Berea Students and Staff Photos and Videos

By Anthony:

Praise the Lord!  I made it through my first busy month of teaching.  It was wonderful.  From here on out, it should be more of a relaxed pace.  We have a couple weeks off from classes, and then the regular term students come.

In this blog post, I'd just like to give you a few interesting insights about life here at the college.  But, mostly I want to share with you some pictures and videos.

First, we celebrated our anniversary recently, and managed to get a good photo of ourselves:

Second, I have some really interesting and talented students in many ways.  But one interesting thing is that of the around 30 modular students we have at the college (they come for 3 months a year, one month at a time), at least 5 of them are Gospel artists.  They don't do this for their primary living, but on the side they are Christian singers, complete with giving concerts, having their songs on the radio, producing CDs, and making music videos.  I looked on youtube for their music videos, but could only find videos there for just one of my students.  Her name is Purity.  Enjoy:

Third, we recently had a launching / fundraiser at the college to celebrate and advertise the new programs the college is starting.  As of a couple years ago, our college was no longer Berea Theological College but is now called Berea Christian College of Integrated Studies.  The reason for the name change is that the school already offers extra courses in computer systems and computer maintenance as well as a program for early childhood development education.

The new programs that were just launched include social work, CPA, and business management.  In other words, the college is no longer just for theological students, even though they still make up the majority of the students who are here.  You can pray for the college as they try to start these new programs.  It only works if they can market themselves well and the students actually register to come.  This is important both because the college really wants to help the surrounding communities with such programs, and because with more students coming in these new programs, the school will be more financially stable and successful.

Two of the above mentioned Gospel artist students sang at the launching day.  Here is Pauline and then Purity, and then Benson.  They sound like they are lip syncing, but they are singing along to their own recordings, their own created songs.

This is our bishop of Nakuru Diocese, the Right Reverend Joseph Muchai.  We have gotten to know him pretty well over the last year or so through our many visits to Nakuru from Uganda.  He is the main one overseeing all of our work as he is really the one in charge of the Diocese, including the Anglican Development Services, Berea Farm, and Berea College.  Everyone reports to him, so he is the connecting link, especially for Sara, when she is working with so many different organizations at once.  We really like this bishop, as he is really humble, personable, and a good leader.

Ranya, our Academic Dean:

Our Principal, Catherine:

The curtain opens to unveil the new courses being launched!

Sara made a ton of cakes for the event!  People really enjoyed them.  I think they look pretty fancy, and they certainly taste better than anything you'd get in the store.

Fourth, here are some photos and videos from chapel some days back.  Chapel is every morning but I do not make it there every time.  We also have a communion service with the whole college community every Thursday afternoon.  At the communion services, each different year grouping of theology students makes up their own choir and sing a song for us.  We have realized, both from our time at Berea and also times at church services, that Anglicans really love choirs, and you can usually expect that the total time for choir presentations will be longer than the sermons.

1st year modular students:

2nd year modular students:

3rd year modular students:

Quite the podium for preaching in the chapel:

Last, here are some photos taken outside of most of the Berea community together during August:

Student leaders of various aspects of college life:

Some, but not all, of the staff.  This includes all the teachers except for the part-time adjunct teachers, of which we have 2-3.

Berea Farm

By Sara:

I have had the opportunity to start spending time at Berea Farm, (across the road from the college) which is a beautiful, productive farm!  I am enjoying following the farm manager, Ann, around to learn from her.  Below is a picture of some of the tea that is grown there - it is all picked by hand.  I learned that when the plants flower, it means they are stressed by lack of nutrients or water or something - it is not supposed to flower if you take care of it well.

And here is a photo of Ann out in the tea field.  She is a very knowledgeable and competent farm manager.  I appreciate her willingness to let me learn from her and to discuss and brainstorm with her about plans for the farm.

 I have also been assisting the Anglican Development Service (ADS) with their chili peppers that they are growing at the farm.  They got some greenhouses set up there, but the covering material kept it too hot in the greenhouse for the peppers.  As a result, they had to move them outside and are now transplanting some in front of the greenhouses, using Conservation Agriculture practices, to see how they do.

 So, I was out at the farm helping to transplant the peppers and put mulch around them.  This is what happens whenever I am outside working and there are children around:

I am not sure what is so interesting about me transplanting peppers, but they don't get tired of watching!

We used the crop residue from beans as mulch.  And when I say "we", I mean myself and Ndumia who you can see in the picture below.  He works at the farm and is also a plumber!

The farm now has some sheep, along with their dairy cows, and I was amused to see them standing in the feeding trough while they were eating:

There are also the bee hives that belong to ADS, which I will be helping with.  I didn't want to get too close for a photo while not wearing a bee suit, so here is the far-off view!

I am sure that as time goes on, I will have the opportunity to learn all sorts of new things by working on the farm as well as being able to share some of my knowledge with the people there.

