Thursday morning, the house was way too quiet when the boys left.  Teah cried, and Timo stared at her long face -and mine- and shrewdly asked, “Are the boys coming back?”

Jonathan (13) and Collin (11) though definitely full of nerves and nervous energy mostly seem excited!  They have begun school at Rosslyn Academy.  I am amazed.  Me? Learn to walk by faith?  I think I have a very patient teacher.  Many have helped us praying to the LORD Jesus about this transition time for our family.  We got many notes from folks telling us they were/are praying.  Even the boys were impressed.  We are seeing answers to prayer. We have been overwhelmed by the generosity of those who have made schooling for the boys possible.

The boys had a half day on Thursday and a full day on Friday.  All the teachers took Friday to tell them what is expected and what to expect -information overload!  One answer to prayer is that both boys seem pretty positive about the other kids in their class.  Collin was cheery about being able to wow his Language Arts teacher by knowing the word “pugnacious”!  The science teacher has an elephant skull in his classroom, and a live python.  Jonathan got his #1 choice of Foreign Language. They will start band and soccer next week.  Band is during school hours, but soccer is after school.  If their grades slip, they will have to drop that one.

In a practical sense, Ted and I both feel concerned how the time management will work, but we are not letting them know that.  The bus rides are longer than we had hoped.  They leave the house 6:45am and got home on Friday after 5pm without any extras.  Just traffic.

The boys are motivated by the challenging course ahead to navigate, and they seem impressed to have so many grownups not only available but committed to their learning.  Jonathan comments on how excited several of the teachers seem.  Both boys are smiling a lot.  And it was special to see how glad they were to get home after surviving Thursday and Friday.  They were unusually appreciative of each one of us at home, Me and their Dad and the younger two.
Love you.  THank you for praying!

-Liisa

-one week later-  Days 3-8

Pushed off from home shore into schooling J and C at Rosslyn Academy, we were shocked to see God paying for passage on board this “ship.”  So with every good reason, we have been trusting Him when the waters quickly grew rocky and the constant motion nauseating.  God’s provision can leave one breathless, or even…winded.  This year promises to change us.  But our God promises to turn all for our good and His glory.  Romans 8:28.

Rosebud -our only girl, 7 going on 17- has yet to see if Mom can find the rhythm of second grade.  Studies so far have been shotgun style, a little intro to the artful curves of cursive writing here, a good look at the stained glass beauty of a locust wing in the microscope there, pressing out “asdf jkl;” in typing, and simple C-scales on the piano.  But wait.  The piano is a story!

Label it God’s Faithfulness.  My mom -”Grandma”- with her grandchildren in mind bought a little electric piano on sale.   The kids benefited much from it even in the 2 months we were in MN.  But the piano did not make the cut of what could fit into 12 boxes for a family of 6 going away for 2 or 3 years.  We were so disappointed.  Grandma was disappointed but already used to having to wait on the LORD and see what He would do.  Two months after our arrival back in Kenya, a dear friend and mission colleague asked us to babysit their electric piano the entire year while they are gone.  We see detailed faithfulness in God persuading our fickle hearts to trust Him.

Ted is finishing up the Nomad video.  Mid-process, we got stuck.  Ted expressed a frustrated sense of searching for something, and we began to pray together about it.  We asked for good ideas and for a unifying idea.  As we asked, our awareness of Who we were asking increased.  He is the All-Creative, Truthful One, powerfully good.  He shows us who he is in a way we can understand better in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth town.  One day Ted texted me, “The idea came!”  It felt like getting a Christmas package!  It will still be an uphill climb to closure on a project personally important to us because of our own time getting to know and love nomadic peoples when we lived in the North.

Mama A -the lady who generally comes 2 mornings a week to help us with laundry- hopes to join a specialty sewing school called Amani ya Juu (Faith from Above).  Before our last furlough, Fall of 2009, I drove Mama A over to Amani ya Juu for an interview.  We were hoping they would have made room for her by now.  But no word yet.  Together, I would like to ask God to make a place for her there if it is what He wants.

