Chad’s Wild African Adventures!

            I deeply apologize for the delay in writing to you to thank you and to give you a post-trip report on our time in Africa. First, let me explain the delay. As some of you know, when I returned to the states in October of 2007 I came home to a beautiful fiancé who was eagerly awaiting my return. And with my return came all the preparations for the wedding, along with moving into an apartment, starting a new job at a local congregation, preparing for graduation from LCU this May, and preparing for Graduate School next fall. Not to mention we had a bit of catching up to do after five months separation! We had our hands full to say the least! We were married on Dec. 30^th here in Lubbock, TX and have been quite happily married for a month now! Her name is Jaime and she is wonderful!

            If you were keeping track of our progress through my webpage, www.chadewheeler.com, then you should be fairly updated except for the final stage of our trip to the Sudan. If you haven’t been able to track us on the web, here’s a brief description of our trip from the beginning to the Sudan: On May 17^th, 2007 three of my best friends (Justin Hanes, Justin Gibson, and Josh Pruitt) and I set out from Lubbock, TX and arrived in Entebbe, Uganda on the brink of an amazing adventure. Two days after we landed on African soil we were out in a village teaching a course for MTI (Messiah Theological Institute, Mbale, Uganda) on the Epistle of James, staying in mud huts, with no electricity or clean water, and teaching under a thatch-roofed building for about eight hours a day. It was awesome!

            From Uganda we traveled by public transport (you need to experience African public transportJ) to Kisumu, Kenya where we worked with the Ringroad Orphans Day School. We were also met by Tiffany Hanes, our fifth teammate and wife of Justin Hanes. The school supports over 300 children, with the help of the Christian Relief Fund, by providing free education and meals daily. We had the privilege of teaching several classes each day, varying from coloring to biology, and leading a VBS one of the weeks. We were also able, with your help, to purchase over 300 Bibles for the school, which they were so excited to receive! The children are beautiful! They touched our hearts in ways that will forever change us. For more information on the school contact CRF at www.christianrelieffund.org.           

           From Kisumu we traveled SE to Nairobi, the capitol city of Kenya. Nairobi is a huge city of about 3.5 million people, and there are vast slums all over the city. We worked with a program for street children called “Made-in-the-Streets” which works in Eastleigh. We played soccer with the children and visited them at their “bases” where they stay; we also ran day-camps for them at the compound. Do not misunderstand my language; these are CHILDREN living on the streets! I mean babies with their mothers living on the streets; their mothers sniffing glue while breast-feeding. Thousands of children, as young as five, living on their own, addicted to cheap glue (to ease the pain of hunger), with nothing and no one. Made-in-the-Streets is one of the few places where these children and homeless mothers can find hope, and they do an amazing job of caring for them! One incredible way they help the children is by actually providing a way out; the program works on two levels. The program starts in the slums building relationships with the children and helping them as they can, but every year children are chosen to move out of the city to a place called Kamulu, which is an orphanage run by Made-in-the-Streets. At Kamulu the children live in dormitories with Christian adults who take care of them and teach them in their school. The children also learn different trades like farming, sowing, cooking, carpentry, etc. We had the great blessing of going to Kamulu for a few weeks after our time in Eastleigh. You would not believe the transformation that God is doing with these children! We were so blessed to get to know them! If you want to know more about Made-in-the-Streets visit their website at www.made-in-the-streets.org.

            After we left Nairobi we bounced around to several different places on the coast of Kenya and Tanzania. We helped a really cool widow-woman named Margaret who had more energy than all of us together! She is trying to start a house-church to reach out to the Rastafarian culture of Malindi, Kenya. So we dug her a “choo” (African latrine) to be used by the church; don’t worry we tested it out when we finishedJ After a short visit with the Talley’s in Tanga, Tanzania and some crazy traveling adventures, in which I debated with a taxi driver for an hour about the correct price of travel and witnessed the illegal transport of drugs on our taxi from Kenya into Tanzania, we arrived in Dar es Salaam, the capitol city of Tanzania. In Dar es Salaam we stayed with Fielden and Janet Allison, the missionaries I interned with on Mt. Elgon, Kenya in the summer of 2004. They blessed us so immensely by debriefing us and helping us send off three of our teammates. The day our teammates left to return home, Josh Pruitt and I also parted ways, he traveled to Mozambique (a Portuguese speaking country which is Josh’s native language) and I traveled back to Nairobi. It was a therapeutic time for both of us; he was able to speak his mother-tongue, and, in a way, I was too; I went to the mountains and climbed Mt. Kenya (16,300+ft!) with some friends. After our short break, we rejoined in Nairobi and began preparation for Sudan.