Baringo

By Sara:

I had the opportunity to travel rather far from Nakuru, to Chemolingot in Baringo County, with some of the staff of Anglican Development Services (ADS).  They are starting a project there where they are working with people who are mainly pastoralists.   This is a disaster risk reduction type of project where they are helping the people there to diversify what they do so they have something to fall back on if their main source of livelihood fails.  Since they are going to be including agriculture, keeping chickens, and beekeeping in this project, I will be traveling to Baringo more with them in the future to join in that work.

After being in such a cool hilly place for the past month, it was pretty different to go back to the dust and the heat of a lower elevation area.  It was like being back in Uganda again!

Since this project is just getting started, our visit was mainly to meet the local leaders of the area and introduce ourselves so they know who we are when we come back.  For several hours, we went around from office to office, meeting people like a Member of the County Assembly, the County Chief, the local pastor, and many others.  Then, we went to the church and met with some of the men and women who are going to be leading the community groups who are participating in this project.

Finally, we went and visited one woman who has already started trying some new things on her land, including growing maize and raising chickens.

She sent Justus (from ADS) home with one of her chickens.

 She is definitely a hard working woman and an early adopter of new things.  You can see some of her maize in the picture below.  This is her third year trying to grow maize after two years where it didn't turn out well.  Her persistence has paid off this year because she's going to get a very good harvest.

We had to cross this seasonal river on foot to get to her house.

I'm always amazed at the interesting things that I see while traveling around East Africa.  In the area where I was, I saw (wild) ostriches right next to the road, all sorts of other spectacular birds (this was fun for me because I really love birds), camels (people in that area raise camels for meat and milk), and a donkey slaughterhouse, for exporting the meat to China.

Also, like we've told you before, we live just south of the equator.  So to go to Baringo, we crossed the equator and headed north.  Here's a picture of the equator crossing:

Teaching is so fun

By Anthony:

I've been really busy all month teaching and writing lectures.  For August we had modular courses, meaning that we take our normal classes that usually take 3 months to teach, and teach them in 3 weeks.  I had to write a lot of lectures and discussions really fast.  But this means that a good part of my work for the first semester, starting in September, will be done already.  So by September I will start having a normal work schedule, being able to rest a little bit, and begin work on my courses for second semester which are not near ready yet.

Teaching has been really fun.  This is what I was made to do.  I enjoy teaching in the classroom just as much as teaching in the field informally like I was doing in Uganda.  Both are good and different, and it's nice to have a change of pace.  I'll get to do a fair amount of teaching in the field around Kenya in coming years though, once we've been here a while.

When I first started teaching again, I had memories of when I first started teaching in Uganda 7 years ago. I have come a long way since then.  I speak in a totally different voice and accent then I did back then, because now I know how to speak so that students can understand.  I am much more confident.  And I know how to make my teaching both simple enough, and contextual to the African context.  I'm thankful that my Ugandan students were so merciful back then when I was so green and surely made many mistakes.

For the modular courses, the students come three times a year, a month at a time.  I am teaching the first year students church history, and I have 15 students for that class.  I am teaching the third year students for missions and evangelism and I have 6 students for that class.  These are two of my favorite subjects to teach.  Surprisingly, most of my students are women.  Most of the students are pretty young, some as young as 19 years old, just out of high school.  But some of them are older than I and have been working for years or been in ministry for years.  Most want to become ordained pastors, but some want to go on to university to get a theological degree first (this diploma is a prerequisite).  Here is the first year class.  They are only here for another week.

Some surprises or interesting things from classroom discussions:

• There is a common idea here that many Christians in Anglican churches are not really "born again" or "saved."  In Uganda, this was the impression that Pentecostals had about the Anglican Church.  But I was surprised to find that Anglicans themselves also believe this.  When preachers introduce themselves or people introduce themselves in meetings, the most common form of introduction is, "Hi my name is Anthony.  I am born again and Jesus is my personal savior."  Or, "Hello, my name is Anthony, I love Jesus so much, and I am God's child."  Things like that.  I asked my students about this and they said that a lot of people in the church don't want to be "saved."  Upon digging into this further, it appears a lot of people are content to just go to church and enjoy the tradition but they don't want a personal relationship with God.  This is obviously something I am going to have to keep learning more about.  But it always warms my heart to hear people introduce themselves and talk about how much they love Jesus.

• I learned that being an evangelist in the Anglican Church of Kenya involves door to door evangelism almost every day.  It is also, from what I gather, a stepping stone to becoming a pastor.  You begin as an evangelist, do that ministry, get more theological education, and then you can move up to ordained pastoral ministry.  I've been trying to emphasize that being an evangelist or missionary is a respectable calling by itself, and if that is your gift, you don't need to "move up."
     
