No, we haven’t, in case you’d wondered. Yes, we know we haven’t sent an email since March 5. No, it’s not because the rainy season knocked out the internet to all of east africa. Yes, it’s because we’re busy and sometimes lazy and forgetful, and often both at once. Consequently, since we skipped a month, we have a TON to tell you about!

During the past two months, we have moved to a transitional home on a AIM missionary compound. Also, Lesa had her wrist surgery which ended up being fairly significant and is taking a while to recover fully. Praise the Lord that it is doing better every day!

Overlooking Rift Valley

Mom & Dad

We began our journey over the past few months with the visit from Andy’s parents over Easter. We had a wonderful time with them, somehow squeezing in trips to Kibera, an overnight ride on the Lunatic Line (go rent “Ghost in the Darkness“), a few days at the beach, a move, visits to the Rift Valley and Kijabe, and a game drive. Read the full story here.

Filming in North Africa

On-Field Media

The OFM has been PDB (pretty darn busy) serving AIM throughout EA – East Africa (we are an organization that loves abbreviating).

Andy’s got a few more stamps in his passport, and some great photos and stories as well.

North African man

In March, Ted and I (Andy) went on a trip. We met some amazing national believers, some amazing Christian workers there, got spat on, rocks thrown at us, and all kinds of frontier-missionary kinds of stories to tell. Get our photos here, and read Ted’s story here.

Earlier this month, we went to northern coastal Mozambique, to work with a family there who are working among an unreached people group there. We flew about 3 hours to Pemba, drove 6 hours (way past the end of the paved roads!), and spent 2.5 days among the Mwani people there. Get photos here.

Mozambique hospital

We are very very excited that Tim Lang will be joining OFM as an intern this coming fall. The Lang family are great friends of ours, and we’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Tim quite well over the past 6 years at DCC. Tim will be spending his gap year with AIM, doing videography and traveling with OFM. Please pray for Tim as he is raising his support over the next few months.

Lesa’ Ministries

My involvement in the Inbound Program, which brings/receives/trains short-term and now also full-term missionaries from around the world to AIM International Services is growing and going well. I’m so grateful to now have a team of 3 others working with me and we are in prayer for the Lord to send us someone with administrative skills/time to lend to the work. It is such a blessing to introduce people to Kenya and to missionary life.

A new development for me (Lesa) was just finalized yesterday. I’m going to be volunteering as the high school drama director at a school similar to the Robbie and Avery’s school (yet larger and older). It has an international student population made up of Americans, Kenyans, British, Koreans, etc. Their current director is returning to the States and leaving behind a well-established program. We are excited about this as a family – to be involved heavily again in the lives of teens, have an outlet for our creativity, and to be involved in teaching/promoting the arts in this community where exposure to the arts can be limited.

Rehearsals will be 2 – 3 days a week after school and we’ll produce a play in the fall and a musical in the spring!! I’m seeing this as a move back to my original vision in college of teaching the fine arts on the mission field. Isn’t God incredible?

Avery & Sydney

The Kids

Robbie and Avery have one week left of school. They have both had an amazing year at West Nairobi School. We have been so impressed with the quality of teaching and how much the boys truly like school! Robbie will be going to summer camp for a week this summer, and all three kids will be attending VBS at their school for a week. Sydney has been doing some home-school preschool with Mommy at home. She loves learning and calls Lesa, “Teacher.” It’s so cute! All three kids have loved living on the compound, as there are many other children here and they run and play all day long.

How We Are Doing… Really

The past two months haven’t been the easiest, but things have been getting better. When we lost our last “permanent” home in April, the adjustment to living in yet another house, along with Lesa’s surgery, and some other random incidents, our spirits dipped pretty low. But, He has also remained faithful through it all. We’ve been learning more and more of His great love for us – even when we doubt and especially when we struggle. He has provided for us what we see as the just the right home to settle into (of course, permanence takes on a whole new meaning here). It is located near our old neighborhood, and is the home of some of our new friends who unfortunately are leaving the field. They have done some amazing improvements to it during their time here! We will be moving there in early June.

