THINGS WE LOVE

Darlene and I have walked down memory lane lately.  We had our 50th Anniversary, with several trips and with good friends gathering for a celebration.  And we went through all 94 albums and the digital pictures so Darlene could print a book with about 100 pictures.

And with soon finishing our 20th year in street ministry, we have much to celebrate and memories to enjoy.  That has set us to thinking and talking about things we love.

We love

• birds singing in the morning at Kamulu
• raindrops on the metal roof
• sitting on the rooftop patio with green all around or stars in the sky
• playing music videos for the kids at MITS so they can learn songs
• stopping at Java House for a cappuccino
• seeing African animals
• visitors at Made in the Streets
• meetings with the MITS Team
• Sunday morning class and worship at Kamulu
• writing curricula and proposals and policy and dreams
• having a car with an air conditioner
• little kids at "MITSville" who come by for "biqui" (cookies) and "sweets"
• a smile and hug from Lucy Wairimu
• seeing Jackton and Millie evangelizing the guards at Kamulu
• working with interns who love to be at MITS 
• planning with the Team for literacy students to move into skills training
• working with John Wambu on building at MITS 
• having a cup of coffee in the evenings with John and solving the world's problems
• getting ready to leave for time in the USA, or to leave for time in Kenya

There is more, but this is enough to keep us going for a while.

peace and joy,

charles

Here is an old picture from a place we love too....

I Watched a Baby Being Born

This morning Darlene and I went to chapel as always.  Made in the Streets has visitors from Midland, TX and Lubbock Christian University.  The students did their small group Discovery Bible Study on Joel 2:28-32 while the Team and visitors met outside.  After chapel we spent some time with the visitors, then we walked over to the boys' compound.  I wanted to take pictures of the wrecked van; we need to convince the insurance company it is not repairable.  I also talked with Moses Mwangi and the young men working under him who are painting one of the dorms.  And I talked to Charles Ndonyi, our mechanics teacher, about our car needing air conditioner work.  As we were about to leave, Ben, our landscape and animal guy, came in and told us the cow was about to have a calf.  So we stayed around and watched the birth.  Darlene had never seen anything like that; I guess she wasn't watching when she gave birth.  The calf did exactly what she should - stuck her feet out with head laying on her legs.  After she was born, mom licked her all over.  After about 10 minutes, she managed to stand up!  So...MITS has another baby...maybe one we'll keep for the future.

Ready to be born!

Ahhh, my baby!

I can walk

DOWN MEMORY LANE

My apologies for waiting so long to write again.  One would think that the most beautiful and wonderful summer of one's life would be worthy of a blog, but what do I do?  I enjoyed every minute of it.  Of course, there are a couple of other summers that come to mind as great memories -- the summer Darlene and i married, wow!  And the summer our daughter was born!!

But 2014 was great!  We finished up some work with MITS at the end of May -- the graduate profile was written, a new Team member hired, the orchard was bearing fruit, more land was added to our property and we had given 3 more plots to Team members.

We met the grandkids in London and flew to Greece for a holiday (oh, yeah, the parents were there too!).  What a great time -- Mars Hill, the Parthenon, the Pnyx (birthplace of democracy), Corinth, Starbucks, gyros on the go.  One of the grandkids loves everything Greek, so she explained to us who all the Greek gods and goddesses were and what they did.  She also has been praying for the children of Afghanistan every day for two years, and we discovered on our visit to the Church in Glyfada that they are serving Afghani refugees.  A great connection...

This summer was also our 50th anniversary; Darlene says she married at ten so she isn't really old.  We spent part of the summer visiting old friends and new, making contact and memories.  We had a  meal with Tim and Ann Lewis.  We visited Lubbock, Texas, and had lunch with Steve and Mildred Eckstein, whom we had not seen for 45 years. I taught with Steve 2.5 years at Eastern New Mexico U.  We went to Tennessee to see Otter Creek Church and have a Board meeting.  We went to Abilene and stayed with Mel and Jan Hailey and visited with Estelle Sinclair and others.  We visited with Tony and Janice Mauldin and Bill and Joanna Arnold and spent the 4th of July with my brother and his wife.