            We traveled to Mbale, Uganda to stay with the team there and were briefed by Shawn Tyler about the plans for Sudan. A few days later we headed for Entebbe, Uganda where we hopped on a small 4-passenger plane up to Nimule, Sudan. We landed on a dirt strip and were met by David Bikokwa and Kennedy Obura, our faithful companions and guides for the next month. David and Kennedy are native Kenyans, but have been living in Sudan for the last three years working as missionaries. They live on a large compound in Nimule with their families. The compound contains several buildings: their homes, a kitchen/dinning house for visitors, a large school house, and a newly constructed building which serves as both an eye and dental clinic. We stayed in the clinic which at the time was not yet operating. Our arrival in Sudan was pleasant, but we realized quickly that Sudan was very different than any place we had been before. With no infrastructure, the deep effects of decades of civil war, and a dominating military presence, Sudan was a different world than any we had seen.

            Our main two objectives while in Sudan were to visit and collect information about the churches/areas we visited and to teach a Bible course from MTI called “Foundational Teachings of Faith” which consisted of 8 lessons taught over a 2-3 day period. In some ways Josh and I were guinea pigs, traveling a road that literally had not been taken by white men on this kind of mission within the past 40+ years. We traveled entirely by public means, which mostly meant hiring soldiers to transport us on the back of their motorbikes, and we stayed with locals in their homes, which meant we slept in mud huts in small villages and in some displacement camps during our month of travel. Traveling was probably the most difficult part of our trip to Sudan; we traveled over 500 miles, averaging 10mph because of incredibly poor road conditions. We also experienced extremely difficult negotiations concerning travel. Because Sudan has seen so few white people in these past years of war, and because the ones they have seen have been mostly well-supported aid-workers, they saw Josh and I as walking-ATMs with supposedly an endless supply of money. Which was definitely not the case! But we were at their mercy, having no other means of transport, we needed them, and God provided.

            We taught in seven villages and made contact with 14 different congregations who were all incredibly excited to hear the Word of God. Josh and I worked hard teaching 8-hour days, meeting under large trees and in primitive buildings, and only finding “breaks” on days of travel. The teaching was received well, and many people came to listen each day. The churches are all very young and immature in their faith. Most had only been Christians for a few years, and had a wide variety of ideas about things! We felt like we were transported back in time, to the world within the texts we were teaching about! The questions people asked were amazing: questions about traditional animal sacrifice; questioning if the “churches of Christ” are a cult; questions about polygamy; about the nature of Jesus (is he Divine); about if witch-doctors have the Holy Spirit; about praying for the dead; and many more! Josh and I did our best to respond to their questions, but we kept bringing it back to the foundation we were there to teach: “God made this Jesus both Lord and Christ!” and this is what he is doing!

            Overall Sudan was intensely challenging, but the people are desperate for help and are searching, many times in the wrong directions, for hope. They are searching for something different; something drastically different from the violence and hate that have been a part of their lives for so long. And many are finding that hope in our Lord Jesus!

            Thousands of miles away there is a land that is wild and beautiful, but most beautiful of all are its people. We have been so challenged and changed and moved by the people of Africa. They are our sisters and brothers. And we love them. Thank you so much for supporting me in so many ways on this mission! I am forever grateful!

            Please join me in continuing to lift up the people of Africa to God in prayer. You may know of the recent outbreak of violence in Kenya after the disputed results of their Presidential election in December. Many lives have been lost already; please pray for peace and unity in Kenya. And please join me in lifting up David and Kennedy and the continued work in Sudan.

Eternally grateful,

Chad

Tomorrow we fly out of Entebbe, Uganda with MAF (Missionary Aviation Fellowship) to Nimule, Sudan. We will be in Southern Sudan until Sept. 27th traveling around with two Kenyan men, David and Kennedy, who have been living and working in Nimule for the past few years. We are planning to visit 9 different villages within a fairly large area (about 60miles North of Nimule). At each place we are going to be teaching a course offered by MTI (Messiah Theological Institute) called “Foundational Teachings of Faith”. The course is a basic Biblical overview of things like God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Salvation, Church, Christian Living, etc. and will be taught over two days in each place. Also, while visiting we will be helping to collect information about each church (history, leaders, location, needs, etc.) and about other things like travel, culture, accessible roads, expenses, location of establishments (schools, hospitals, petrol stations, etc.), and other useful information for anyone (future missionaries?) going into the area.