Please also pray for Mama A’s son Alex.  Alex had untreated strep that damaged a valve in his heart.  He was to have a surgery to repair the valve but it has been delayed repeatedly.  Mama A believes he has been healed because he is functioning normally and able to attend school.  I keep wishing to bring him down from upcountry and have him evaluated to confirm his situation.  Praise God for sustaining Alex.

Ted will be traveling in the next several weeks.  Exactly when and where is not firm yet, but it looks like both September and October will take him far away to remote places for a week or two weeks at a stretch.  Please pray not only for his protection, successful shot list and production, but for the nationals who are willing to involve themselves in OFM’s visual calls to prayer and to action in mission.  Pray for a churched place that still has bondage to alchoholism and abuse.  Pray for an unchurched people that have no hope.  Pray for something as wild and impossible as God using each of us in his plans of deliverance and redemption.

I am distracted with pondering and peeling.  Can summaries of home life and current agendas connect people?  Maybe.  After lunch I can type out a bridge of words that will draw me closer to many Dear Folk far away and give me the pleasure of knowing God’s delight.

When I cut open the avocado for lunch and found it sprouting, I temporarily abandoned lunch preparations.  Toothpicking the sides of the ready avocado pit so it half dipped in a cup of water, I held out a mild hope for another avocado tree in the yard years from now.  Back to lunch, my children and their friend ate toast with the homemade guacamole, while Ted and I put the guac’ on homemade tortillas with a bit of chicken and tomato and crushed red pepper.  It was 2 pm.

Lunch was late not only due to my distraction of trying to grow a tree, but also waiting on Ted who was busy forcing the house toward repaired status.  He was roto-rooting the slimy plumbing until the kitchen sink could drain like a waterfall with its own tornado.  Last week he built a shower into the room that had the bath and semi-automatic washing machine in it.  The new shower serves two purposes besides the obvious: one -it looks good with the pretty shower curtain brightening the whole room, and two- it allows us to incapacitate the other broken-down, duct-taped, mold-happy shower, in hopes of change.

In the last four weeks, we have seen many changes, even just on our property.  Our compound manager is leaving for a year furlough.  He and his wife will teach us how to be “compound manager” before they go. They have been working very hard, putting a lot of work into getting everything in good order.   Replaced are the rusted metal roofs over the storage containers.  Trimmed are the trees -a huge truck hauled away the trash heap in the far back of the property.  Young plants started a small vegetable garden for me, after the boys cleared and dug the earth (and disposed of the snake skin found there).  Anytime order is called out of chaos or void, I am reminded of Creation.

At OFM, Ted jumped onto a treadmill already at speed.  Together with a creative team of currently three other guys, he is in the middle of updating the next round of videos for homeward bound staff from the big missionary school (Rift Valley Academy). He is editing the weighty AIM Identity video which pushes the big picture forward and needs to be usable for the entire mission for years to come; he is prioritizing the Nomadic Peoples video next and planning when to tackle the editing of video shot late last Fall in Lesotho.  The video report on AIM’s Africa wide medical ministry also will continue to move forward.  We deeply appreciate prayers!

We continue to pray and plan for a schooling transition this Fall.  Collin and Jonathan are accepted at Rossalyn Academy.  Due to some tremendous and unexpected gifts, we now have half of what we need for this school year.  We are excited and a little nervous.  As the mommy, I admit I am glad Teah and Timmy will still be home.  But the power of change can make us look both forward and back, treasuring what we would otherwise take for granted.  Time is a treasure.  God is using it.     With love,      -Liisa

Our bathroom, the one with the shower, is having problems.  We quickly noticed the hairy mold blistering the paint, revealing the concrete beneath last week when we arrived back at the house.  The shoulder height tiles in the narrow shower are coming off in sheets, and some quick strips of duct tape have temporarily halted their collapse.  There’s no cover for the toilet, directly above which lies our medicine cabinet.  So don’t drop the Nyquil.

