Teaching Update and many Photos

By Anthony:

It's been a very busy and hectic week!  Our house has been in a constant state of flux and construction.  We have also had a lot of meetings, people coming over to help, and many long drives back and forth to town.  Somehow in the midst of it all, I still was able to get a lot of work done for my upcoming classes.

But before I show you pictures of all of what has been going on this last week, let me give you a teaching update.  I had meetings with staff here at the school and what I will be teaching is slightly different than what I told you before.  Part of being a missionary is being flexible!  But the staff were flexible with me as well.  Overall, I am very happy with what we decided on together.

I will start teaching on August 8th, teaching modular classes of students, instead of September like I had planned.  These are students who come just a few weeks at a time several times a year because their work schedules do not allow them to come on the regular terms.  I will teach two classes I was already going to be teaching in September: Missions and Evangelism and Church History 1.  But the class I was going to work hard to prepare for during August was Greek and now I don't have to as we've canceled it.  Perhaps I can teach Greek next year after I've had more time to prepare.  So that frees me up to begin teaching early in August.  In September, when the regular semester starts, I will have Missions and Evangelism, Church History 1, and Systematic Theology 1. In the 2nd semester, I will have Church History 2, Apologetics, Homoletics, and Theology of Development.  We agreed to switch me to Theology of Development instead of the African Philosophy class, which is good for now because I am much more prepared to teach the Development class.  I can always add more classes in later years.  I am happy about the changes, and am so grateful for your prayers as I start teaching real soon.

Some activities this past week have included laundry (we do it together by the way):

Our clothesline that is not yet fully finished.  The men working on building our fence helped us put the posts up.

Our house continues to get more settled:

Sara is right now in the yard digging up the grass for where her garden will be.  She is really excited to grow her own food.  This upcoming week she will have more meetings with Anglican Development staff, World Renew staff, Berea Farm staff, and Berea College staff, to discuss in more detail the work she can do.  She will not be bored.  I imagine she will have to get used to saying "no" often in order to not get spread too thin!  In later posts she can tell you more about her work.  Also, in later posts we will give you more pictures of the college campus as well as pictures of people we work with.

Here is what our house looked like last week:

But then our yard became a construction zone with men from the college and farm helping to build our garage and a fence around the yard.  They were very friendly and sacrificial in their work, asking only a small amount of payment for their labor.

Our new garage:

Our new fence (not for security, but to keep animals inside).  When it was complete yesterday Caleb was finally able to go free without being on a chain constantly.  I have never seen such a happy dog, literally leaping for joy and running all over in circles.

The gate for the vehicle:

This week we have also enjoyed seeing chameleons in our yard again.  I'm surprised to see them so often in such a cold place.  The one we saw most recently fell (or jumped) out of a tree from like 20 feet high and landed right next to us and started walking across the ground.  We also saw this slug, which seriously, before it got scared, was stretched out to a foot long.

We also have met some missionaries around town, and have enjoyed getting to know the Berea College Staff, some Anglican pastors, and Anglican development workers.

We finally were able to get internet set up at our house, and it's not bad.  I initially despaired a bit that we wouldn't even be able to find an internet connection that would allow us to do email.  We are in the hills, in a very rural area, and basically in a dead zone for internet.  Even with our mobile phones, we barely get any signal inside our house.  But we found an internet solution through a company in town, and now we are set to go.  It was hard getting it installed with a lot of equipment delays and then when they were trying to get it set up the power went out.  We had to use the college's generator to get the install finished.

Apparently they rarely have any issues with power and water here at the college, which is vastly different from our situation in Soroti, Uganda.  But this week, the water pump broke for the college but it was fixed before things got too drastic, and the power has been going in and out regularly due to some issue that needs to be fixed.  All of it, plus the stress of getting settled in, has tested our patience!  But I'm happy to report that we are doing fine and I think we passed the test as we stayed calm, prayed through it, and just did what we could each day.

Here are some photos of where we walk/jog.  Note my sweater.  It's apparently the warmest part of the year right now, and is below 60 in the nights and mornings.  It must be about 50 at night because it is 60 in our house even in the morning.  This is a coffee field in the photo.

Coffee up close:

Berea Farm in the background (distinct business, separate from Berea Theological College):

Berea Theological College hidden in the trees on the left in the middle of the photo:

Path at the college next to the Dining Hall and some staff homes:

View from 2 feet outside our yard's fence of the college campus:

Other random photos from driving around.  Like this guy's hat?

For some reason on our road, there are just a ton of donkeys.  Some are wandering around (we saw a dead one that had been hit by a truck).  But most are in these donkey carts used primarily for hauling water.  I wish we had space at our house for me to have a donkey.

Kenya Food Post

By Sara:

If you're interested in food, we have a post at my food blog with some pictures of what we've been eating lately.

World Renew Colleagues

By Sara:

During our week in Nairobi, we enjoyed getting to know some new World Renew - Kenya staff as well as spending time with staff we knew from before.  We're so thankful to be with an organization with such knowledgeable and generous staff who spent a lot of time helping us get around Nairobi, shop for a vehicle, go to the immigration office, and do whatever else we needed to do while there.

Lily met us at the airport when we arrived in Nairobi, late in the evening and escorted us to our hotel.  She helped us get our lost luggage delivered to our hotel, went with us to immigration, and overall made sure that we were well taken care of.

