Little is much when God's in it

I know that I talk a lot about how God provides, but it blows me away every time.  I never really worry about the money coming in for my mission trips, because God won't call you where he can't afford to send you, but this year was another awe-inspiring year of fundraising.  My church is getting ready to do some renovations, which means a lot of fundraising has been happening in my church over the past several months.  I thought that would mean I'd have to do some shake-downs of my close friends to find the money for this trip.  In the past, after about a month of fundraising, I'd have to start talking to people to let them know how much I still needed, I'd start looking into what else I could be doing to raise funds, and then the last of the money always came in a couple of weeks before I'd have to leave.  Never failed.
This year, I was mentally prepared to do my shake-down once it hit June and I'd still have money to raise.  One week after I sent out my support letters and posted on Facebook that I was starting to raise money, I got a report from the missions team to let me know how much money had come in that first week:  it came to $500 more than I needed!  After just one week!  It was as if God was reminding me that a challenge is just another chance for him to prove his power: "My kindness is all you need.  My power is strongest when you are weak." (2 Corinthians 12:9)  The fact that other fundraising was going on at the same time didn't matter to God; he has the power to get it done.
For the second year in a row, I have had people coming out of the woodwork to ask how they can help and how they can pray.  I am humbled by the way people in my church carry each other through life.  I was astounded last year by the way the children at the Tania Centre care for each other, but I see that same love in my friends here when they do what they can to share God's love with others.  I am so very blessed to have a church family like this in my life, teaching me what it truly means to love others.

Narudi nyumbani--I'm coming home!

It's springtime in Virginia, which means I'm thinking ahead to summer.  I can hardly contain my excitement over returning to the Tania Centre again this year as a volunteer teacher.  Not a day has passed since I returned home from Kenya last August that I haven't thought of and prayed for the people I met there.

As you probably know, it takes a lot more than just me to get me to Kenya, so I'd like to ask for your support.  I need prayer, both as I prepare and as I spend my summer in Kenya.  Please pray that God would prepare me for what he has planned for me at the Tania Cenre; that he would prepare everyone at the Tania Centre to receive me in June; that God would be glorified through all that I do this summer.

I also need financial support.  The total cost of my trip will be about $3500.  I'm hoping to raise about $2000 by the first week of May to cover the cost of my plane ticket, then to raise the remaining $1500 by the first week of June.  If you feel led to support me in this way, donations can be made through PayPal at www.fairfaxcirclechurch.org/give.  Be sure to put "Beth--Kenya" in the notes section.

If you'd like to hear about what goes on at the Tania Centre this summer while I'm there, keep checking back at this blog.  I usually update about once or twice a week while I'm in country.  You can also read my entries from last summer to see what happened there last year.

Thanks for all of your support--I can't do it without you!  Be sure to contact me if you want to hear more about my upcoming summer at the Tania Centre.  I can't wait to see what God has planned for this summer!

Remember what is true

God is good.  God is love.  God is sovereign.

I love a good mix of upbeat and contemplative worship songs on Sunday mornings.  It lets me be joyful and praise God for all that he is, but also lets me mourn how far we often stray from the path God intends for us.  This morning, I didn't feel like playing the upbeat songs, though.

It's hard to sing "hallelujah" when your city is still reeling from a mass shooting less than a week ago.  It's hard to sing about how "if our God is for us, what can stand against?" when there is an ongoing terrorist attack in a country you love dearly.  It feels like I'm singing something when all evidence points to the opposite.

At one point in the Hunger Games trilogy, the main character, Katniss, goes through a time when there is so much chaos around her, she starts to forget what is true and what is her imagination.  When she starts to lose sight of what's real, she goes back to the basics and reminds herself of what she knows is true:  "My name is Katniss Everdeen.  I am seventeen years old.  My home is District 12.  I was in the Hunger Games."  There is turmoil all around her and she doesn't know who to trust, but she can remind herself of who she is.

