This is How it Goes...

This is a great house we're moving into in Arusha, but the actual moving in is getting pretty silly.

The internet people surprised us by being really efficient and professional and, wow, we got internet on the second day!

But, woops, when the were installing poles down our lane to bring the cable to our house, they accidentally dug up the water pipe. Woo hooo! Internet is working! Boo hooo! Water is not. Well, we have what is already in the cistern, but nothing new coming to the house the last couple of days.

I wonder if that means our neighbors aren't getting water either.... Hhhmmm. I'm sure they love having us :-)

Today the plumber who was working on inside pipes (that still have a little water) walked away from the job for a little bit and I had to hold a bucket under the open pipe till he came back. The pipe is one that feeds a sink in the hall (outside the shower room) so the hallway was slowly getting wetter and wetter until Byron discovered it and called me to hold the bucket. The tile floors weren't in danger of getting hurt, but the unpacked boxes lining the hall would not have liked it.

Byron had to leave because the car alarm was going off. Trevor must have somehow set the alarm and the Russells' big vehicle that we're borrowing was making weird, scary sounds in the driveway. So Byron spent a fair amount of time under the hood doing whatever you do to stop a determined alarm.

What else weird happened today? Seems like there were at least a couple other odd challenges. Maybe the fact that the shower curtain rod is set permanently in the wall at an outrageous height so that our shower curtain is about a foot too short. I don't know... I can't remember now.

Honestly, I'm not complaining. All these things just seem kind of normal, par for the course and sorta funny to me.

This is how it goes :-)

A House (Soon to be a Home)

We've found a house to rent at last. Can your hear our collective sigh of relief?

We're in the process of moving in and it's taking longer than we'd like due to getting the water and power sorted out and the shuttling over of about one million boxes from our container, which arrived safely from Portugal a couple of weeks ago.

The house is spacious and clean inside. The tile floors will be cold during July and August! The outside of it is a very mustardy yellow. Not so attractive but we don't mind. We're just happy to start making beds and putting things away in cupboards.

The internet access is being set up so hopefully we'll be on-line from home in the next couple of days.

So that's the brief report to say:

1) We've found a good house in a decent location
2) We're busy moving in and
3) We're happy :-)

Thanks for prayers! I'll post a photo soon.

Monday, Monday

I woke up very tired today.

Crying in bed at night will always make me wake that way.

I don't think I have a good reason to cry. Not compared to the kids living down in Unga Ltd, the economically challenged area of town where we sponsor our wonderful soccer team. Those bright eyed guys have friends and relatives who are HIV positive, and AIDS has already taken some of them.

I don't have a good reason to cry compared to most anyone in Africa.

But I'm tired and overwhelmed. It's like the 6 weeks of adrenaline that it has taken to do this initial moving-in work just ran out last night.

Jesse said a mutual friend saw Bono at an orphanage in town a couple weeks ago. My mind goes to the vastness of the issues and the problems that are too deep for western money to help. (Which is not an indictment against what Bono or anyone, us included, is doing. It's just where my mind went.) Thinking of that makes me put on U2's song "40".

I read the words of David in Psalm 40 and ask the Lord to please set my feet upon a rock.

Video Log

Trevor has been making little video documentaries of our escapades.

Here's the first one he made and it's called "Jesse's Adventure."

Enjoy :-) PS 6,000 Tanzanian shillings is about $5.

Jesse's Adventure

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Friends

My Dad sent this photo today so this is just a shout-out to the Klein family in Pasadena, California.

Dan, Sue, MacKenzie, Morgan, Allison, Bruce and Emily, you guys are the best! Thank you for always befriending this band of travelers whenever we pass through (and spend eight months) in your town.

Photo taken on our last night in the States when the Klein crew stopped in for a few more hugs :-)

A Good and Lovely Weekend

Wow, this last weekend was the first proper weekend we can remember having in ages.

We played and had fun basically the whole time.

Saturday was an excellent adventure out. We convoyed in three vehicles (we were 20 in all) out to the toolies in search of a lovely waterfall coming down the Rift Valley wall. We had been told it was a nice spot but none of us had been.

It felt good to pull out into the morning and head for an explore. We explored a little more than we needed to since we lost our way but finally, some four hours later, we stopped at a river beach and had our picnic. PC decided he would go find a way to access the water fall we were looking for and it wasn't too long before we got a text message saying he had found it. The message also mentioned that his truck was quite securely stuck in the river and he needed Byron to come pull him out :-)

After setting the vehicle free from the soft muddy river bottom we were all hot and happy to walk the rest of the way upstream to the very pretty falls.

I guess we spent a couple of hours there, wading, swimming, laughing, enjoying. Having found the shaded campsite that looks out toward the falls and speaking with the local representative from the village about how much it would cost us to camp there, we decided this is a definite place to come back to for an over-night.