I am very excited about our time! I think it will be tough - we will be traveling so much among a people and culture that we are so unfamiliar with (the war has left the south with very little, if not any, infrastructure, and the war-effected, poverty-stricken, regularly-displaced people are a part of a world we from the west have never experienced), as well as, language barriers, primitive living, and other things that will require patience and endurance. But the adventurous side of it excites me! We are going into an area that is very different, we are going to people who live in very different world, it will be hard, but I am so excited to be a part of the Kingdom movement! I pray, and ask you to pray with us, that God will work powerfully through our visits, that we will be able to encourage and edify all that we meet, and that we will see God revealing himself among the people of Sudan!

Please specifically pray for Josh and I - for endurance, compassion, wisdom, mental focus as we teach, patience in dealing with cultural/language barriers, health, safe travel, and that the love of Christ will be present in all that we do, in the unity of us wazungu (white guys), within the unity of the larger group of missionaries (Kenyans and us), and the fellowship we will share with the people of Sudan.

Contact through internet will probably not be available, so thanks for the prayers, I love you all, see ya in a month!

(Josh Shelburne, Chad Wheeler, Joshua Pruitt, Shawn Tyler - Josh has been working on the construction of a clinic, as well as other structures in Nimule. Shawn, along with other missionaries in Uganda, has been overseeing recent work in Nimule.)

In Sudan, in America, in all the earth, we join together and continue with Jesus in his mission as stated in Luke 4:18-19, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because he has anointed us to bring the good news to the poor. He has sent us to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

We are three less than before now. Our teammates, Justin and Tiffany Hanes, and Justin Gibson, have gone back to the States. They flew out of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on August 7th leaving Josh and I to continue on our journey to Sudan.

The experience of saying goodbye meshed several emotions together. I was sad to see them go, happy for them getting to return to family, friends and loved ones, thankful for such a life changing trip, excited to hear about the new ways they see the world (as we usually only begin to understand the changes that have taken place when we return), and honestly a big part of me wished I was returning with them.

Our trip (over three months now) has been amazing, life changing, exciting, and educational; but it has also been challenging, tiring, stressful, and breaking in many ways. We’ve been going and going and going and traveling A LOT! We’ve been rung through many very stressful situations; having to adjust to culture, deal with barriers like language, and simply deal with the repeating unfamiliarity of the people we are visiting.

But one of the most difficult and life changing things we’ve had to deal with is each other. I love every one of these guys! But it doesn’t change the fact that living with 4 other people who are not family members for 3 months, everyday, sharing rooms, food, over packed matatus (van taxi), money, and everything else, gets really difficult sometimes! We couldn’t just hop in our own individually owned cars and get away from each other, we couldn’t leave after a long days work to go to our own apartments - we were forced to deal with (and sometimes try to ignore for a while) the difficulties of being WITH each other.

We didn’t do everything right. We didn’t always have our happy missionary faces on displaying the pure love of Christ. But through it all God taught us a little bit about community and about loving each other. We learned that loving people while at a distance is usually fairly easy, but loving those who are closest to us, on an everyday basis, is definitely the hardest task God has given humankind!

Most of the time when traveling around to different places this summer no one knew if there were conflicts within our group. We could serve others and love strangers while, sometimes, we had moments when serving and loving each other was the last thing we felt like doing. We would tell others about Jesus and the great love that he has. We would go to the street children in Nairobi and tell them that, even though God might not instantly bring you off the street or make you rich, if he is present he can transform life through loving community. But we ourselves sometimes struggled to invite his presence into our smaller community by loving each other.

Don’t get me wrong, we had a great trip, and we really do love each other and try our best to love each other. I’m just talking about the reality of community - IT IS HARD! It is. For anyone who really risks, I mean really steps out and risks, being in community, they will find that it is definitely the hard stuff of life!

But I’m so glad for it! It’s so hard, but it’s so good! In community we see others junk clearly, but we also see our own very clearly! Any great picture of ourselves undergoes serious scrutinization! But through it God shows us where we need work, how we lack in loving others, and occasionally when we allow him he shows us how to really choose to love others when it’s hard. And that, my friends, is the really, really good stuff of life! That is the time when we and sometimes others get to really see Jesus - we look and see something that so closely resembles Jesus! Following so radically in the way of Jesus that WE actually look like him! Community is the tool God uses to refine us into the image of his Son.

