Just 4 weeks left to this first term of school. Time flies here in Africa too! I’m finding I have mixed feelings about how quickly the time is going here. On the one hand I miss all of you, my dear friends and family. On the other hand, I really can’t imagine leaving here. Now don’t worry, we MUST come home after a year because of our status as volunteers and tax issues, so we will be home. Grace and Olive, the Kenyan lady that helps me in the library, have both been asking me why we are going back so soon…and I wonder too…

We had a good week but there were hard moments. Seth, one of our dorm boys, got word that a special uncle of his back in the states was in a coma and not expected to live. We know something about grief, but to be 10 years old, far away from your uncle, and far away from your Mom & Dad.  I’m so glad the Heavenly Father is there for him. We had a sweet time of prayer with all of the boys and it was so heart-warming to see their concern and hear their prayers. But just today we got word that the uncle died. Pray for us that we can comfort Seth as the Father wants, and pray for a sad boy who is far from home.

On Thursday I had chai (that’s Kiswahili for tea) with Fred & Grace and it was a special time of sharing. They really tried to share how different their lives are from the wazungu (white people). It started with Grace asking me what time I got up on Saturdays. I told her about 6:30 (when you are cooking breakfast for 12 you don’t sleep in). Then she asked what time I get up on other days. I said between 6:00 and 6:30. She got that funny little smile on her face that she tried to hide-the smile that let’s me know in her own gracious way, that I haven’t got a clue about her life. I didn’t press her about what time she got up, but it’s a good hour and a half or 2 hours before me. Then she walks 45 minutes to work all day for me. And at the end of her long day, she walks 45 minutes home to be met with 3 boys who want dinner. And dinner has to be cooked on a fire from scratch. She has also talked about laundry. First she collects firewood, then she fetches water, then she heats the water, washes everything by hand and hangs it out. To iron, she has to build a fire to heat charcoal to put into her charcoal-powered iron. But no complaints.

I, on the other hand, tried to tell them what America is like. Once I asked Grace what she thought it was like and without hesitation she said, “Heaven.” It’s not easy to explain to a Kenyan that a place where you don’t worry about food or water or heat or cold or school fees; a place where weekends are for relaxing, a place where nearly everyone has a TV and a car is not paradise. I tried to explain that besides physical & financial poverty there is spiritual poverty. But I came away wondering, yet again, why I have been so blessed. And whenever I wonder about that I usually end up at Luke 12:48, “To whom much is given, much is required.” And I find myself needing to repent again and say “Father, not my will but Thine.”

Then on Friday, the local elementary school came for a tour of our facilities. They were so grateful just to SEE what we had. Most had never seen a piano, an aquarium, or a computer. The headmaster thanked us profusely and said that the kids tend to be afraid of RVA because it is so different. My heart broke again. More questions. How can we share what we have without creating dissatisfaction, without seeming to be “better”. It seems, at times, that the distance is too great to bridge, but with God, nothing is impossible. I wait, anticipating His answers that will answer the even greater questions that I don’t even think to ask.

Yes, I love it here. I love the kids, I love the Kenyans. But I daily am faced with questions that have no pat, easy answers. And I have to look out over that lovely valley and know that God has been, is, and will continue to hold it all in his loving and righteous hands!

Love, Nancy

P. S. We had rain last night!! And it looks like we could get more today!! Praise God!