Robbie piloting the DC3

Support

It takes a miracle each and every month to keep us here. It’s really amazing and encouraging to us to see how God provides the $5500 each month that is required to live here. Thank you to all who have continued to give sacrifically.

Truthfully, we are slightly undersupported, as the support rate was raised this year in accordance with cost-of-living inflation… including the boys’ school tuition. We trust God to continue to provide. In addition, if we raise any extra monthly support, we would like to put Sydney in a Kenyan preschool here in the fall – we think she would greatly benefit from the social interaction – especially getting to know Kenyans. Some of you supported us abundantly last spring with a one-time check when we were leaving for the field. Would you prayerfully consider renewing your gift this year to help us continue our ministries here?

Also, thank you to all who have given to our vehicle project. We have almost paid for the 1973 Land Rover we agreed to purchase from the Delorenzos. You’ve provided $4500 of the $6500 we need to finish paying it off and making some necessary repairs (radiator, fuel tank, rear shock). If you’d like to give to this project, click here and type in our name, select “project” and enter “Vehicle” as the project name. Thank you!

Prayer requests

* AIM AIR incident: This past month, our AIM IS community had a shock when one of our planes crashed on take-off in Sudan. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt. We do ask for prayers for the pilot’s family, friends of ours, who are continuing to process the incident, and also for the several passengers who were on board. Full story here.

* Kenyan people: Following the election crisis, life here has certainly returned to some level of normalcy. However, food and gas prices have sky-rocketed and the poorest people have been affected the most. Please pray for the inflation to cease and for prices to lower.

* Our upcoming move – our 4th house here. (Enough said).

* Our support needs

in closing

We close this, our 11th newsletter in 12 months, with the words of the apostle Paul in Romans 5:

And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.

Amen!

Andy, Lesa, Robbie, Avery, Sydney

First of all, thank you for all of you who have been praying for us and for the country of Kenya during this time. Since our last email we have been so encouraged and blessed by your emails to us. It’s good to know when we click “Send” it doesn’t just go out into the vacuum of space, but that people are actively following what is going on and praying along with us. Thank you! Secondly, sorry for the long email, we’ve been trying to keep these things short but we have had so many things happen in the past 30 days we needed to tell you about.

Things were pretty tense at the beginning of January, and have fluctuated wildly since then. Threats of riots, sounds of gunfire, and constant visitors to our door from Kibera remind us that this situation is far from over. A lot of forgiveness will need to happen first, and that is a supernatural act that can only come from Christ and his power to transform minds and humble hearts. AIM is continuing to monitor the situation for the safety of all of its’ missionaries in Kenya and we still feel confident in their experience, judgment, and guidance for us during this time.

Lining up for food in Kibera

The Body of Christ in Action

Despite being in this difficult situation, we have been blessed and encouraged to see the body of Christ at work around us and through us. Many churches here have stepped up to the challenge to take care of the displaced and hungry and wounded.We had a unique opportunity to partner our sending church, Dulles Community, with a church in Kibera that was housing 300 refugees but had no way to feed them. At the time Kibera was (and still is, depending on the day and the violence) a very desperate place, because food vendors had been looted and chased out of town (or killed) and it became very expensive and dangerous even to possess food. Dulles Community was ready to give, willing to share (1 Tim 6:18) and provided 3 meals a day for those 300 people for 2 weeks during the most desperate time. We were just blessed to have been a part of connecting the body of Christ to each other.

We have also realized that the greatest way we can make an impact here is to help those whom God puts us in contact with. We have people at our door everyday who are hungry and in need. It has been our goal to give out food to anyone who needs it – as there have been people across the country without consistent food for the past month. Also, just today we were able to help out some Kenyan friends – he was in western Kenya and unable to get home to Nairobi, as there are no buses running right now. We were able to connect him with an AIM AIR plane that was landing nearby and he is home now safe and sound with his family. It’s things like that which help us to know we are here for a reason.

Ministry

AIM AIR Cessna Caravan

The On Field Media team has been busy as well, trying to cover the stories of God at work during this time. From the secular news media, people are left to wonder how a country with such a rich, lengthy Christian heritage could do this to itself. Our current mandate is to declare God’s glory, and get out the stories of how lives transformed by Christ cause people to go against the status quo and embrace fellow Kenyans across tribal lines. Recently we have been in Kibera and in Western Kenya with AIM AIR relief efforts. Click here for more photos from these trips.