“By THIS all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35)

 David Augsburger in ‘Dissident Discipleship’ says, “Spirituality is not free-floating; it has location, and that location is community.”

The gospel we are trying to share here, in America, and every place on this earth is not only found in a story or on a page, but it is found most profoundly when it is seen in a loving community of believers. We made mistakes on our journey and we will make more, but we learn from them, and I think we have all learned a little bit more about Jesus and how to really invite his presence into the world - through community.

Thanks, I love you guys!

The following are some quotes about community:

 ”Nothing reveals a person more fully than the person’s relation to those who are close and response to those who are opposed and closed” - David Augsburger, “Dissident Discipleship”

“We might define true community as that place where the person you least want to live with always lives.” Parker Palmer, ‘A Place Called Community”

“True community exists when the person you dislike the most dies or moves away and someone worse takes that place.” Quaker Proverb

“Discipleship usually is not a grand calling or a spectacular act of martyrdom. Rather, it is a set of Christlike instincts and reflexive responses of love that gradually take shape in our lives over a period of years. We immerse ourselves in Scripture and in awareness of his presence. Then, when we have to respond quickly to a life situation, we are more likely to act in a way that is a credit to our Lord.” Donald Kraybill, “The Riddle of Amish Culture”

“How can you go and say to people, “that which we would like to know - that declare we to you. That which is not a reality among us, we declare unto you - a brotherhood which we cannot practice.” How dare we preach, how dare we evangelize, from any standpoint except that of incarnation.” Clarence Jordan, Sermon of the Mount

“Love of God is made visible in love of neighbor, and love of neighbor is the means by which love of God is expressed.” David Augsburger, ‘Dissident Discipleship’

Since my last update we have been traveling a lot! From Nairobi we went to the coast and spent our first week at Turtle Bay at the AAMC (All African Missionary Conference) which was such a blessing! There were missionaries from all over Africa and a group from Portland (Milton Jones and others) and Ft. Worth who lead us in worship and encouraged us in so many ways! It was a time of relaxation and refreshment, and great encouragement being surrounded by such a great group of people. We also ran into our friends Jim and Nathan Beck, and Warner which was awesome!

After the AAMC we went just up the road to Malindi (where the Becks and the Talleys worked when they first came as missionaries just after Paul had finished his missionary journeys I think) and spent the week with some awesome people! We stayed at the Uzima (meaning “light”) Christian Training Center and enjoyed the blessing of the community there. Every night before bed we would all meet together and hold hands in a circle singing and praying. And the Giryama can really sing! It was such a blessing to be around people with such joyous faith! Our work while in Malindi consisted of digging a choo (pronounced “cho” not “chew”) which is an old school in-ground toilet. The pictures on flickr to the right show the exciting time we had! We worked for five days digging this thing. The first day we dug down about 7ft, next we put up an internal brick wall to serve as the foundation, next we dug down another 6ft. or so but ran into rock and had to stop, the next day we put a solid concrete platform over the top of the hole, and the last day we built a brick house around the toilet. It looks swell! It was pretty hard work, but a lot of fun!

We built the choo for a church that has not yet begun, but is in the vision of a widow woman named Margret. Margret is an awesome old woman who is an extremely hard worker and has a huge heart! She just finished building a new house (right next to her old one)  this summer with the help of James Reppart and the crew from York College. And now she wants to start a church that will meet in her old house. She is such a cool lady! She has really taken in and cared for a lot of the children in her community and she also reaches out to the Rastafarian culture in Malindi (which is not welcomed by most churches there). She told us she wants this church to be a place where her Rastafarian (Bob Marley-looking, Raggae-type, pot-smoking-type, beach culture) friends will come to Jesus! We really learned a lot from this woman and are so encouraged by her desire to embrace the socially (and sadly religiously) unaccepted people. Keep her and the others in Malindi in your prayers.

After Malindi we had an interesting journey down to Tanga, Tanzania where we stayed with Tim and Rebecca Talley and their two daughters Abigail and Debra. They were such a blessing and an encouragement to us! Such a hospitable family! We helped them put in a concrete floor at the new “learning center” on the church property in Tanga, but mostly just relaxed and fellowshiped with the Talleys. We also got to go Mangrove Mucking which, if you haven’t experienced, is impossible to describe. someday you must try. I had visited Tanga 3 years ago with the Allisons when I interned with them, and it was great to see the progress of the church there. Tanzania is very blessed to have people like the Talleys and the Bumpus’ (another couple living in Tanga), but Tanzania needs our prayers and we need more God-centered, missional people willing to serve here in Tanzania!