• In talking about some African missionaries in history I told my students how they received visions from angels who called them into ministry.  Being an American, I have natural skepticism about angels, visions, miracles, spiritual warfare, etc.  But I was surprised to find that their skepticism of such things dwarfed my own.  Here I was in class, as an American, trying to convince my African students that God can still use angels today, God can still do miracles, and God can still give people dreams.  It was not what I expected!  In this way, they are nearly exact opposites of the Pentecostals I used to teach in Uganda.
   
• In missions, we have been talking about the challenges of being a missionary, and the students certainly think that it is a tough calling.  I keep trying to inspire them that perhaps God will call one of them to be a missionary to an unreached group in Kenya.  So far no takers, but I am convinced they all want to go home and change their church cultures so that their churches send out more missionaries.
    
• In my research I found that there are quite a number of unreached people groups in Kenya.  What is sad is that most missionaries to Kenya from around the world, like me, are not doing anything to reach these groups.  They end up with all other kinds of mercy ministries but the unreached peoples stay unreached.  And even more sad is that the Kenyans, who are right next door, metaphorically speaking, are not reaching out to these groups either.  When I talked to the students about these groups, they were mostly aware of them.  So I asked why Kenyan churches are not sending missionaries to them.  The answer I was given was that Kenyan Christians fear to go to those places because sometimes the tribe might be violent.  They have heard of people being killed.  This led into a good discussion on whether we should really have a fear of death or not as Christians.
  
  This website shows you some of the unreached people groups in Kenya - Joshua Project - Kenya.  Most of the groups that are unreached are either about 100% Muslim or about 100% Hindu.  It's crazy to think of a group of about 50,000 people, with only 4 church members.  Most East African Christians, based on what I've been told in both Uganda and Kenya, plant churches in areas where the majority of their new church members come from other existing churches in the area.  Please pray - Matthew 9:37-38 - "Then he said to his disciples, 'the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.' Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.'"
  
  
• We also talked a lot about reaching out to Indians.  There are many in Kenya as in Uganda.  But Kenyans fear talking to them, and for some good reasons.  It seems that many Indians, while they work with Africans daily, seem to look down on them.  I'm not sure if this is related to their beliefs in the caste systems and different social classes or something else.  But we have seen a lot of Indians belittling Africans and looking down on them, whereas they treat Westerners completely differently.  And we've heard many sad stories from our Ugandan friends. Indians remain unreached with the Gospel in Kenya, few are reaching out to them.  Kenyans fear that if they try to talk to them they will get "chased away."  Next semester, I am giving an assignment that the students have to try talking to an Indian, even if it is just asking them if they can interview them about their beliefs.  I will let you know how it goes.
      
• We talked about the mission concept of "culture shock," the stresses of living in a new culture.  They asked if they would have culture shock if they went to the US.  I didn't really think they would have much as Kenya is so westernized now.  But I said that they would probably have culture shock, not from anything big, but from hundreds of little changes.  I mentioned one small change:  "In the US, we drink tea but we don't have a set time each day for 'tea time.'"  Their eyes got so big, they were just utterly shocked and horrified, haha.
    
• We talked about the missions concept of Western churches supporting local evangelists in a place say like Kenya.  A lot of organizations do this as you can support about 4 local evangelists for the price of one person from North America.  It seems like a great way to partner together.  But the students surprised me by arguing that it is not a good system.  They think it is keeping the African churches in dependency upon the Western countries, when they would like to see the African churches taking up the call to missions without having to be paid by the West to do it.
    
• A new greeting I heard a student say was "Up up Jesus!" and then the other person should respond, "Down down Satan!"

Settling in - Challenges

By Anthony:

I began teaching this week!  I really enjoy it and I can tell the students are already getting more used to my accent and learning a lot.  But since I've just started, I'll write more about teaching as time goes on.  We just wanted to have one last post about moving in.  But first here is a photo of Sara and me both starting our day of work:

Whenever you move into a new home and a new place, there are always challenges, but they are also possible to overcome, especially when you have faithful supporters back in North America and welcoming, helpful, and hospitable Kenyans here where we live on the campus.  We have been really well taken care of, and received help from people for all kinds of little house repairs.  Below are some of the people who have been taking care of us: the manager from Anglican Development Services, Justus, our World Renew leader in Nairobi, Jenninah, and the college's Principal, Catherine.

Challenges:
1. Classes. The biggest challenge has been finishing writing my lectures really fast!  But God has given me grace to do so.  August will be busy, but then first semester will calm down a little bit and I can enjoy teaching while also writing lectures for the second semester.  Here are pictures of one of the classrooms.  I appreciate using a whiteboard rather than a chalkboard.  Don't you just hate that rough writing/scratching on the chalkboard feeling?

