Family Worship Centre

Hello from Kenya!!!!

I have arrived safe and sound to this marvelous country. I can’t even explain how delighted I am to be back here. At the end of the day yesterday my cheeks were in so much pain from smiling so much!

The trip was rather uneventful. All the flights were wonderful, my luggage got here all in one piece, and two young guys from Word of Life greeted me at the airport. They have quickly become good friends and have been extra hospitable to me over the past few days.

I love sinking back into life here. Everywhere I go I seem to meet people that I know or who are friends of mine. I am quickly adjusting back to the African way of living. I have a smile on my face when I am driving down the street, listening to the Swahili being spoken, and being woken up by the birdies singing melodies to me. I feel right back at home.

The Word of Life compound is outside of the city a little bit in an area called Kabete. We are surrounded by lush, rolling hills and small homes with gardens full of corn. The weather is quite mild actually. I have been wearing long pants and long sleeve shirts. There are no mosquitoes either! This place is calm and beautiful and I am looking forward to spending my next few months here.

Bible school starts tomorrow night. We have been busy preparing for it here. I am so excited! I know that it is going to be challenging in new ways for me. One challenge for me will be the required jogging every morning at 5:45am. My stomach dropped when I heard this. If you know me, you know I hate running. I always have but I am glad that I am being forced to do it. Please pray for my legs as they have issues with running as well as a willing spirit to get up every morning and do it with joy and not grumbling. We have a small class so I am anticipating making some great friendships. One of my good friends from Mombasa will also be joining us here. The people here think this will be one of the best Bible Schools yet!

These past few days have been busy and I have been trying to catch up on sleep while adjusting to my jet lag. Yesterday I went to town with some of the staff here hoping to do some shopping but, true to Kenyan fashion, I spent 14 hours in the car and didn’t get to do my shopping. We ended up driving to a small town about an hour outside of the city. I agreed to come along because I was told that we would stop to go shopping. Well, that didn’t happen. We didn’t get out there till about 8:30pm. Now, they had told me that they were going out there to pick up coriander but it didn’t hit me until we were half way there that coriander is cilantro. I hate cilantro. There are not many things in life that I hate but cilantro is one of them. It is the only thing that I will question God about when I get to heaven.

We drove on this dark bumpy road for about 30 minutes before we finally got to the farm. I opened the door and smelt a huge waft of cilantro. The smell alone makes me gag. The guys then started to load it into the vehicle. They loaded 5 HUGE bags of it in the back seat with ME! Talk about being pushed out of your comfort zone. I feel that God was testing my flexibility by surrounding me by the one thing I hate in life. I had to laugh though. It was rather ironic.

I sucked it up while we drove to a factory where they will sell it to the local supermarkets. There we unloaded all the cilantro into crates. There were over 600 bunches of it. After almost 2 hours of being there, we finally left. As we were driving home I asked the guys why we did this. It confused me because as far as I know, Word of Life is a youth ministry not a farming business. One guy explained to me that this is one of the ways that he uses to raise finances for the work here. I was humbled. This organization does not make money but relies solely on the support of generous donors who are mostly in the US. But sometimes, the money doesn’t come in and they are stuck. So they have started this small business in order to make a little extra cash to sustain themselves while they lay down their lives for the gospel.

I was humbled in many ways between being surrounded by the one thing I can stand in life to watching these men work hard to make a little pocket money while they spend all their time investing in the youth of Kenya to not actually getting to do my shopping. I came home exhausted but oh so thankful for the great day.

Thanks for all your travel prayers!!! God was so good to me. I ask that you pray for these next few days as we start school and I adjust to the busy schedule. Pray for a flexible spirit. I find that having spent time here before, I am quite independent and used to doing things my way but here I am forced to be more dependant on others and adjust to their way of living.

I will try to update my blog regularly with pictures and stuff and will keep sending out emails periodically! And I always love receiving emails from home.

Happy to be home,

Nikole