We are now in Dar es Salaam staying with Fielden and Janet Allison. We are now at the end of the summer phase of our trip, and Justin and Tiffany, and Justin Gibson are getting ready to fly back to the U.S. on the 7th. Pray for us as we part and as Josh and I prepare to head into Sudan.

A brief update on Sudan: James Reppart will not be joining us on our journey to Sudan. He just returned a few days ago from a trip with a group of men to Sudan and said it was very great and very hard. So we are excited to go, but asking you to join us in asking God for his guidance and grace.

Also, to your prayer list, I’ve somehow acquired some kind of infection in my hand (maybe a boil, but not confirmed yet), but its really is a pain. so pray for this to be taken care of quickly.

 blessings to all!

Well our plans for the fall have been in the making since very early on. But because of the nature of our plans (what we want to do and where we want to go) it took some time to form.

I didn’t want to say too much about the fall until we had more of a definite idea of what we were going to be able to do. But now, although there are still a few details up in the air, I think our plans are in motion enough to give you some things to specifically pray for.

On August 8th Josh and I will send off our friends Justin Gibson, Justin and Tiffany Hanes back to the USA, and begin our journey north. We will first go to Nairobi to visit our friends at MITS; next we will travel to Kisumu to visit our friends from Ringroad Orphanage; then we will travel to Mbale, Uganda to meet with Shawn Tyler to prepare for our trip into Sudan.

We are planning on flying to Nimule, Sudan sometime in mid-August and spending the next month and a half in the surrounding area. We will be traveling around the area with two Kenyan nationals who have been working as missionaries in S. Sudan for the last year and a half. We plan to visit around 10 churches for about 2-3 days each. We will be teaching a course on the “Foundations of Faith” and doing some survey work in the area.

We feel this is a great opportunity to be introduced to Sudan, learn about the people and culture, see the needs of the area, gather valuable information for the people in Uganda who are heading this mission effort in Sudan, and we hope to be an encouragement to the Christians in the area.

Please pray the God would open the doors for us to go, that he would prepare us spiritually and physically for this journey.

 After our time in Sudan our trip will be coming to a sooner-than-planned close. There are several factors in our decision to come home early. One, because our plans will have all come to completion; we had chosen to come home in early Dec. because we had no real plans and wanted to leave the time open for whatever opened up in Sudan, but now we know our Sudan plans will be complete at the end of Sept. so there is no definite reason to stay. But also for me personally, I have an extremely important reason to return early - I’m Getting Married!

If you haven’t heard, it’s true, I finally caught the most amazing woman in the world! Her name is Jaime Rucker and we will be getting married on Dec. 30th. So I’m not too extremely sad about leaving a bit early

Please pray for our plans for Sudan, also for our return, and please pray for Jaime and I as we deal with the difficulties of being apart and as we plan for our wedding and marriage.

Thank you and blessings,

Oh yeah, almost forgot, our new return date is Oct. 6th.

Our time with Made in the Streets is at an end. It all seems to be moving so fast! The last 3 weeks have been a blur! We started in Eastleigh working with the street kids doing day camps, playing soccer, eating and just hanging out. Then we moved from the streets to Kamulu to work at the “Farm”. The Farm is an orphanage/school/transition place for kids who are selected to leave the streets and work towards recovery and life training. There are about 50 kids, boys and girls, ages 13-18. They live in two compounds (boys and girls) with dorm parents, and go to school and do different activities everyday. They go to school to receive the same basic education as most Kenyan students, they also have Christian Bible classes, and at a certain stage in their stay they take skills training. Skills training allows students to prepare specifically for a trade to go into once they leave the Farm. They have a Tea House where students learn to cook and run a business, a Sowing shop, a Hair Salon where girls learn to do it up, and an Auto-mechanics shop. The place is amazing! They have a full staff of awesome Christian teachers, cooks, dorm-parents, etc. and they are doing an excellent job!

