Habari!
We are safe and sound in Kenya and have been enjoying our first week in this wonderful country. We are staying in Nairobi at Savelberg Retreat Center. This place is gorgeous! I will post pictures eventually, but I feel rather spoiled, mainly because of how we lived last time and how it is in the country and bush. This experience is infinitely different! We each have our own room with a bathroom, toilets, hot running water, and electricity. The center has wifi (sometimes) so I am writing this from my room! We get three meals a day and two chai breaks, and it is so close to everything! It doesn't really feel like I am in Kenya, to be honest, because the Kenya I lived in was in the country and the bush and was just a very different experience. The language is slowly returning, I am constantly practicing and everyone here is happy to help and translate words for me. I love Kiswahili!
The flight out was good; no delays except for sitting for an hour on the runway in NY but other than that, it could not have been smoother! We easily made our connection in Brussels, napped in the airport, drank wine, ate food, napped and watched movies on the plane and finally arrived in Nairobi at 10:15pm (Nairobi time). Usually customs and visas take at least an hour, but all of us were through in 20 minutes! Our bags all showed up and we had our friends waiting to pick us up and take us to Savelberg. We spent our first day resting and getting over the jet lag and then explored the city on Sunday with a friend from the Savelberg, sent emails to the locations we will be visiting, made phone calls, and rested some more. We have been able to get in touch with many of the places and have scheduled site visits for the coming weeks. We had our first one yesterday (Wednesday), which I have written about in my next blog. I have been able to get in touch with some of my dear friends from Mbita and Kisumu and am arranging times to meet up and visit with them. It is such a blessing to know I will be reuniting with these friends. In fact, one of my friends from my church in Perth, Australia will be arriving on the 9th and I will get to visit with her as well! I haven’t seen her since my Junior year in college, so this was a very exciting surprise. Next week we will be visiting more of the counseling centers in the city and a few of the new contacts that have arisen since we arrived (Most everyone you meet along the way has a contact they can share with you.) Overall, our time thus far has been a blessing and we have been able to grow as a team and build deeper bonds with each other, as well as build new friendships with those we come in contact with.
Personally, my arrival in Kenya has not at all been what I was expecting or envisioning. As I said earlier, the living conditions are so very different. As it is in America, living in the city as opposed to the country makes such a difference and I have struggled to adjust to living in Nairobi instead of a smaller town or the country. It is strange to be here without my amazing team from AIM and I find myself reminiscing and missing them all terribly. Spiritually, I am in an enormously different place as well. I have just finished my second year of seminary and while I love what I am studying, have been absolutely exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I feel completely drained. My cup seems bone dry, as if I have nothing left to pour out to others and it has taken its toll on me. I am in a time where I am in deep need of rest and replenishment from the Lord, yet I don’t quite know how to receive that. I am used to going full speed and doing so much, that rest seems to be a foreign concept. How do I simply stop doing and just be? How do I come before the Lord when I no longer have words to express what I need because I no longer know what I need? How do I make the most of this time God has given me in Kenya to grow and learn when I feel too tired to even move? These thoughts and questions have been consuming me and leave me more tired than before. Rest, it seems, is harder than I ever imagined. Releasing myself to the Lord to give me what I need, letting go of all control, is even harder.
I have also grown and changed in so many ways in the 3 years since I was here last. I think I expected to come back and have things be the same. I expected to meet God in the same ways I did last time, which was so powerful (read my past blogs on this site about my spiritual journey last time.) He is showing me bit by bit that he has something new for me and that I need to release my expectations and reins to allow Him to really show me this new thing. Yet as we all know, that is infinitely harder than it sounds. I know I must lay it at His feet, lay myself at His feet, and allow His grace and love to flow over me like a river, but I am constantly jumping up to “do” instead. I have learned and grown so much as a woman of God and in my knowledge of Him at seminary, yet I still find I struggle with letting God just be God, and taking myself out of the power role. I was reading 1 Kings 19 with my team, and the part that grabbed me was vs. 3-9. I feel like this last semester, I was like Elijah, running for my life, simply trying to make it through and survive, and now I find myself in the wilderness, exhausted and spent, telling the Lord, "I have had enough. I am no better than the others." Oh, but God is so gracious in His response! When I feel so weak and inadequate in my faith and in life, when I feel that I cannot go any further, he finds me there. I feel that I am lying under the tree as Elijah was, just waiting to be done, and God promises to refresh me. How thankful I am for that promise! We were reading Isaiah 43-44:8 in our bible study time this week and 43: 18-19 spoke to my heart and my expectations of God doing things the same way as he did before. I wanted Africa to be the same, for the Holy Spirit to move as He did before. Yet He is doing something new and exciting! He is bringing me from the wilderness and guiding me. Psalm 139 was such a huge part of my time in Africa before and I felt God speaking it over me again today. Funny that when so much has changed, He is bringing some familiar back to me. He is doing something wonderful and new in me; I just need to release my strong hold and rest in Him.
Please be lifting prayers for our team, for the coming weeks and site visits, and that we remain healthy and continue to grow together. Jason, Julia, Julie, and Erin are amazing teammates and I am grateful for what each of them brings to this team and our time here. Pray also for my time here and what God is doing in me. What I anticipated to be a purely academic trip, a time to learn and to teach and help others, is turning into a time of change and renewal in my spiritual walk with Him. Please also pray for actual rest through sleep. I have been struggling with sleeping through the night and the lack of sleep is taking a toll on me. Thank you for your continued prayers and support! If you would like to donate to our trip, that would be amazing!! I am still short on funds but I am trusting God to provide through the generosity of others. Please see my last post for the instructions on how to do so. Love from Kenya!! Kwaheri!
-Kathleen