There is turmoil around us in this world.  There are shootings every day, terrorist attacks, broken families, and broken lives.  It's hard to know who to trust, and it's hard to remember that there's still good in the world.  It's days like these that I need to go back to the basics and remind myself of what I know is true:  God is good.  God is love.  God is sovereign.  I have seen God pull a phoenix from the ashes of a broken life, and I have seen God use terrible situations as opportunities to show how great he is.  And God can use even something as awful as a terrorist attack to create something beautiful.  It's just hard to remember when the headlines cry about death and destruction.

So, even when it doesn't feel real, I remind myself of what I know to be true:  God is good.  God is love.  God is sovereign.

Finding balance

I've been home from Kenya for three weeks now.  Most days it feels like it's been longer, like time is trying to see how slowly it can pass before I lose my mind.  But some days it's as close as the air in my lungs, a part of me that I can never really be far removed from.

I stopped by Wegmans for a couple of things after work today.  As I walked down the stairs to the parking garage after making my purchases, a family with two small children made their way down behind me.  "How many steps are there?" one of the kids asked the other.  They found their answer the obvious way:  jumping down one stair at a time, counting each as they went.  One, two, three, four...

My heart stopped for a moment as I was transported to another set of stairs and another pair of preschoolers pondering the number of steps.  In my mind, I saw Elijah and Kanje, two of the children at the Tania Centre who loved hanging out with me, but didn't know much English yet.  We spent a good part of one afternoon at the school store, which had a staircase on the back, running up to the top of the steps, and counting each in English as they hopped back down.  My heart was bursting with pride to hear those itty-bitties counting the whole way to 13 without my help, and the whole way to 20 with just a little help on those pesky teens.  We must have counted those stairs a hundred times, until I was begging them to do something, ANYTHING else but count the stairs again.

I've almost found my balance of enjoying my life here, while still missing Kenya.  It gets easier every day to understand that I can be happy here, and still love and miss Kenya without feeling guilty about being happy.  And I'm usually able to look through my Kenya pictures without many tears, remembering how much I love those kids and how much love they gave me, and still move on with my day.

But some days I just really want to be counting stairs with Elijah and Kanje again.

(There were 20 stairs in Wegmans, too.)

Thus far the Lord has helped us

If you read through the Old Testament, you'll notice that the Israelites seemed rather fond of setting up altars and stones and monuments just about everywhere they went.  They built them after crossing the Jordan, after hearing the 10 commandments, and after God came to them in dreams.  In a world before blogs and facebook newsfeeds, people needed a way to remember events.  So they would set up these stones in certain places, and seeing the stones would remind them of the laws God gave them in this place, or the dream God planted in that place. 

My favorite story of one of these stone piles is in 1 Samuel 7.  The Philistines are about to attack the Israelites, so Samuel instructs them to cry out to God, and God saves them.  To make sure they always remember how God rescued them in that place, Samuel builds one of those stone altars:  "Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, 'Thus far the Lord has helped us.'" (1 Samuel 7:12)  "Ebenezer" translates as "stone of help."  Every time the Israelites saw that stone after that, they remembered that it was called "stone of help" because God had helped them and brought them that far.

Right now, it's very easy for me to remember just how far God has brought me over the past few months.  It's almost overwhelming when I think about it because of how fresh it all still is. 

But I know it won't always be so fresh, so I want to raise my own Ebenezer to remind myself of what God's done in my life when the dust has been scrubbed from my feet and my suitcases are back in storage.  I want a visual that I can look at and say wow--look at how much God helped me. 

So today, I took some time to pick out pictures from my trip that illustrate how God is my helper.  I made a collage with these pictures, the boarding passes from my first solo flight, and a printout of 1 Samuel 7:12.  This collage will hang on my wall, and no matter how far from Kenya I feel here, I can look at this and truly say "Thus far the Lord has helped me."