It was truly amazing to go from Eastleigh to Kamulu and to be struck with the reality that these kids came from the streets! The pictures you saw of the kids sniffing glue and passed out in the trash heap; these are the same kids! They came from the same things! It truly is a miraculous sign to see the change God has made in these kids! Such beauty, so many smiles, the laughter, kids singing praises, applying themselves to something worth their time - all found in these kids who were “made in the streets”. You know when poetic words in Scripture sometimes strike deep within you and are are really seen and experienced? Come to Kamulu and you will find all kinds of poetic words coming to life…. beauty from ashes, gladness instead of morning, a garment of praise instead of despair (Is 61), dry bones coming to life (Ez 37), etc. - the imagery is real! God is giving life to these children and its awesome to watch!

But sad to leave.

We’re on our way down to Watamu to attend a conference for missionaries coming from all over Africa. We will be with them until Friday and then we’ll just take a 10min ride up to a town called Malindi where we will visit some friends who are building houses for orphans, a group called Mulangaza lead by people taught many years ago by our friend Jim Beck. Should be fun… to see how he messed with their minds I mean

Thank you for your prayers, God is present!

Blessings!

We are now in Nairobi, Kenya working with a group called Made-in-the-Streets. MITS is a ministry to homeless children, primarily teenagers, in a slum of Nairobi called Eastleigh. They have a compound in Eastleigh where they feed people, take care of health needs, bring in mothers and babies, play games, and profoundly provide an environment of safety and love for the people of the streets. I say profoundly because God has really opened our eyes to the profound impact of seemingly simple things. For example, our first day at Eastleigh we walked out to a soccer field hidden behind a massive trash heap, and played with homeless guys for about 2.5hrs. At first it seemed like a very simple day of soccer, but as we walked and talked I began to realize what was really happening. We were walking out to the field and little children rushed up to us, hugging us around our legs; while playing, the boys were laughing and competing just like any normal child; and on the way back teenage boys held our hands and smiled and talked freely. It all seemed very normal - but the normal experience for these kids is starkly different! these kids sleep on the streets every night! they are seen as pests and a bother by the community! they are kicked and treated like dogs by strangers everyday! Love and kindness are not the normal treatment these kids experience!

Larry Conway, one of the missionaries that works with MITS and our host, told us a story about a time he went to put his arm around a street boy, but the boy flinched thinking he was going to hit him. These kids are so used to being abused and treated like trash. But what God is doing here in Nairobi through MITS, while it may sometimes seem simple, is so profound.

It has been hard though. Going out to the bases (the places where groups of homeless people hang out and sleep) and visiting these people stuck in such darkness. The second day we went out to a base and met some people there. They were all just laying around on a pile of trash and rocks in the middle of a roundabout. We started talking to them and I met a young girl named Nancy. Nancy had a baby, 4 months old, and she was adorable. So I asked her some questions and played with her baby for a while. And then we all gathered around to pray and hear a message about Jesus from Josh. While Josh was speaking I witnessed one of the hardest things I have ever seen. While Nancy was breastfeeding her baby, she revealed her bottle of glue that had been hidden in her baby blanket, and began sniffing the glue. It was so hard seeing someone so addicted caring for such a fragile child! I wanted to just yell at all of them and flip out on them for acting so irresponsibly and so obviously harmful to this baby! But I felt so helpless! I looked around and saw such deep darkness. Talking to Larry later he told me what another missionary, Jim Reppart, had said once, he said, “Darkness blinds people, and blind people can’t see.” This woman, Nancy, and the others around were so blinded that they don’t even realize they are killing themselves and those they care for.

We have met so many people addicted to glue and being dominated by the darkness. The darkness reigns so heavy in Eastleigh and in all of Nairobi. But there is a light. Maybe even a very small light, but still a light. And it is invading the darkness!

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:5).

I ask again, please pray for us; pray for the light to shine; for Jesus to appear in our flesh and dwell amidst dark places. We join you in this prayer.

We have been in Africa for about 1 month now and things are mzuri sana (very good)! We have had our bumps and bruises and rough days, but God has been faithful, the people are beautiful, and we have been learning together everyday.

We love Kisumu and the Ringroad Orphans Day School. They have been so hospitable and so much fun! This past week was so awesome and the most exhausting yet! We had VBS during the week followed by a day of teaching some church leaders from the area on Saturday. Lots of teaching, singing, playing, and laughing! Its a bummer because we have just started to really get down the kids names and feel close to them, and now we’re leaving! But we believe God will use our trip, the way it has been arranged, to teach us the things he wants. As much as we love Ringroad, there are so many other things we want to see and learn about Africa. Like in Nairobi, where we go next, when we will learn about ministry to street children and how the ministry deals with the difficulties of that work and what God has taught them about that area of need in E. Africa (www.made-in-the-streets.org).

——

So I want to share some things God has been teaching us and some ways he has been breaking us:

The story starts just yesterday. I was feeling sick and decided to walk to the store to try and find some medicine for my stomach. On the way I was stopped by four young boys (8-11 yrs old) who asked me if I would buy them something to eat. If you’ve never been to a third world country before you might be surprised that I was reluctant to buy them food at first. For several reasons, one because kids and adults alike ask us for food, etc. everywhere we go because of our skin color and we simply cannot buy food for them all, and also because I hesitate to encourage a system in which the Mzungu (white person) is nothing but a source of money, food, etc. So I asked them about themselves and they told me they were orphans, homeless, and didn’t sniff glue. They seemed honest and sincere so I decided to feed them and brought them along to the store I was heading to. I asked them if they went to school and they said, “No.” They said they wanted to, but, like so many, they didn’t have the money to go.

One of the boys had gimpy legs; he could walk but with a harsh limp. While we were walking he grabbed my hand and held it. At first, and this is embarrassing to say, but I had the urge to let go; I didn’t want to hold his hand. I was thinking, “This boy is dirty and sticky… why is he holding my hand?… you just don’t grab strangers hands!” But then I remembered what I had just read in ‘Dissident Discipleship’ about imitating Jesus and how I felt a strong desire to - love as he loved, have compassion as he had compassion, touch as he touched - so I held his hand confidently for the rest of our time. I decided to get over myself and simply love this kid - to hold his hand like my own son.

It was a breakthrough moment, where the Holy Spirit took control and allowed Jesus to live now! I had a choice to hold on to my sanitation, my cultural norms, or allow Jesus to touch this child. And it was so refreshing to choose his way.

We’ve been thinking a lot about this lately - how we are being pushed so much; much like Jesus was. Everywhere we go people are asking us for help, people are touching us, people are needing from us, people are invading our space, and challenging our comfort zones and selfishness. We’ve been able to understand, in a small way, what Jesus went through; why he told people not to tell anyone he healed them, etc. - because he knew people from everywhere would come to him expecting something always. He would hardly be able to have conversations with people without them asking something of him, he wouldn’t be able to just have normal relationships, because there would always be this question, “are they coming with an agenda?” We understand because our skin color automatically makes people think we can fix their problems or give them something. That’s why we can’t go anywhere without having little kids come to us and say, “buy me a biscuit” or having church leaders ask us to sponsor them. It’s hard! And we understand why Jesus went away to the lonely places to pray so much - because it was so exhausting to maintain compassion and patience, and continue giving and giving and giving even so much that it eventually cost him his life!

In America we have so many boundaries that keep these “problems” at a safe distance. It is not socially acceptable to touch complete strangers or ask them for food; hosts don’t ask their guests for something as soon as they walk in; personal space codes are strictly respected; and you generally don’t bother complete strangers. With the exception of homeless people (but even the homeless in the US don’t come close to breaking these codes the way Africans do) who most of us successfully avoid or only rarely have to deal with. But here we are challenged daily with the choice to keep these boundaries and become offended or irritated or to imitate the way of Jesus who looked on the people and had compassion. He said they looked like sheep without a shepherd. And even though those same people broke personal space codes and followed him and his disciples out to a desert place when they were trying to get away by themselves, and even though they wanted nothing but food, Jesus still took what others doubted would be enough, and gave to them all (See the story in Mk 6:30-44, 53-56; Jn 6:1-15, 22-40). Afterward he retreated to the mountain to pray; probably because it was so taxing to be around such needy people; a people who wanted to take more than their share and make Jesus king by force. And even when they came to him the next day on the other side of the sea looking for more bread he continued to give to them - this time offering the greatest bread ever tasted - himself.

So many times we are tempted to be impatient with people. Everywhere we go people chant, “Mzungu, Mzungu, Mzungu” and I’ve started telling people, “Mimi si mzungu” (”I’m not a white person!”). I find myself wishing I wasn’t white, or at least that people didn’t look at me and see an ATM or a foodbank. But God is breaking us and teaching us to have compassion even with the most demanding people.