But the most disturbing problem is the single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.  It blew last week, the second bulb to do so, immediately after being replaced.  It was then I noticed the black soot streaks on the base fixture, indicating something bad.

“I’ll have to see about that.” I thought, as I mentally placed it somewhere in the medium range of priorities, which means it might be weeks before I dig into it.  There are more pressing issues of the house I’ll need to address first.  More pressing issues of the family, life, work, friends, etc.  So in the mean time we’ve taken to showering by candlelight. It’s not bad, really.  A single candle can light up the small Somewhat White painted room fairly nicely, once your eyes adjust, and a second candle can be on the way to dazzling.

These candles aren’t the scented kind.  They aren’t used for mood or atmosphere here in Africa, they’re actually used for lighting.  You can find piles of them at every supermarket for about 10 cents apiece.  A surprising amount of Kenyan kids grow up doing their homework by them, and for the most part, it works.

In time, the bathroom will be fixed up.  But it seems upside down for a bathroom to have a higher priority than something involving people.  Many of the truly gifted missionaries I’ve spent time with in my life share a common neglect of their houses.  Yet the relationships in their life are well cared for, nurtured and tended to in detail with a completeness that only large amounts of time can bring.  They tend to the physical when the relational is more in order.  They’re trying to do what they see their heavenly Father doing.

Frankly, I think our house is too nice.  Well, maybe not the bathroom, but the rest of it is nice, and I wonder about the balance of priorities in our own life.
-Ted

Before we returned to America last fall, we moved all our stuff out of our house into a container (aka “boxcar”), as is custom with AIM missionaries, so our house could be used as a guest house while we were gone.  When we returned, we found that our metal container, despite having a separate roof over it, had leaked in two places, destroying some of our things, and putting mold and mildew on almost everything.  This setback has more than doubled our workload to move back in and get settled, but it has served its purposes – reminding us to note what is temporary and what is permanent, causing us to look forward more to heaven and guard our heart, holding all the temporal with an open hand.

-Ted

No flight leaves the ground without a thorough check of the equipment and supplies of the airplane. Our preflight has started! 3 more days and we’ll lift off, bound for Africa!

Did we receive the required monthly support?

Yes, the Lord has raised our monthly support $1500 per month this home assignment, enough to send us back to Africa. It is not enough, however, to comfortably afford the boys’ schooling out of our budget. Instead of giving up on the school, though, we feel the Lord still might bring in the money when it is time, so we are trusting God in this, and we’re prepared to continue homeschooling should this door close. We’re both excited and nervous, with lots of packing and to-do lists to complete in these next four days. The kids are counting the hours to go home. Our days are filled with the final goodbyes, the last minute purchases, the trying to fit our stuff into the suitcases, and trying not to get sick before the trip. Pray for peace and health, and that the great ash cloud over the Atlantic won’t move over Europe again. For those we did not get to see, we pray we catch you the next time around. The reconnectings are irreplaceable. Deepest thanks to those behind us in prayer and giving.

-Ted for the Rurups

Dear FOLK, Thank you so much for praying! It is very encouraging to see God’s hand in our lives, especially right now when we are way over our heads in packing. Packing is not our strength. Ted is an awesome packer -used to it from pilot work. But this time is hard with less bags we can bring and 20 less kilos allowed in each bag. This combined with all the kiddos being bigger (bigger sweatshirts, bigger shoes) and more of them being school-age (more school stuff to bring) has added up to a potentially discouraging challenge, where it not for God’s smile telling us that none of this really is essential. Maybe it is rather like moving to heaven with the old saying “You can’t take it with you!” God can make your gifts and our efforts more than worthwhile. He can do more than we ask or imagine. Thank you for your prayers as we get ready to go. Thank you for praying for our parents and our children in the transition time. Let us know how you are. with love,

Liisa for Ted too