mud. There is no running water, no electricity and no washing machines.

But – not to alarm. I have created a system. Before I get into my white linen bed, I use up to three, maybe four washcloths and I scrub from head to toe… beginning with my face and ending with the soles of my feet. I try to scrub until my white wash cloth, well, still resembles white. It’s a pretty disgusting procedure. I had no idea.

I then toss them into a white bucket with soapy bleach water. After a few days, I drain the water, take a soap bar and rub it over both sides of the cloth and toss it back into the bucket, filling with about a cup of bleach and boiling hot water.

Then, I take a long wooden spoon and begin to stir the clothes while making ever effort to simulate the agitator in my Maytag back home. I stir for as long as my weak American arms can handle, drain, fill and do again. This is repeated for TWO DAYS!!!

THEN, the cloths need to be rubbed. I use a rubber cutting board and it seems to work well. Flipping sides and using the soap bar again, the board acts as a, I don’t know, wash board???

It’s all quite the process. And I must say, each night as I scrub my face, and scour my extremities, I am really, well, basically grossed out at how filthy I am.

When the young man that helps us, Evans, was involved in this process recently, he turned and said to me, “Mrs. Kari, you should buy brown wash clothes”. My first thought was – boy, are you right. But then, without thinking I answered him, “but then I wouldn’t know if I were clean.”

As I’ve been studying God’s Word lately and in this personal reflective state, it dawned on me… what a picture!

If I am measuring myself by standards such as – how others act, what others do and don’t do, if my standard is the lives of other people and it is THIS standard by which I measure how my life is being lived… well I might as well be washing my face with a brown washcloth. I might even reuse the one I used last night…. YUCK! GROSS! DISGUSTING! NEVER!!!!!

You see, it’s not until I measure my life, my actions and reactions, my love, my kindness, my patience, my gentleness, my joy, my peace… not until I measure these things by the standard GOD has set – that of JESUS CHRIST… that I see just how dirty I am.

OH Lord Jesus…
Cleanse me
Wash me thoroughly…
And I shall be whiter than snow!!!