It is just hard to find a balance between compassionate giving and compassionate withholding. We could give more, but it seems that we will not have enough. And it seems if we gave to everyone as they had need we’d be broke in a day! But are we like the doubting disciples who see only five loaves and two fish? But the problems we face seem so much harder to handle than feeding people. And like Jesus even said, this bread will leave you hungry tomorrow! Even if we had all the money in the world it wouldn’t provide fathers and mothers for the uncountable number of orphans left alone on the streets! How can Jesus multiply what little we have and what little we are?

I don’t have the answers. But we are on the journey. And we rest in our belief that these are the questions Jesus wants us to ask, and perhaps this is the journey of the disciple - to struggle with the way things appear to be, the way things can be, and the way we can position ourselves to live and to pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Jesus gives so much, he bears with people like no one I’ve ever seen! He touches even the most dirty and most undeserving people! Somehow I think we have a flannel-graph idea of leprosy or the massive crowds that came to him! Are you kidding me? Following Jesus, imitating Jesus, living “just as” Jesus lived is so hard! Only by the power and guidance of his Spirit will we be able to do anything!

Pray for us, as we also pray for you.

Yes, I know, it has been almost 3 weeks since we left, and I am just now writing. We are here. Hopefully you have been reading up on Josh’s website and have an idea about what’s going on. But in case you haven’t here is my version of the story

We travelled for over 85 hrs before we made it to our first destination, Mbale, Uganda. We stayed with Ian and Danetta Shelburne and their 7 kids! while in Mbale. Ian and the team in Mbale run a Bible school there called MTI (Messiah Theological Institute) and we were asked to teach a course for them. So the day after we arrived, May 22, we split into two groups; Justin Hanes and Justin Gibson went to one village, and Josh and I went to Kodeidei, a small village about an hour and a half’s drive from Mbale. You can see some of the pictures on “Flickr” (the pictures to the right of the screen). While in Kodeidei we stayed with a family and taught the church there. We had about 35 students ranging in age from early 20’s to some old folks. We taught an exegetical study of the Letter of James. The first day I taught the introduction to the letter which lasted 4hrs with a translator! 4 hours of standing in a wood and mud building teaching the introduction! It was fun but exhausting! The next day we basically walked through the letter breaking it down into different sections which Josh and I taught in rotation. We taught for 7hrs that day with an hour break for lunch in between. You may have also seen the pictures of the children with the soccer balls we brought. Every time there was a break we played a chaotic game of soccer/volleyball. The people were so nice and so hospitable - they seriously have an unbelievable style of hospitality, one that we could learn from in the States. The people we stayed with only had two beds (a family of 5) and the insisted that Josh and I take them both while they slept on dirt floors, and they served us only the best food they had. The people were awesome, the class was exhausting but good and the children were so beautiful!

For the rest of our time in Mbale we did random things like travel to a village for a lesson about pastors, take a trip out to Sipi falls (which are also in the pictures) with some good friends (Audra and Becca), and let our bodies adjust to the 8hr time difference. The people in Mbale are great and we had some very refreshing fellowship with them.

We left Mbale on May 31st and took a matatu (van taxi) to the border of Kenya (it cost about $4 a person for an hour ride). And after receiving our passports we took another van to a town called Bungoma where Jared Odhiambo, the director of Ringroad Orphans Day School in Kisumu, Kenya, picked us up. He drove us for almost 3 hours on some amazing roads to Kisumu (if you know anything about Kenya you know how badly I’m lying ;). We have been in Kisumu for 3 days now and it is so awesome! The school is a lot of fun, they have 350 something students in primary school, many of whom are orphans from losing their parents to AIDS. The first day we came to school they told us we were going to teach “anything you want from the Bible”; we had about 3 minutes to prepare. And of course I was placed with the youngest kids in the school who don’t speak English very well, so we needed a translator. I taught them about Abraham’s journey of learning to see that God is faithful to his promises - I think they got it. They looked kind of bored even though I was trying to make it interesting, I think they just had trouble understanding me. But they got very excited at the end when we reviewed and each person that answered correctly got a piece of candy. This confirmed that they had superior memorization skills and could pay attention even with their eyes rolling in the back of their heads

Kisumu ni tamu.

We are planning to teach in the school most days we are here, we also have a 3day VBS planned for the kids, and a seminar planned for the church leaders in the area which will of course be over James.

We are enjoying our time so far, Africa is so beautiful, even with the many difficulties the people of East Africa face, the Lord is working here and revealing himself to every tribe, tongue, and nation. Keep us in your prayers as we journey with the people of East Africa and try to reflect God and see God in the many ways he reveals himself to us.

Mungu aku bariki (God bless you),

Chad