Sabstone was invaluable in helping us go to trustworthy used car dealers and shared his knowledge with us about what kinds of vehicles were good choices and which ones were in the best condition.

Joash drove us around Nairobi (we would have been very lost without him) and also had great knowledge about vehicles.  Between him and Sabstone, we felt confident about choosing a good vehicle at a fair price.

There are two more people in the picture below: Everlyne, in the middle, is the administrative assistant and always greeted us cheerfully when we arrived at the office.  And next to her in the white blouse is Naomi, who is in charge of monitoring and evaluation and also manages the partnership with the Anglican Development Services (ADS) in Nakuru, with whom we will be working.  We will appreciate learning from her and hopefully seeing her in Nakuru when she comes to check up on ADS.

Not only are all these people very helpful to us, they are also friendly and fun to be with.  We look forward to spending more time with them as our time in Kenya goes on.

New Vehicle, New Caleb, New House, New Experiences

By Sara:

We have all sorts of stuff to update you on this week.  Actually, we probably can't even tell you everything - it will take a while to catch you up.

First of all, we had a very new experience while staying at the guest house in Nairobi.  They had a tennis court that guests were allowed to use (we didn't figure this out until the last day and a half there, but we enjoyed it while we could).  We never thought we'd be playing tennis in Africa (or jogging around a tennis court)!

We also were successful in getting a new used vehicle!  Here it is, a Toyota Surf.  We're very happy with it so far.  The funny thing is that since it was imported from Japan, the direction screen is all in Japanese.  And we have a Japanese lady's voice talking to us when we start up the vehicle!

We were also able to pick Caleb up from our friend from World Renew who lives in Nairobi.  The first thing he did when he saw us was mark our car's tire as his own.

We haven't been able to let him roam freely since we picked him up, but so far he seems a lot calmer than he was before.  He enjoys being petted more and is a little less jumpy.  This is the video that some people requested of his reunion with Anthony (when we initially got out of the car, he took a few seconds to remember who we were, but then he was really happy, and enjoyed being petted by Anthony).

When we got to Nakuru, we weren't able to move into our house right away, but the guest house there graciously let us keep Caleb outside our room.  We feel very safe at the guest house anyway, but we were especially safe with this scary guard dog right outside our door.

We also had a new experience while stuck in a traffic jam in Nakuru.  Some young street kids were begging on the sides of the road and jumped on the sideboard of our car and the car behind us to demand money.  It made us very uncomfortable because we didn't want them to be riding on the outside of our vehicle for any reason and we didn't think we should give them money, but they wouldn't get off until we ignored them for quite a while.  We really don't know what the right response is in that kind of situation.

Monday night, we were excited to finally be able to move into our house (you can see it above)!  Even though we don't have internet yet (we had to go elsewhere to do email and work on this blog post), we are starting to feel like we're living in our own house.  We have been very busy for the past few days, making sure the house was cleaned, getting furniture and food, fixing curtains, unpacking everything that we brought with us, and on and on.  We also have to drive 40 minutes from our house on the Bible College campus to Nakuru if we need to buy certain things or go to the bank or use the internet.  We're looking forward to the day when we have everything we need at home and can get on to our work and be a bit more relaxed.

We've got lots and lots of pictures to share with you here.  Keep in mind that we're still unpacking, so it will look even better in a couple of days.  But we already have a single guest bed, so we're ready for at least one person to visit us!

The staff at the Bible College have been really helpful in getting us settled in.  They've provided a bunch of the furniture for the house, helped with cleaning, getting materials to build a fence around, finding a plumber and electrician to do repairs, and much more.  We'll introduce you to them in a later post.

Here's a tiny chameleon that greeted us in the bush outside our door when we moved in:

And, what you've all maybe been waiting for, the pictures of the house.  Here is our bedroom.  Note the quilt on the bed (made by my mom!), which we actually need at night.  We even bought a blanket in addition to it.  In fact, it was 61 in our room yesterday morning.  Very different from Soroti where we didn't always even need a sheet and slept with a fan blowing on us every night.

Then, the first guest room that will be ready, with a single bed.

Another guest room which will someday have a double bed in it.

Our bathroom - we got a shower head put in which heats the water as it goes through so we can have hot showers (much more important here than it was in Soroti!). 

The toilet is in a separate room, which we think is kind of nice.

Our living room.

The dining room.

And the kitchen.

We really appreciate the pantry attached to the kitchen.  Having all those shelves is really nice.

So there is a bit of our life these days.  We hope to have internet hooked up at our house this weekend, but we don't know how good it will be.  There are very few options for the area where we live and we're hoping the one that Anthony found (after days of research and asking around) is at least decent. 

Sights of Nairobi

By Sara:

Here are some pictures so you can see more of what Nairobi is like.  First, here is the road going into downtown.

There are so many multi-storied buildings!

Can you find the guy selling belts in the picture below?

Here are some people selling street food:

Outdoor local restaurants:

Some fun signs:

I am actually not sure I can identify anyone painted on this bus other than Captain America.

An ambulance parked outside of a furniture shop:

How about this tow truck?

I'm not really sure what is going on with those there:

And finally, stuff that is being sold on the streets: