Anyhow, we recently released this video, and it is now being distributed to all AIM missionary candidates, but we thought we’d share it here as well so you can enjoy what our last 2 years have been like!

Exploring Old Town

We went to Mombasa last weekend, in partial fulfillment of our orientation requirements, and in partial fulfillment of ourselves and getting away from the busyness our lives are in right now. We stayed with some new friends of ours, Justin and Shannon Brown, in Mombasa’s Old Town which was built in the 1500′s. It was the closest we’ve been as a family to life in an islamic culture since Lesa, Sydney and I went to North Africa 3 years ago. Waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of the call to prayer in 12-part dissonant harmony from the dozen mosques in the vicinity, sweating it out in the oppressive heat and humidity even at 4 in the morning, reminded us alot of where we were when we experienced that original confirmation/call into missions.

The drive to Mombasa from Nairobi is like this: 2 hours of the worst roads followed by 6 hours of the best roads in all of Africa. We left around lunch time on Friday, stopping along the way to treat ourselves with snacks and sodas and a sit-down Kenyan-style meal, and arrived at the Brown’s around 10pm. We didn’t sleep too well, though, as it was all we could to do stop thinking about the heat as we lay sweating on top of our beds, under the mosquito nets, with fans blowing on us.

The next morning we did a little grocery shopping, ate lunch out, and spent the afternoon teaching at AIC Tudor, a large church in the Tudor area of Mombasa Island. Lesa and I had been invited to give a workshop on worship to the worship teams of this large church. It actually went pretty well, we decided to focus on what God says about worship in the bible and how important it is to Him, apart from our individual forms of expression since the Kenyan style of worship is vastly different than our western style. Lesa and I both had some serious points we wanted to get across, without sounding like we were judging their expressions of worship but wanting to help them raise the bar. We talked about God, about worship, sang some songs together, talked about practical steps in preparing a worship service, then opened it up for questions. From the questions we were asked (like “how do we coordinate the singers and the band when starting a song?”) we could tell our objectives had been subtly achieved, in getting them to take worship seriously and wanting to strip away the distractions that drive Lesa and I crazy like keyboard/guitar players taking the entire song to find out what key the singers had started in. “Great question,” we responded, and demonstrated how hard it is for an instrumentalist to pick out the key when the singer starts first, but how easy it is to prompt the singer with a pre-determined chord and key. We sat down afterward with a few instrumentalists and singers and went through some of the handouts on piano and guitar and worship leading we had written.

I know this seems like common sense to you westerners, but the traditional African style of music is largely vocal and rhythmic, not based in keyboard or guitar, so as they try to add these instruments (which for some reason they feel they must add) and a big loud sound system, you get a lot of chaos unless the guitarist or keyboard player is also the worship leader or is highly skilled. We hope what little we had to offer will help the church in the long run, and we’re looking forward to doing more of this kind of thing in the future.

On Sunday we had been invited by the AIC coast area bishop to come to his church and lead some songs and give the Palm Sunday message. We left Sydney with the Browns, who have 2 little girls, and the rest of us drove to AIC Chamgamwe. Not really sure what to expect or what would be required of us, we overprepared but were thankful. We expected a 3 hour service in Swahili and were not disappointed. We led a couple songs, I gave a message on worship and how Jesus’ death ripped the temple curtain and moved worship from the temple to our hearts, how the Father is seeking people to worship him with heart,soul,mind. It was my first time giving a message in an African church, though not my first time speaking with a translator. I actually spoke for maybe in a minute in swahili, greeting the church and introducing my family. Beyond that I can’t think fast enough to not bore the people to tears.

After church we had lunch in the pastor’s office (ugali, sukuma, chai, even some bread-and-butter for us wazungu [white people]). We went back to the house after this and crashed. Late afternoon we went out with the Browns and toured through Old Town. Most of Old Town has streets too narrow for cars, and is full of women covered head to to toe in black, men in white robes and skullcaps, children running all about between prayer times. Mosques everywhere, ornately carved wooden doors on everything.