Last weekend Lesa spent 3 days at the annual AIM Ladies’ retreat with 70 other women. Since we shipped a portable sound system with us to Africa, she volunteered to run sound for the event, as well as taught 2 workshops on “breathing new life into your daily quiet time.”

Lesa has been serving in a new role at AIM this month, also. She has been helping out with Short-Term missionaries (here for less than one year) who are here to serve within International Services (our division of AIM). Many of these are pilots, mechanics, counselors and their families. She had a group of four new people come two weeks ago and enjoyed organizing their orientation and getting them settled into life here. We have started a Short-Termers’ Fellowship at our house every other week for worship, training, and fun for all short-term missionaries in Interational Services.

Avery’s arm

Last Tuesday night we were having supper at a friend’s house, and joking about how Robbie had broken his arm once, Avery twice, and Andy three times. The very next day Avery tied his dad, and is well on his way to breaking the record at this pace! He and Robbie were jumping off the swings at the playground at Tumaini, and apparently Avery must have won the contest.

In Kenya, getting treated for a broken arm is very different than in the US. We had to pay for everything in cash ahead of time, and it involved Avery having to go by himself to the “operating theatre”, and spending the night in the hospital with Lesa by his side. All told it was about an 18 hour stay in the hospital, and I think it might have slowed Avery down for a day.

Sydney

Sydney’s surgery and trip to US

For those of you who have kept up with our blog, it may not come as a surprise to hear Lesa and Sydney will be back in the US by this Friday night. And for the rest of you… surprise!

We knew before we came here that Sydney would need eye surgery at some point to correct her eye condition, strabismus. We had seen several doctors in the US before coming here, and had some recommendations. We were able to follow up here in Nairobi with another highly recommended expert in ophthamology who concurred that waiting till our next furlough (summer 2009) could cause permanent vision problems. We decided that Lesa would take Sydney, leaving Andy and the boys at home, so they could continue to work and to attend school.

They will be in the Dulles (VA) area the weekends of the 3rd and the 17th, and will be in Kansas with Lesa’s family in between for the surgery and recovery. They are looking forward to connecting with many of you in these places, visiting Dulles Community Church, and having some special time with Lesa’s family.

Vehicle fund

Our Land Rover?

We have been praying for the right opportunity to purchase a vehicle that is a better fit for our family’s personal and ministry needs. Our current vehicle is a station wagon that seats 5 and we need to drive more people around than just our family when we have visitors and when Lesa is driving around new Short-Term missionaries. We also needed a vehicle to drive outside of Nairobi, where the roads are REALLY bad – an SUV that is made for the type of roads you find in Africa. A vehicle has become available for us to purchase – our friends are willing to sell us their old Land Rover (you can see us with it on our little safari in pictures on our website). It can seat almost double what our current car can seat! We would like to purchase it as a second vehicle, to only use when needed, as our station wagon gets great gas mileage and is much better suited for city driving. In order to get it, we need to raise $7,000 for the purchase and necessary repairs by the end of February. If you would like to give to our vehicle fund, click here. Type in our name, select “project” and enter “Vehicle” as the project name.

Prayer requests

• Please pray for the still volatile situation here across Kenya, for our new Kenyan friends who are all affected by this, for the Kenyan church that it would be a light in this darkness, and for the leaders who need to come to a solution quickly. Thousands of Kenyans have lost possessions, homes, and loved ones in this senseless violence.
• Please pray for safe travel for Lesa and Sydney, for a successful surgery and recovery for Sydney, and for the guys and they stay in Nairobi for 20 days without Mom.
• Please pray for our family and other missionaries as this past month has been extremely stressful. All of the missionaries are feeling the strain of grieving the loss of this once peaceful country, concern for the Kenyan friends, and concern for their own family’s safety.
• Please pray for our ministries here – OFM, Short-Term missionaries, and our efforts to help our Kenyan friends and neighbors – that they would be able to continue, to bless others, and to bring glory to God.

