Finding Faith in the Battle

 Every missionary is faced with educating their children, and there are as many ways that God provides as there are challenges. For us in this season, living in Nairobi, we have the option of Rosslyn Academy. It is a faith-based school for kids from KG-12, and priority is given for missionary kids. It's the school where Anya and Ethan attended when we lived here before, and we remembered it as a great community, a rigorous college-prep curriculum that matches US standards, and a beautiful campus where children are safe and loved and nurtured and directed to Jesus.  Now that school has started, the reality is just as wonderful as we remembered it being, and more so.  Isaac is in grade 10, and Omara is in grade 7 this year. They have fit right in and are enjoying smaller class sizes and community-building events. Isaac is already working on the set and lights/sound support for the "fall" performance of Emma  and is attending a boys' Bible study and Friday night fellows...

I asked you to pray for me while I attended the Baptist Women's Convention, and I know I need to give you an update on how it went. But I’m struggling to find the words to faithfully describe it in ways that communicate my experience . Oh, let’s be honest. I’m sorta struggling to process it for myself. It was incredibly hard...and incredibly sweet. It was 100% Kenyan…in every wonderful and every challenging way. I went to be a blessing…and I ended up being blessed. I had moments of wonder at the beauty of what I get to partake in, and moments of tears over the sacrifices it requires. I actually truly enjoyed myself, even as I wondered how I wasn’t curled up in a fetal position. Actually, that’s the only thing I know for sure—I felt God’s grace sustaining me through it all. I knew my flesh was weak and my determination could only take me so far—God did the heavy-lifting to make me joyful. The conference started with an 8.5 overnight bus ride to Western Kenya. It then consi...

We have landed, and we are well.  Last time we lived here, my work partner and I agreed that anytime we started to feel culture stress, we would close our eyes and repeat the phrase that gives life: "mangos, sunshine, and roses" so that we could focus on the gifts of God instead of the traffic and power outages. I must have shared that with another coworker, because when we arrived--she met us with mangos and roses. Another friend made sure we were well-supplied with the dark roast coffee I have yearned for. New coworkers who have never met us provided bags of food and sweet notes. We have been hosted for dinners almost every night so I don't have to try and remember how to cook here again just yet.  We are in temporary housing until our house is painted and prepared for us, and there are times I yearn to unpack. It's been a long 11 weeks of living out of suitcases since we left Hilliard. But we've always had comfortable accommodations, and even now we're stay...

I started this blog decades ago (!) when we were first headed to Africa with our 2 young children. I anticipated adventures that I would enjoy sharing, and indeed we had all sorts of adventures! We spent 3.5 years in Lilongwe and added 2 kids to our crew. Then we all spent another 5 years in Nairobi, Kenya where we had more adventures--both the good and the hard kind. Our beautiful, adventurous young teen Anya was living her best life there. Our tender reed of a son, Ethan, was not. The demands of school and the loss of friend after friend to mission-life transition almost broke him. Silly little 1st grade Isaac and salty but loving pre-school Omara just went with the flow. And we made the heart-breaking decision to take a leave-of-absence from Kenya. That leave-of-absence turned into resignation as it became clearer that God was directing us to stay in the US to support Ethan. Let me be clear--it was one of the most painful things we have ever done. You can read more about it here ...

During a time when it has seemed that life was put on hold, someone suddenly skipped over the 'play' button and went right to 'fast-forward'. On Friday we drove to Ohio, on Sunday the church voted resoundingly in favor of calling Chad as Pastor to Crossing Community Church , and on Monday we went into contract on a new home near the church. We had driven a car-full of packed suitcases and boxes up to Ohio, in what I like to call optimistic planning...but I refused to unpack the car until the vote came in--I may be optimistic, but I'm no fool! Monday, I drove back to North Carolina, Chad followed on Wednesday, and on Friday I flew out for Kenya, to pack up or sell every earthly belonging we had that wasn't in either the pathetically few boxes now sitting in a garage in Ohio, or sitting in a different garage in Oregon. The trip was uneventful, other than a few funny anecdotes appreciated most by those who fly frequently. The TSA man who had to specially x-ray...