We intended the Greece trip to be our anniversary celebration.  But our daughter surprised us with a party, inviting people she found in Darlene's phone!  Sorry that some friends were not invited because they were only on my phone!!  75 people came - a former elder from Redwood City, CA, where we served the Redwood Church for 21 years.  New friends from Southlake Church.  Our joyful friend Chris Gingles from Healing Hands.  And my Aunt Imogene from Burkburnett, TX, who is so much like my mother that memories flood back just to see her.  And others whom we love.

Our 50 years has been a "wild date"
We will try for some more, as God wills.

Darlene made an online book of our 50 years together - in Abilene, in Portales, in Redwood City, at Pepperdine, in Nairobi, memories of sponsoring churches Redwood, Simi Valley, Golf Course Road and Otter Creek.  Travels in Greece, Scotland, Spain, Tanzania, Germany, France, Croatia, Italy, Singapore, Malaysia, Hawaii, Transwestern tour of the USA, and of course our beloved Kenya.

Our lives are rich, and happy,  and we have the best of friends.

Too Old for That

Since I hit 70  (reference: The Acceleration of Time), Darlene and I have been saying to one another, "We're too old for that!"  It is mostly in reference to falling down, which we no longer want to do.  So...last week one of the breakers in our electrical box started clicking off at odd times.  We got the electrician over to work on it. It was hard to find because the wiring rand under the concrete floor, and water has gotten under the house and in the wiring, causing the short.

But my point is that I had to move the computer and printer to another wall, as the plugs on some walls were now dead.  Being in a hurry, I got my foot caught up in the cord (when will we get cordless electrical power??!!), and I fell down, landing on my right elbow and my left knee.  And the results -- my shoulder feels tight when I lift it, and when I go up stairs fast, my leg wants to give way.   Oh, the failings of the flesh!

Then Darlene did one of those "we're too old for that" things, so she has a bruise.  Oh, well, it is so good to be alive, to have a ministry we love (what a great Team we have at Made in the Streets, and the street kids make amazing strides in studies, in relationships and in faith), to have family who love us.

I rejoice in getting older, but I am too old for a few things!

Reaching Out

There is a new emphasis on disciple-making at Kamulu Church. Irene's granddaughter Stephanie was baptized last week and back with us yesterday. The women reached out to another woman and baptized her last week. And yesterday Jane Njeri's grandson was baptized. And a neighbor, Tobias, came to worship yesterday. Happy to see growth apart from the MITS family! 

Amazing Grace and Disciple-Making

Grace is amazing!  We have been doing a study of the book of Revelation at Kamulu - we did chapter 21 Sunday and Easter will see us finish up with chapter 22.  Mbuvi has asked me to preach that sermon, and I always teach the Sunday morning class when I am here.  I will do the Lord's Supper as part of the sermon, and Barbara (one of the church members) will make 100 chapati.  So each two people will have a chapati to share for the Lord's Supper, which will take some time to eat, and they can talk about the resurrection and eternal life while eating.  Each one will also have a larger cup of juice than usual.  We will also have a fellowship meal following worship.

Back to chapter 21 - the angel who takes John to the mountain has a measuring stick made of gold to measure the city of God, bedecked like a bride for Christ.  It turns out the city is 2,400 kilometers wide and high and long.  I did the math on living conditions.

We won't need a toilet or shower.  And we won't need a kitchen.  And the women won't need to find a place for a husband's toys.  So...I asked the class about how much room each one of us would need. Jane Njeri, who is on MITS staff, said her current apartment is about 20 feet by 10 feet.  I asked if 20 x 25 would be big enough.  She thought that would be a lot better than she has now.  So...if we all have 20 x 25 feet, and there are hallways -- I'm not sure we need hallways, but if we do...there is room for 360,000,000,000,000,000 people.  And everybody knows that lots of street kids could live in 2,400 kilometers of hallways.

So - it makes sense to make disciples, because there is room for a lot of people - everybody we know or ever meet in all our lives - there is room for all of them.

Amazing grace!

Many of the Team at MITS went to a Disciple-Making Movement seminar last week.  They came home thrilled.  Maybe the beginning of a whole new movement among us....Amazing Grace!

Poster made by a MITS student - we have 21 of them posted in the chapel - one to go!