I'm not who I was

One of Brandon Heath’s first big hits was a song called “I’m Not Who I Was.” Those lyrics have been running through my head as I’ve been reflecting on my time in Kenya and Uganda this summer and prepare to fly home tonight.

I didn’t expect to change so much. I’ve been to Kenya twice already, so I didn’t think I’d experience anything drastically different enough to really change me. But it’s impossible to get on an airplane alone, flying into the unknown, and stay the same. It’s impossible to move in with strangers who become family for five weeks and stay the same. It’s impossible to give your heart to a hundred children and have it shattered time and again as you learn their stories and stay the same. It’s impossible to face one fear after another until you’re no longer afraid and stay the same. It’s impossible to follow the call of a living, loving God and stay the same.

As always, I am leaving a part of my heart here in Kenya.  It’s a larger piece this time, so it’s harder to leave this time, but I can’t wait to get back and share even more stories with friends and family in my first home.  And I’ll be praying for time to pass quickly until God calls me back to my second home.

The thing I find most amazing in amazing grace
Is the chance to give it out.
Maybe that’s what life is all about.

Prayer and Praise

I need to start this post with a prayer request.  There was a fire early this morning local time at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the only international airport in Nairobi, which gutted the international arrivals hall and temporarily shut down the airport.  It has since been re-opened for domestic and cargo flights, and may start to accept international flights tomorrow morning.  Please pray for the team from my church, which is supposed to arrive at JKIA on Friday night, and for those of us who are scheduled to leave for Uganda via JKIA on Sunday afternoon.  Pray that the airport would be reopened to international arrivals by Friday night, and international departures by Sunday, so that we can continue the work God has called us to here in East Africa.

And now, my blog post as I intended to post it before today’s excitement:

I’ve been called many things for coming to Kenya and volunteering here on my own this summer.  I’ve been called brave, but I can assure you I am the biggest coward I know.  I go out of my way to avoid awkward situations, meeting new people makes me nervous every time, and I take the Metro whenever I go into DC because I’m scared to drive there.  I nearly threw up on the plane ride here, but not because of turbulence.  I was scared witless of coming to a place in Kenya I’d never been, all alone.  But I have a courageous God who reminded me that he was already at the Tania Centre, preparing a place for me there.  I have a courageous God who puts incredible new people in my life here who are so easy to be comfortable around.  I have a God who is courageous even when I am not.

I’ve been called amazing and inspirational, but all I’ve been doing is the one thing I wanted to do most this summer.  Who thinks they’re amazing just for doing exactly what they want to do for an entire summer?  I think I’m truly being spoiled!  But I have a God who molds my heart to be more like his, and then delights in giving me the desires of my heart.  I just have the privilege of following these desires the whole way to Kenya.  And I have a God who came to earth to give an example of how to live with each other—He is the true inspiration.  I am just making a feeble attempt to imitate the life Jesus lived in the places He calls me to.

I’ve been called loving and caring, and these I may agree with.  I have had a life filled with so much love from my family and friends that I can’t help but let it spill over into the lives of those around me.  But, most of all, I have a God who loved me first and showed me how to truly love others.  I have a God who’s cared for me in every rough patch in my life so that I know how to care for others in their tough times.  I have a God who touched lepers and had dinner with prostitutes, and he helps me to fall in love with these children even when they smell like feces or spit at me when I sit near them.  It’s something I can’t help doing.

Somehow, my five weeks at the Tania Centre have flown by.  I leave in less than two days to meet the team from my church in Nairobi, where we will split into two groups. One group will remain in Nairobi to give a children’s ministry training to a group of church leaders from around Kenya, and my group will leave for Uganda to give a sports ministry training to church leaders there.  I’m terribly sad to be leaving these children whom I love so much, but I can’t wait to see friends from back home, and I can’t wait to see how God uses their time here to touch even more lives.

Once the rest of my team arrives, I’ll be posting less, but you can also find our team blog at 2013missions.wordpress.com.  Please come follow the rest of the journey there!