We spent the next day, our last day, at the beach. You can’t go all the way to Mombasa and not go to the beach, right? We paid a daily rate at one of the hotels and swam in the pool and ate at the hotel. We also hired a local boat captain to take our family out for a bit on a big dugout outrigger sailboat. When we’d had enough we returned to Old Town, where the boys and I grabbed a tuk-tuk (3 wheeled taxi) to go visit Fort Jesus, a 16th century fort built by the Portuguese.

It rained that day, and in Africa when the rains come, so do the termites. Something about the rain that hatches their eggs or frees them from the ground, and suddenly the air is full of these little flying bugs. The first time this happened at our home in Nairobi we thought a plague had come upon us, as these little guys head immediately for your house and squeeze through every crack in every door or window, often leaving their wings behind. We would awake puzzled to find a big pile of wings at the threshold of our doors, until we figured out this is a normal part of life here. In fact, flying termites are a delicacie, and when they come it is like candy that is flying through the air to the children.

Termites... yum!

Well, Justin and I decided we need to know what the big deal is with people loving to eat termites, so we rounded up the dozen or so that were crawling on his kitchen floor, and threw them into a frying pan with a little oil. I called the boys to the table, and we feasted. I think anything that small and fried in oil can’t be too bad. Neither did the boys as we all enjoyed several of the crispy treats.

We’re back in Nairobi now, trying to wrap up our lives here as we’ll be leaving in 3 and a half weeks for America. I’ve got a video and web project I’m trying to wrap up, Lesa has the big “the King and I” production in 2 weeks, and we have a house to pack up. It’s a strange mix of emotions, like the ones we felt moving here, knowing we’ll be right back, but feeling a little anxious about coming to America. Like we don’t really know how we’ve changed until we experience the “reverse culture shock” of re-entry. Anxious that everyone will be wearing space suits or speak some new language or have a completely new cultural cues (tv shows, movies, etc) that are a part of every conversation that suddenly we don’t know about. But we’re most excited to see everyone and catch up relationally with you. Sharing meals and lives and swapping stories. That’s the African way!

Our orientation school, ABO (Africa Based Orientation), was a really great time of making new friends and learning many things. It humbled us, challenged us, and helped us push through the culture shock. We realize how shell-shocked we were that 1st couple of weeks in Kenya and now we feel a little more like this is home, thanks to our 3 weeks of immersion in rural Kenyan culture. We learned a ton about Africa worldview and thought patterns, not only the obvious ones like event [Africa] vs. time [Western] oriented cultures, but more difficult ones like how to communicate between a shame [Africa] vs. guilt [Western] culture.

We stayed in dorms at Scott Theological College (or, as Avery says: Scottological College). The kids had one room, Lesa & I another, which was nice. We ate primarily Kenyan food for those 3 weeks, stuff like ugali and sukamowiki and rice and beans, in different orders but pretty much the same food every day for lunch and supper.

In addition to classroom “lectures”, we also participated in ministry on Sunday mornings.  First, at a rural church where we taught a children’s Sunday School lesson and second at a girls’ high school boarding school where we got to deliver the “sermon.”  We also went to visit a Mosque during our unit on Islam, and went to visit the home of a Kenyan family for tea (Chai and cookies).  The home was a one room “apartment”, we sat on the bed as we were served tea and visited.  We also got to go shopping for veggies and fruit at the market in Machakos – a wonderful experience!  We made guacamole to share with our ABO friends (the avocados here are super-cheap!).

Homestay

We are now on our second day of staying with a Kenyan family in Nairobi.  We will be here for four weeks.    The couple we are staying with have grown children and one baby grandson.  The “mama” has declared that she will spoil her new “grandchildren” with whatever they want!  We know that we will have a great time joining in with this family and their extended family that seem to be in and out quite frequently.  There are many things here that will take some getting used to – even from our ABO experience.  We are quite a few steps deeper into African life.  As an example, we have both tried a piece of goat head meat – which they have cooked and cut up right here at the house.  It actually didn’t taste too bad, but the thought of what it was made it a bit hard to keep down!  The boys will start school on August 14th – we’re all looking forward to that!

Reflections

As I (Andy) swang in a swing at ABO, a few afternoons ago, I marveled that as I was thinking about supper, most of you were finishing breakfast. I marveled that as most of you are sweating it out in the humid summer heat, we are wearing jackets and sleeping under several blankets because they don’t heat the dorms (or homes) here (don’t forget we’re on the equator!). I realized how different our 2 worlds are, but yet the sky looks the same (but a different set of constellations at night). I marveled that so many people 8-9-10 hours behind us were praying for us, and had sacrificed so much for us to be here, right now. We praise God for each of you, and think of you often.

-Andy, Lesa, Robbie, Avery, Sydney

After we landed in XXXXX we went through customs and I tried a little French small talk with the customs officer. They speak French in XXXXX, but I’m pretty sure the guy didn’t think I was speaking French because I learned French with a rural Illinois farm town accent.

We took 2 taxis to B’s apartment (taxis are only large enough for 2 passengers, plus luggage), and since I was the only person in the group, besides B (who spoke arabic), with language skills (ha), I was doomed to always ride in the “other” taxi for the week. Just getting a taxi and negotiating a fare at the airport involved what looked to be quite an animated debate, that even involved the police. Somehow my taxi made it to the same place B’s did, and we arrived at his apartment around lunch time. These pictures are of the outside of the apartment (landlord lives on first floor, B’s apartment was directly above him, with access to the roof).

Looking out his window, I could honestly say I couldn’t believe I was in Africa. Middle East, maybe, but not Africa. It is really quite a culture shock when you go some place like that if all you know of the world is the U.S. Everything is painted white (at least in XXXX) with blue trim, and everywhere you look there are satellite dishes. Notice in the photo on the right the large pile of garbage at the end of the street. This was there trash dump, and occasionally a truck would come by a scoop some of it up to haul it off to an even larger dump, probably at the end of somebody else’s street. Mangy stray cats are everywhere and nobody seems to use garbage bags to, uh, bag up their garbage. It just kind of blows around and is out there for the world to enjoy finding out what you had in your house that you no longer want.

Since it was lunch time (about 6am body time I think), we went down the street to a small restaurant in some sort of market where we had shwarmas, which is pretty similar to a gyro, and quite delicious. On the way to lunch we passed a mosque and I got to hear my first call to prayer. I’m not sure what time it was, but all the mosques seem to have synchronized their watches because if you are close enough to town to hear the call to prayer you can probably hear multiple mosques doing it simultaneously. It’s kind of a spooky sound when you hear more than one at a time because each imam (?) has his own pitch that he’ll sing it at, and they make some crazy dissonance by singing over top of each other. You’d think if they synchronize their watches they could use a pitch pipe as well.

After lunch we wandered around the market while B caught up with several friends. It was amazing how the language is a blend between French and Arabic, and that B seems to carry on pretty well in conversations. He says it’s all small talk, but that in this culture is really important to be able to small talk well. B creates instant credibility with people he meets by speaking their particulary dialect of Arabic.

We went back to his apartment and started packing dishes and stuff while some other “workers” (codeword for missionaries) came by to get supplies we’d brought for them or to purchase furniture or appliances from B. Surprise of all surprises, one of the workers was “TN” (name witheld for security), who Lesa and I went to college with! Small world… it only took 3 hours from our arrival in North Africa for me to run into someone I knew pretty well. Crazy!

After packing for a while, we split again and waited outside Cafe Cote-du-Cote for taxis to take us to our hotel downtown. This became a big part of our trip, waiting for an open taxi, watching 2 of our group take off in it, then waiting for another taxi and hoping I could communicate well enough to get us to the same place. Another interesting thing about Cafe Cote-du-Cote, and other cafes here: They don’t seem to be really in the business of serving food or coffee, the main business that happens there is smoking chicha (more on that later). These pictures were snapped while we waited, and waited, and then eventually crossed the street to wait beside some kind of interstate or limited-access-highway, which didn’t seem safe but proved to be a lot more efficient at finding a taxi!

I don’t know if it was my French, or that I just looked gullible, but our taxi ride took twice as long and cost twice as much as B’s. But I didn’t really care, I was thankful we found ourselves in the same place, considering I didn’t have a single phone number or way to get ahold of anybody should we have been separated. Anyhow, we walked several blocks to our hotel. It’s old (1920′s or earlier) and not fancy, but at least we had our own toilet and it had toilet paper (which is rare in a country where “the hose” is the norm).

Outside our window I can hear arabic music and lots of people milling around… very tired… must shut eyes…