2. The cold! It's usually about 60-61 degrees in our house, a cold temp when you are just sitting around.  Outside it is colder than that during the night and morning, but it can get quite warm outside during the afternoon. Thankfully we came prepared.  We brought our winter coats, sweaters, hats, and gloves, all of which we've already used.  We also bought a $20 space heater from a store in Nakuru, and it's very nice to have that next to my desk.  This is how Caleb handles the cold at night sometimes:

3. Internet.  We are in a dead zone for internet.  But we were finally able to get satellite internet which works quite well.  It's expensive but worth it to be able to keep in touch with all of you.

4. Phones.  We are in a near dead zone for our mobile phones as well.  When talking to people on the phone, we had to keep running outside the house for them to hear us.  But we got that fixed thanks to a little booster antenna that boosts the signal inside the house.

5. Electricity.  The power has gone off every day we have been here, except for one day.  It goes off for between 30 minutes and 7 hours.  But it seems we just came at a bad time, and that it won't always be this bad.  In fact it's already a bit better.  Plus, we bought a generator!  Now I can work on my computer with peace of mind even when the power goes off, instead of wondering if I need to save my battery.

When the electricity goes off, not only do we lose lights and power to the fridge, etc.  But we also lose internet, the cell phone booster goes off, and the water pump for college campus goes off.  If not for our storage tank of water in our ceiling, that would mean no water for us.  Oh, and the hot water heater goes off too.  The generator only lets us charge the computers and use the internet, so we've had to take some freezing cold showers in the 60 degree temp within our home!

6. Leaking roof.  The tank in our ceiling has some holes in it.  We have a part of our roof that is all wet and moldy now, but people have come to fix it twice.  Finally, the college decided to just buy us a new tank to replace the old one which is not in good enough shape.  We are very grateful for that.  Here is the house, coming together nicely, and Sara's garden is coming along.

She is still working on collecting mulch to cover the whole garden.

7. Jogging at High Altitude.  It's been tough!  Can't....get...enough.....oxy....gen..gasp gasp.

These are the types of things we've been dealing with.  None of them are big things, but it added up to a very interesting and busy few weeks.  Now we truly feel at home and settled in and we really like the house and the place that we live in.

Movie Review - "God's Not Dead"

By Anthony:

I recently watched "God's Not Dead" while were were still in the US.  I had to see what all the talk was about.  I have Christian friends who aren't even willing to watch it, and other Christian friends who absolutely loved it.  I have to say that it pleasantly surprised me, but I have some serious criticisms as well.  I think if you have been against watching it, you should watch it, so you can see how far Christian movies have come.

The theme of religious intolerance on campuses is surely a huge thing right now, and this movie was timely in that sense.  Free speech and belief is under attack.  I'm glad that Christians, like those who made this movie, are coming together to address this important issue.  However, the setup of the movie seemed unrealistic, that a teacher would make students write down "God is dead" on paper.  This seems like an unfair caricature.  It would have been better to use a real life example (as far as I've been able to research, I can't find that this actually happened anywhere).

Christian movies have come a long way.  I thought both the filming and the acting were great.  Some scenes were very moving.

I appreciated that it was not as simplistic as I predicted it would be.  I didn't expect this mainstream Christian movie to be talking about Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, and John Lennox for example.  I appreciated that they were willing to draw on Christian scholars outside of mainstream evangelicalism and even outside of the US.   And while it's unlikely a freshman college student would beat a philosophy professor in such a debate in real life, it was nice to see that they had him studying constantly.  The student wasn't taking this task simply.  He was studying and reading so many books that he was in danger of failing his other courses.

I also appreciated that the American pastor was learning good things from a visiting pastor from overseas.  We need to do more of that!

But the biggest criticism I have of the movie is that the non-Christians are portrayed unrealistically negatively.  This is upsetting and makes me not want to support movies like this.  We can get across the beauty of conversion to Christ without making non-Christians all look like they are abusive, uncaring, and arrogant.  The non-Christians in my life generally don't act like this.  I couldn't relate to it, and I was offended by it.  It's basically a straw-man.  Of course we'd all want to be Christians if Christians are loving and everyone else is an egotistical jerk.  But that's not the reality.  The reality is that people will want to accept Christ because he is real, he is Lord, and for the forgiveness of sins.  Of course, a part of our witness is our character, our love, and being a light to the world.  But the non-Christians' flaws were over the top.

I also didn't appreciate the gimmick of evangelism it was promoting.  Evangelism involves more than texting people that "God's not dead."  Our job is to personally share the good news, not spam out text messages.

But all in all, I can see both why people appreciate it and why some people don't.  Because I was able to see both sides perspectives' I found it interesting to watch.  I think that God has used this movie to do a lot of good in people's lives.  Watching it can give people courage to share their faith, give people willingness to suffer in our walk with Christ, and willingness to deeply study theology, philosophy, and science.

July Prayer Letter 2016

You can download and read our newest prayer letter from July - here.  Thank you for faithfully praying for us!