In closing

Wow… sorry again for the long email. We just had so many things in the past month we had to talk about, and many more that didn’t fit on the page. We just wanted to close with saying despite the situation here, we are confident God has us (and other missionaries) here because we are needed. Maybe the things we are needed for are not part of our official assignment with the organization, but we feel confident that when times are tough, that is exactly when we are needed here the most. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to be here and serve this country.

In Christ’s love,

Andy, Lesa, Robbie, Avery, Sydney

In a nutshell, there has been a great deal of unexpected unrest all over Kenya since the results of the election unfolded this past weekend. Hundreds have died in tribal-related violence over the disputed election results. This being a usually peaceful country, the extreme violence has surprised us all.

At this point, we have cancelled our vacation to Mombasa that we had planned and will continue to stay put here in Nairobi. We have just completed our 4th day of being in the house – though Andy ventured out today in search for some food! Our neighborhood has been quiet and peaceful. There was only one point yesterday afternoon when we became concerned – we could hear a mob and police gunfire in a market area not far from us, close to Kibera slums. This occurred at the same time as a protest rally was being thwarted in another area of the city. We are awaiting some kind of move towards a resolution on the part of the political leaders, as well as another rally set to occur on Thursday.

Prayer Requests:

- Please pray for this country – that the leaders will resolve their issues politically and not incite violence amongst their followers.

- Please pray that people will see that no election is worth these deaths, and that wisdom and peace will prevail.

- Please pray that God will provide for the physical needs of all in Nairobi and around the country as our food supplies are running low and the markets/grocery stores are emptying quickly.

- Please pray for the safety of our Kenyan friends as they, like us, are trying to stay out of the way of those causing this violence.

- Please pray for all of the missionaries who are making decisions for their safety while still trying to do their work in this uncertain time – particularly for those in the town of Eldoret who are being evacuated.

- Please pray that God will knit our family closer together during this time of much “togetherness” and that we will all grow to lean on Him even more.

Thank you all for your prayers and love.

In Him,

Andy, Lesa, Robbie, Avery, and Sydney

Here is a run-down of what has occurred in the past week: The election was held last Thursday.  There are many parties here in Kenya, and the election process is very different than what we are used to.  Many people follow a party based on tribal lines, even though this is a “metropolitan” city.  Therefore the tribal animosities arise during election time especially.  The two main candidates were Kibaki (who was already president) and Raila.  In the first couple of days after the election, it looked as if Raila was winning.  Many people wanted him to win with the hope that life might get better for them than it has been under Kibaki.  There is a general mistrust of the government and here – as corruption has always been a reality in this country.

On Saturday, they spent hours reading election results live on TV, only to tell us that not all of the results were in yet.  There is an electoral commission here that is supposedly not influenced by the government.  This is who has been running the process.  Raila was still in the lead on Saturday, though it was a very small lead.  His supporters became violent in places across the country because they believed that it was taking so long because Kibaki’s people were rigging the election.  The violence was directed towards those of a specific tribe (Kibaki’s: Kikuyu) – their homes and businesses.

Come Sunday morning, everyone was glued to the TV (or radio) thinking that they were finally going to announce it.  People waited all day long, growing very impatient as they are very passionate about the elections.  We had the TV on all day, too, and absolutely nothing was progressing.

Finally, late in the day, a bizarre string of events occurred.  First, Raila gave a statement that the election was being rigged and there should be a recount.  Then the electoral commission was about to give the results and people in the press room were getting fired up about it.  The chairman of the commission left the room, the power went out, and then they evacuated all of the press from the building.  Then we find out that the commission told one of the TV networks privately that Kibaki had won by about 200,000 votes (out of 7 million!) and that network then announced it over the news. Then, Kibaki was sworn in within the hour in a very “British” ceremony and it was supposedly all over!

Of course, the Raila supporters are not happy about this. Not happy in the least! Kibaki, in an effort to keep violence under control, banned all live media broadcasts.  That has been the weirdest part of the whole thing, as we have been “in the dark” ever since the announcement.  We have told you before about Kibera slums, which is about a mile from our house.  This is where much of the violence is happening, as we have been reading on the internet – but we have no way of knowing what is really happening since the news hasn’t been covering it.

