Why my name is now on a Kenyan police report.

Interesting title, I know.

I cannot believe that two weeks from today was when this event happened.  It seems like some distant dream, but when I search through my backpack, I am reminded that my Bible did actually burn in a fire and that this event really did occur.

So, Tuesday in Kenya started off like any other Tuesday.  We went to the schoolhouse and taught the children for a little while and then went back to the appartment complex where we were living.  There were multiple buildings in the appartment complex, and we were living in different building than where our contact was living.  There were only three stories to each building, and both us and our contact lived on the third story.

In the afternoon around 2:30, my friends Kyle, Jessica, and I decided to go to the appartment across the hall from our contact and hang out with one of the pastor's daughters that lived there.  We stayed there for about two hours, teaching her worship songs in English and her teaching us worship songs in Swahili.  We were sitting in the living room.  In the appartment were two bedrooms that were down the hall and one kitchen across from the living room.  At one point her younger brother came in, and at another point her older sister and baby brother came in, as well.  The six of us were the only ones there.  Around 5 o'clock, Jessica turned to me and said, "Do you smell something?"  About that same time, the girl's younger brother comes running into the living room yelling in Swahili, "FIRE!  FIRE!"  I could see a significant amount of smoke coming out from down the hall, so I quickly run downstairs to try to get help.  As I run outside, I see our team leader running into the building.

Kyle had gone into the bedroom and Jessica had run across the hall to tell everyone in the appartment complex to get out.  At this point, I looked up from downstairs and saw her standing in the balcony, flames and smoke coming from the side of the building.  She yelled, "Go get the men!!!"  I ran to the building where we were living and burst through the door, yelling, "Guys, we need your help!  There's a fire!"  The boys got their shoes on and followed me downstairs.

After I ran downstairs again, the next two hours passed like a blur.  I remember snippits of information, like people saying "Mzungo," as I passed by them with buckets of water.  I remember dropping an entire jug of water when I saw that there was nothing we could do to help- the fire was too big.  I remember men from the community breaking into the windows with a ladder to get to the second floor to save as much stuff as they could.  I remember trying to comfort our contact's wife and assuring her that everyone was safe (no one was seriously injured at all... praise God).  I remember yelling frantically if anyone had seen Jessica because the last time I saw her she was on the balcony.  I remember watching as the third floor went up in flames and smoke and almost throwing up from the sheer stress of it all.  I remember giving my name to a Kenyan police, surrounded by a crowd of Kenyan children and adults.  I remember seeing the police stop a riot that almost started because people were trying to steal the stuff that they took out of the appartment.  I remember hearing that my Bible had been up in the appartment.  I remember praying fervently and out loud while hundreds of people watched the third floor vanish.  I remember an explosion when a tank of gas exploded in the building and I remember the hundreds of people running and men trying to escape the second floor.

I remember calling for the first time since leaving for Kenya, just to tell him that everything was alright but that there was a fire and he needed to call the church.

I remember crying.

Our contact and the pastor who lived across the hall lost everything in that fire.  Afterward all they had were the clothes on their backs.

God is still working on my heart and I am still processing the events of Tuesday night, even two weeks after it happened.  All I know now is that God is still good.

My backpack weighs more than me...

Hello, everyone!

Sorry it took so long for me to finally write about my trip to Kenya!  I'm actually in France right now, so I don't have a lot of time to spend on the computer, but I will try to tell you as much as possible without putting you to sleep.

So, here's the story:  I went to Kenya with a team from my church for about 9 days.  The trip was supposed to last about 3 weeks, but I had to leave early to go study abroad (boohoo, I know, I know).  Anyway, we left early early Monday morning for our destination, and finally arrived in Nairobi on Wednesday evening.  When we arrived and got our luggage, we realized that we had no way to contact the person who was going to pick us up and we ended up spending 4-5 hours outside the Nairobi airport until 11 o'clock at night (which is definitely not safe for Americans) waiting for him.  He came, and we spent the night in Nairobi.  The next day (Wednesday) we traveled for 9 hours to get to a small city called Moi'sbridge, about an hour away from Uganda and 20 minutes away from Kitale.

The first few days in Moi'sbridge consisted of getting to know the people in the community and the school and church where we were going to be working.  After the first day we had three church services a day, which lasted for about 2-3 hours each.  They were exhausting because about an hour of each service was dancing to songs in Swahili.  Then, our group went on stage and sang American worship songs and one person gave a short mini-sermon.  This three services a day event lasted from Thursday to Sunday.  By Sunday, we were so tired, so Monday was a day of rest.

