WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR HEAVEN?

Here at Made in the Streets in Nairobi we have had everyone painting Christmas stockings - all the students at Kamulu, the single moms at Eastleigh, the Team members, the other staff of MITS, the little kids in our family -- we have 89 stockings hanging up in the courtyard of the Learning Center and a few more to finish. I told them that Father Christmas only puts stuff in the stockings he finds. Darlene had fabric paint, so they have all been creative.

We watched the movie Polar Express, and we then gave the DVD to the girls. The boys have seen it. The big question is, What do you want for Christmas? Somebody asked me, and I didn't have an immediate answer, but I've been thinking about it. All I can think of that I really really want is a quiet, or noisy, afternoon with my granddaughters. I think that's "dayenu" as we say at Passover time about each of God's gracious gifts that are "plenty."

Then I started thinking about the gift of heaven and what other gifts go with it. And I was sitting in church at Kamulu on Friend Sunday yesterday (we had 186 before the kids went out for Sunday school, and I had 34 in my adult class - quite a few visitors at church), and two of our street girls sang a song for the church, and Titus led one of his wonderful prayers, and I looked around at all these kids, some in literacy, some in skills training, some in internships, some having jobs and with us on Sunday. And we set up all our tables and had chapati and bread and Blue Band and jelly and cookies and tea and coffee and juice and cake (did I mention it was Jeremy Mbuvi's first birthday yesterday and Laurent and Eliza's anniversary?), and everyone sat around

and talked and ate and the kids had so much fun.

And I thought -- this is what I want for heaven. This is the gift of heaven I want -- to be with these people eternally, along with some of my family and some old friends -- and Jesus, of course. I think that will do it for me.

BLESSINGS FOR JANE

Jane Njeri was a church member at Kamulu for about a year before she began to volunteer in street ministry at Eastleigh. She would go in on Mondays with Maureen and Team members who worked with the street mothers' program (more than 40 young moms from the streets with their babies) or to go out on the streets with Kennedy, Anthony and Larry Conway. She proved to be a great teacher and inspiration to the young moms. Her background in alcoholism and a broken family and subsequent decision to be faithful to Jesus gave her a good background for working with the girls, plus the fact that she came out of poverty also.

Jane had a problem, though. She had a growth on the side of her face at her lip that had been growing for about 15 years. Last summer she became a Team member at MITS after Ann Mwangi, our Eastleigh supervisor, left us to go to university. Then John Bailey, who was in Kenya on a medical mission program, had a doctor look at her, and we took pictures for the doctors to analyze. Last month doctors came again with Dr. Bailey, and Jane flew "fly540," one of our local airlines, to Malindi on the coast for surgery. It was her first airplane ride.

She was there for almost a week and returned with a swollen jaw. But she said she could tell the difference and was confident the swelling would go down.

Here are before and after pictures to help you see the benefit to Jane. And having her happy is good for MITS! We are all happy for her and grateful to the doctors who came with John and performed the surgery. MITS is blessed to have such friends.

Garden Delights

Yesterday I had opportunity to make a chapel talk. We rotate chapel talks through the kids and the Team members. I decided to talk a little about our garden, because we have been so delighted in how well it does. It makes me know that at Kamulu we are able to grow more food than our kids can eat. It's a matter of doing the farming right, and we will learn.

We have a young woman with a small boy whose husband left when trouble came who works as a gardener for us. Her little boy was born without a full urinary tract, so he has needed surgeries and therapy. A doctor whom Larry Conway knew has been wonderful to take care of him. Anyway, Nancy has done wonders with our garden. Only 6 tomato plants are making all the tomatoes we can eat, and about 200 plants will soon produce. We have 7 short rows of pole beans, and every other day we get about 15 pounds of green beans. So we have been feeding green beans to the girls and the boys and the Team members and for lunch at our cafeteria.

Back to the chapel talk. We sometimes have kids who have reasons to give up - school is hard, another student yells, they make mistakes, they have to keep to the schedule. So I talked about "burnout" in business and professions. Then I talked about how beans can give and give and give (we've picked our beans 12 times already) and still, at the end, they produce as many dry beans as they would have if we never picked them. God made the bean, and it turned out really good. I told them that when they produce for God, He will pick and pick from them and use it for good, and they never have to give up. And at the end God will take what they have left and it will be good.

Then we had a short Team meeting. Francis had been to a leadership conference, and one of the things he wants to talk to the team about is the ability to keep on going with joy and dedication without losing desire and quality work. The ability to renew self in spirit so that you can go.

So, here is to a life without burnout, a life that keeps on giving, a life propped up by God's own energy!

There cannot be much better in life than seeing good things happen to those you love. So let me list a few --

1 -- Paulyne Adhiambo, one of our street moms who came into the Eastleigh program last month, went to the hospital on a rainy night to have her baby. Can you imagine how hard it must be when a street girl has her baby on the street in the rain?

2 -- Jane Njeri, our supervisor at the Eastleigh center, has been invited to fly to Malindi tomorrow to have a long-term growth taken off her lip and cheek. We doubt that we will recognize her when she returns at the end of the week.

3 -- we have good friends in Iowa, and you can imagine how they feel after the locals came from behind to defeat an arch-enemy in the second half.

4 -- Francis Cugia, one of our older boys who is in an internship in carpentry now, was honored in church today for his service to the church.

5 -- Kehl Omondi, Jackton and Millie's baby, came through hernia surgery on Friday just fine, thank you, and came home yesterday. Jackton shared the story of his birth in the communion talk this morning.

6 -- Susan Wambui, our student with diabetes, looks great lately. I talked with her today, and she is keeping her sugar level down, giving herself injections regularly, exercising and eating the diet she has been given, and she is enjoying her beauty school. She has taken mock exams, will take final exam in a couple of weeks, and has talked to some salons about an internship. She will be 18 in December and is looking forward to her life "out there." She also told me that she has already checked into a school downtown where she can go in the evenings and get her high school equivalency, which she will pay for herself after she starts work (unless we decide to give her a gift just because we are so proud of her!)

7 -- Joseph Mburu, our student who got a job in a computer shop, talked to me today about going to programming school. Looks like we'll have to get some money together to send him; it is nice to see such ambition in our kids. He has checked into a school, gotten a brochure, and will now get our IT man to write a proposal for him to present to the Team.

8 -- And there is Titus Kioko, a young man who has come out of a drugged-up life to become a fine young man -- we presented one of his prayers last week. Today he told me that his grandmother found him when the kids went on their last shopping trip and told him her house in the slum had falled down, obviously hoping he could get someone to help her. So he wants to find some way to help her build it back up (she is still sleeping in the fallen remains). We talked about how we could get our Team at Eastleigh to take a few of the older street guys down there with some posts and sheet metal and shore it up. What is important in this story is that this is the grandmother who did not want him. When our Team members first helped Titus get off the streets, they found his grandmother to talk about where he would live and see if she would sign off on him. But she said, "Titus is worthless..he will just run away," and she refused to sign. But there was another grandson, and she signed off on him. He came to Kamulu but soon ran away. But Titus is still with us, and now he wants to help his grandmother. I would say that good things have happened to that young man.

So...I'm happy today, in Jesus Christ I'm happy today....because my friends are blessed.

Have a blessed day