To calm any of your worries, though, the violence is pretty localized in the slums and our neighborhood is actually very quiet.  We are also not on any major roads, so that also keeps us from “centers” of activity.  We can’t hear much of anything, which we would have been able to if it were anywhere close.  You can read about it on the internet, but please remember that the pictures you see there don’t represent our neighborhoods.

We personally weren’t rooting for either candidate.  And now, after all of this, we see problems on both sides.  We also don’t personally know Kenyans from either tribe, though we know Kenyans who were voting for these candidates.  We do know some people who live in Kibera and we are concerned for them and their safety.  We also have friends whose ministries are in Kibera and we are certain that this whole situation is very distressing to them.  If you want to see some of the footage that Andy took in Kibera a couple of months ago, you can see some of it in the Psalm 40 video we have posted here on the website.

So our request to you now is that you pray for Kenya, that peace will prevail and people will not resort to violence to express their frustrations.  Please pray that officials will deal with the situation with wisdom, honesty, and integrity.  Please also pray for AIM to receive correct information as the organization makes decisions for us.  Please pray the safety of all missionaries and that we would be able to promote peace amongst our Kenyan friends and colleagues.  Personally, we pray for wisdom as we try to make the right decision about our vacation which we were supposed to leave for tomorrow morning.  We will probably delay leaving until the we have a better understanding of the situation.

We love you all and appreciate your prayers!

Andy and Lesa

Tonight we are sitting here in our new home, on the eve of the official “first day” of the new On Field Media Team, (of which Andy will be one of three members). We have been in our home for 12 days now and are very much enjoying having the freedom as a family to eat meals when we want to and come and go as we please. Our seven week orientation process, including Orientation School and a homestay with a Kenyan family, was very valuable, but definitely was trying for us all. We are focusing on settling in now, learning Kiswahili, establishing some sort of routine, and seeking some kind of “normalcy” in this new life here in Kenya.

We’ve been asked how we are feeling about everything now. Well, I’m not sure that we know how to answer that! If you have ever moved to a foreign country, then you probably know the state we are in now: feeling a bit upside down and trying to find our two feet to stand on. It’s interesting… before we left the U.S., we told ourselves and many others that we knew we would go through hard times on the mission field. However, what we imagined and what the reality is are two completely different things, (and we had been here on a trip before)! We knew we would have hard times in Africa. We knew cultural transition would be difficult. But we had no idea what was in store for us!

The first thing that we began to see was how every little tiny detail of life was different from our lives in America. We wish we could drag each of you across the ocean to show you that life can be so different from what we are used to! Everything – physical, social, cultural, language… everything is different! The light switches switch the other direction. The homes are made of concrete and plaster, not wood and drywall (lots of fun hanging pictures)! You can’t drink water from the tap… in fact, we have to filter and store “clean” water to use for drinking and cooking. The water isn’t turned on all of the time, so we have tanks buried in our backyard that hold water for the frequent times when the city water is turned off. We’re still trying to figure out the water pumps, heater and various valves we have to switch on and off daily! We’ve decided to add a little section to our newsletter each month to tell you about life here in Kenya. You’ll see it at the bottom of the page.

Our kids are doing well here. Robbie and Avery have started school at West Nairobi School. Robbie is in 3rd grade and Avery is in Kindergarten. They are each making friends here at school and within the missionary community. It has been good for them to see that they can make friends here, just like they did in America. We’ve been enjoying experiencing Africa together as a family, experiencing different foods, doing some sight-seeing (giraffes and elephants, so far), running away from wild monkeys, learning the lingo of life in Nairobi (such as, “security gate” and “matatu” and “duka”). Sydney has made “best friends” with many people here, including our host mom, whom Sydney called “Soso.” She is definitely our little ambassador to people here – she has a way of making everyone love her immediately.

We’ve been getting to know quite a few people here. The division of Africa Inland Mission we are in is “International Services.” These are the people who serve missionaries; some by taking care of administrative parts of their lives on the field, some by flying them with AIM AIR, some by caring for them and counseling them, and now Andy’s team will be telling the stories of what God is doing here in Africa through the hundreds of AIM missionaries who are spread out from Northern Africa to South Africa. We’ve already met and hung out with some really great people and hope to continue building those friendships. We can see already how important it will be to have a support system here in addition to the amazing one we have at home. Also, it’s important to have fun! Dulles guys, you’d be glad to know that Andy has finally bit the bullet and joined a Fantasy Football league with some guys here.