Our day of rest definitely turned into a day of stress very quickly.  We went to Kitale, the local town, and went to a museum, ate lunch, and went shopping.  The museum part and lunch part were quite nice (especially the time when we went to an internet cafe), but the shopping part was absolutely horrible.  Street children came up to us and begged for money.  They tried all sorts of different tactics, from professing the great love of Jesus Christ to calling us greedy, selfish, white devils from America.  Most of the children were messed up from drugs or were doing drugs right in front of us.  At one point the girls from the group were sitting in the van with two of our contacts (who were our age) and one guy from our group.  Boys (because there were no girls on the street) kept coming up to our van, reaching in the windows, talking to us, and staring.  I saw several people who either had drugs hidden in the sleeve of their jacket or who were sniffing rubber cement about 20-30 feet from the car.  It was so difficult, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, but we talked to our contacts, who definitely relieved a lot of the feelings of guilt and frustration.  They said that they grew up in these same streets, but because of their education were able to go on to be teachers.  For many students, there is where there is hope: in education.

I have so much more to say, but I just don't have a lot of time right now.  And, I'm sure you would prefer several smaller posts over one long novel, anyway.

So, soon I will update and tell you about Tuesday's events.  Tuesday pretty much changed my life.  Get excited!

Everyone calls me mzungo...

For anyone who doesn't know; the Kenyan name for "white person" is "mzungo."  It also means " ghost."  That was my name for a week and a half during my time there.

Right now I am sitting in a computer lab, waiting for class to start, so I do not have time to write about all of my adventures in Kenya right now, but I promise I will post soon...

On Easter Sunday I saw Jesus and the Easter Bunny.

The Game

Has it really been two months since my last post?  Goodness, how time flies.

So, I am writing this post because a friend of mine requested that I blog about The Game.  Just so that everybody knows about The Game, let me explain the rules.
Rule #1: Everybody is playing The Game, whether you know it or not.
Rule #2: If you think about The Game, you lose The Game.
Rule #3: If you lose The Game, you have to tell people that you lost The Game.
Unofficial Rule #4: There is a 30 minute grace period to forget about The Game.

The first couple weeks after I learned about The Game, I hated it.  I was frustrated and annoyed because no one can EVER win The Game (I have learned since then that if you do not mention The Game, you never lose, either.  Shhh... don't tell anyone).  Yet, over time and with much thought and wisdom from God, I determined The Game is useful in an evangelistic sense.  Let me try to explain.

I will start out by simply analyzing The Game by different metaphors.  During my frustration phase, I saw The Game as a kind of virus.  A virus that infects anything it comes in contact with and has no cure.  Think about it this way, the more people know about The Game, the more they talk about it with other people, which leads to even more people "playing" The Game (in a conscious sense), which leads to more people talking about it, and so on and so forth.  It is contagious.  There is no stopping it, except to ignore it.

Then, I saw The Game as a kind of tick (the insect, not the twitch).  I saw it in the sense that I associated certain people, events, or places to The Game.  Therefore, when I thought about those people, events, or places, I inevitably lost The Game.  Then, when I lost The Game, I talked about The Game, which caused more associations with different people, events, and places, which caused me to lose The Game more, which caused more associations, and so on and so forth.  Just like a tick, once it attached itself to an idea, it did not let go.  A spiderweb is probably a more appropriate example, but I will just stop where we are and go on.  You get the point.

Then came the glorious revelation, when I began to enjoy The Game for the first time.  God revealed to me His plan for The Game (as if The Game is a distinct Being of its own, which would not surprise me).  Instead of relating The Game to a virus, tick, or spiderweb, I saw The Game as a path to heaven.  I will explain this correlation rule by rule.

Rule #1: Everybody is playing The Game, whether you know it or not.
Everyone has the opportunity to go to heaven, whether you know it or not.

Rule #2: If you think about The Game, you lose The Game.
In other words, you have to know about The Game to think about it, and once you know about it, you cannot help but think about it.  In the same way, you have to know about heaven to think about it, and once you know about it, you cannot help but think about it.
Also, if you know about heaven, you cannot help but want to go there, in the same way that once you know about The Game, you cannot help but lose it.  BUT instead of losing, everybody wins!  Because if you know that Jesus is the way to heaven, you know you have won The Game (you go to heaven)!  I will explain this in Rule #4.

Rule #3: If you lose The Game, you have to tell people that you lost The Game.
If you know about heaven, you have to tell people about heaven!
If you know about Jesus, you have to tell people about Jesus!

Unofficial Rule #4: There is a 30 minute grace period to forget about The Game.
This is where the analysis goes in a completely different direction, so hold on tight because it might be a bumpy ride.
If you look at The Game in the sense that once you know about it, you automatically lose, then think about Rule #4 in the sense that somebody needs to constantly lose The Game for you in order for you to always be in the grace period.  The Game is essentially the eternal consequence of sin.  This is where Jesus comes in.  (I love Jesus.)  Jesus willingly lost The Game on our behalf so that we can have an ETERNAL grace period!  But He allows us to continue playing The Game (meaning making living here on earth- because everybody knows that if you are alive, you are going to sin at some point or another) so that we can tell others about the fact that He already won.

Anyway, that about all that I have for the analysis.  I know that it takes time to digest (it took me a while to write this because I had to sort through all of the details).  But, I hope in the end that you will benefit from reading this.

Bye!