Origin of the Universe

There's a nice telescope down by the South Pole; it's operated by Americans.  And they have found something spectacular out in space!  They are looking at a small spot way out in space, and they have found a wrinkle.  It's not as hard to spot wrinkles in my face these days, but the face of space is really huge, so it has taken us a while to get to this point.

Lots of astronomers and physicists have been working to figure out the beginning of the universe, the nature of the BIG BANG and so on.  This wrinkle in light tells them something about that bang.  And so they conclude….

….that it started out with something "unimaginably small" -- now that started me thinking….what is meant by something so small you can't even imagine how small it is??  It sounds a lot like "no-thing" to me - something so small you can't measure it is a "not-thing"  And that is precisely the faith that the writer of Hebrews talks about -- faith in the living God who made all that is out of "nothing."

It seems to me that every time I read something about the newest advances in science I find myself thinking of Scripture.  I think the scientists deserve honor, for they come closer and closer to Christ, in whom all things hold together…through whom all things were made…

I like science…thanks, guys!

The Book Game

We went by a used goods store and found a trivia game on the Bible.  And it has beginner, intermediate, advanced and children's questions on the cards.  So we played with the kids.  We divided up the adults and kids and every other turn the kids answered the children's questions then the adults answered the advanced questions.  Great fun, and we all learned some things.  I thought I knew all about the book of Revelation, but I did not know that the angel who had the "Seal of the Living God" was from the EAST!  And Darlene did not know how old Ishmael was when he died.  We were on opposite teams, so I didn't have to admit that I didn't know it was 137 years either.  

It took me down memory lane.  I remember as a child that my grandmother had a deck of cards published by someone in Texas that had a Bible person's name at the top with 7 questions about that person.  There were maybe 300 cards.  My grandmother and I played many times and learned all the facts on those cards.  I could have klepped out of some courses when I went to ACU if they were doing that in the long ago.  But then I would have missed having Ferguson for Old Testament and Malherbe for New Testament and Tony for Life of Christ.  That would have been a great loss.  

It's no loss to do something similar with our grandkids.  

Picking up the Kids

One of our USA jobs is taking the grandkids to school in the morning.  That's after making a raspberry smoothie, toasting an English muffin and scrambling an egg, then sitting down to talk to them for a few minutes.  And there are three schools to drop them at, with careful timing.  So…yesterday one of the kids said, "Are you picking us up today instead of us riding the bus?" And I said, "Do you have a reason for picking you up?"  And the kid answered, "That way we get to see you quicker…"

Now that, I said, is a politic answer.  How can I say no?  It is great when our kids learn how to say just the right thing, in just the right way.  Of course, my heart is pretty soft where they are concerned.  Of course they got a pick-up in the afternoon.  They don't even have to pose the question that nicely.

2013

A few days ago our family had a sharing time before a meal, as we often do.  Our question was, "Did you accomplish what you wanted to in 2013?"  "No," was one answer, but I thought back over all that had happened in our family and at Made in the Streets last year.  And I could not think of anything we worked at that was not done, so my answer was, "yes."

A great unity and purpose was fulfilled in family life with a focus on the Spirit of Christ.  Good bonding has taken place, which was my goal.  We had a great experience with four grandkids, taking them on a Trans-Western Tour for two weeks.  We drove through Amarillo, visiting the Indian Museum.  We drove part of old Route 66 in Tucumcari and went in a curio shop shaped like a tepee.  We saw the painted desert and the petrified forest and the Grand Canyon.  We went to Sequoia National Forest and had a great experience with a little butterfly as well as seeing the biggest living thing.  We played on the beach at Malibu, visited friends and walked around Santa Barbara.  How great  it is to be the Grandad.

And at Made in the Streets we made great strides -- we graduated several who had come from the streets and they found jobs.  We built the last of the buildings we need to do the ministry at Kamulu. We gained ownership of blocks of land for future expansion and/or capitalization for the ministry.  We took in at Kamulu more than 20 from the streets.  We added stellar people to our ministry Team.  We had visitors from the USA who blessed us richly.  We learned a lot about solving problems and doing mediations and teaching stimulating lessons.  We worked our way through the Bible using "The Story" as our source.

I'm satisfied.

I have some new plans for 2014.  Tell you later.

Charles