We’ve also been getting to know some amazing Kenyans. For one, we met some wonderful people in Machakos, where our Orientation School was held. We hope to go back and visit them soon, and possibly stay with them a couple of days. We hope we can be a blessing to them, as they are a family with great need. Then, we had a great time with our host family here in Nairobi. We were with them for four weeks. It isn’t easy to stay in someone else’s house that long, but they were great people to spend the time with and to call our friends. We learned so much there about the lifestyle and culture of Nairobi Kenyans. The life of a Nairobi Kenyan will have elements of their tribal culture, where they or their family is originally from. But, it will also have many “Western” influences from the city, as well. We also enjoy learning the language here. We have a private tutor come to our house for two hours a day for 10 weeks total. It’s coming along very well, surprisingly!

Emotionally and spiritually, this summer has been hard for us. The lack of routine and consistency made our family life rough many days. It was difficult to hold to boundaries and discipline with the children when they were in a hard time of transition, too, and when we were in the company of other people nearly all the time. So much togetherness also made it difficult for Andy and I to get our much needed alone time with God and with each other. Through all of those difficult weeks, though, we felt so loved and supported by friends and family who we knew were praying for us and those who wrote and called. We kept coming back to the fact that we knew we were supposed to be here, and so many of you reminded us of that, as well. Thank you!

Over the past week, we’ve been reflecting on a great deal. First, there are still many unknowns for us, including where we will go to church, what will Andy’s work look like, what ministries will I (Lesa) be involved in, what other directions will God take us in Africa in the area of worship leading, and much more. There are many possibilities for all of these things, and we are earnestly seeking the Lord’s will as we hear of various opportunities to serve. The other big part of this phase of our missionary life is for us to begin to feel “at home” enough here to get past thinking about ourselves and really love the people here. We would appreciate your prayers for us as we continue to transition and build our life here.

Please pray:

• That our children will continue to settle into our life here and grow to feel more at home.
• That we would all get over our various illnesses quickly (sinus infections, intestinal issues that are common to living here, coughs, etc.)
• That we will be listening to God’s leading as we search for and choose a church in Nairobi.
• That we will be patient as God’s will is made clear for the ministries He wants Lesa to be involved in, as well as worship leading opportunities for us within AIM and elsewhere.
• That we will continue to adjust to the differences of living in a new culture.
• That God will grow in us a heart of love for the people of Africa.

Greetings from Nairobi, Kenya! We are finally here in Africa, staying at the Mayfield Guest House. We arrived on Saturday night and have been taking this week to rest and get over our jet-lag. Honestly, we haven’t left the Guest House too much, because our children have been taking turns getting sick. This is normal and somewhat a positive thing, though, because it is forcing us to take our first week here nice and easy. Adjusting our bodies to the time and culture change is proving to be challenging for us adults, and add on top of that helping the kids to adjust makes it quite an adventure! Today, though, we feel better than yesterday, so things are looking up. The 14 hour flight over was fairly uneventful, though quite exhausting. The kids were all very well behaved. (!)

We will write a more thorough e-mail in the next week or so, after we have settled in at ABO (Africa-Based Orientation) in Machakos, Kenya, where we will be for three weeks. We just wanted to tell you that we are here – safe and adjusting! Here are a few prayer requests:

* Please pray that we will all be healthy and sleeping through the night for ABO, (we go there this Friday), so that the whole family can benefit from the learning time.

* Please pray for us as we are experiencing the very earliest (and mildest) stages of culture shock – that we would develop a heart of love for this culture and people, which will withstand the major life adjustments we will be making over the next months.

* Please pray for the leaders of our ABO, that God will give them wisdom as they teach and prepare our group to make our homes and develop our ministries in Africa.

We love you all and we thank God everyday for your encouragement, love, and strength.

In Him,

Andy, Lesa, Robbie, Avery, and Sydney