Sunday we made up our second round of picnic food and headed out to Per and Miriam's house. Per runs a motorcycle safari company and occasionaly he hosts motorcycle races at the track around his property. Our family enjoyed the view from the roof of the car as we ate and watched the different heats of races. It was good fun. Per won his set of four races and his little girl, Sarah, won the kids set. Rebekah, who is 11, raced in the mid grade heats against men and she came in 3rd. You may call it home track advantage but I'd say there is some serious motorcycle skill in that family :-)

Sunday night we gathered with about 25 friends and had a really sweet time of worship. Very refreshing and nourishing.

I liked that weekend and hope that we have many more that feel like it.

(Photo by Jesse)

The Forgotten Ways (or Alan Hirsch Has a Great Brain)

I'm reading Alan Hirsch's book The Forgotten Ways (Reactivating the Missional Church)

We got the book many months back but there has been no space in my life for reading. I am now reading and loving it.

In the last few years we have read a long list of very good books. The healthy survival and growth of the church has filled many volumes that we have taken in. They have been good. But if you find yourself dreaming Church, longing for her health and engagement in the world and you really only have time for one book, get The Forgotten Ways.

Alan's question to himself was, "How did a group of 25,000 Christians in AD 100 multiply to 20 million believers by AD 310?" In pursuing the answer to this, Alan uncovers simple, profound truths that fill me with hope and excitement.

I will not delve into a proper review of the book here. I think you should read it yourself. But I will tell you some of the things I love about Alan.

I love that Alan is outrageously bright and disarmingly humble and unaffected. I love that he is not angry. I have read books through which you can actually feel the chip on the author's shoulder. I love that he is brave and hopeful and that he loves the Church with passion. I love that he is a Jewish South African who lives in Australia and follows Jesus. I love that he calls everyone "Beautiful," as in "Hello, Beautiful!" And (maybe mostly) I love that he is married to Deb. I'm a big fan of Deb Hirsch and I can't wait for her to write.

So thanks for The Forgotten Ways, Mr. Hirsch. It's a major blessing to this world.

Good Gifts

Being in England with the 24-7 team was a good gift to me.
Sure, it felt kind of odd to turn up in London just three weeks after landing in Tanzania but I adjusted :-)

Walking along the High Street in Guilford I thought about how the shops are going to be a problem after I've been in Africa longer. Yea, the lovely displays of attractive things will be causing me to stumble when I return after a much longer stay in TZ. There are book and stationary stores, a Lush, a Body Shop, a Marks and Spencers, a nice kitchen shop etc etc. And I don't even like shopping!

The real gift of the time, though, was just being with Pete Greig, Carla Harding, Billy Kennedy, Brian Heasley, Andy Freeman, Jon Peterson and Ian Nicholson.

Then there was the cute little hat that Brian Heasley bought for Heather. We were poking around in the charity shops (thrift stores) with Billy at a lunch break and he found this cute hat and had to buy it. Heather loves it :-)

When I arrived home I found that Jesse (who was just in Portugal) had brought me olive oil from Barbara. I have a jar of oil pressed from olives harvested at the peaceful plot of the Shanti Pilgrim ! I think it's cool and wildly prophetic to have olive oil from there as we pursue community and look to settle a piece of land together here.

Well, the hurdles and hassles of moving, shipping and settling linger on but that's normal. Last night our family gathered to pray and Byron listed a bunch of the stressors before the Lord. "We don't know what to do about these but we do know this," he said. "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

We sat and sang that over and over for a little while. Ups and downs, stressors and times of joy... In it all there is that Jesus love. Now there's a good gift.

All There

I heard this afternoon that Jesse made it safely to Arusha today. It's so nice to know that Byron and all the kids are there together now. Byron said they were waiting for the shuttle and ordering a pizza when the bus arrived a little early. He said they bolted from the restaurant to run and throw their arms around Jesse :-)

I am having a very good time with the this 24-7 Prayer team here in England but I am really excited to get home to my family on Sunday.

I put my headphones on and go to Trevor's myspace just so I can hear his voice. Makes me feel closer....

Where Am I?

Well, I'm in London, that's where!

It's so weird to be here because it seems we just got to Tanzania.

But here I am.

I have the very good pleasure of serving on a leadership team with the
24-7 Prayer movement and we meet three times a year. So on Monday afternoon I took a five and a half hour bustrip from Arusha to Nairobi. The open plains of Africa were quite lovely, even if the road was quite bumpy, as we traveled.

At the airport I checked my little bag (a great mistake as I could have carried it on and it's now lagging behind somewhere) and went up to the transit area where I had a cup of tea before my 9pm flight.

There was a couple of large groups of people in matching outfits and one such group was on our plane. Maybe 75 people? It looked like one group made up of smaller groups, each smaller group being an African family. I wondered if they were refugees being relocated? They had a couple of people traveling with them to help them understand what to do. Anyway, I liked them.

We stopped at Entebbe and then on to Brussels. That's where the bag went missing. In fact, the plane from Brussels apparently landed in London with an empty hold. No one got their bags! Crazy.

Then I trained across to Guilford from Gatwick. Beautiful English hills and pastures and paddocks and fields in the morning sun. I thought about how cool it was that I was watching Africa out my window yesterday and England today.

Now I'm "resting" and doing computer work and getting excited to meet with our team tomorrow through Friday. I am honored off my rocker to serve on this team. I love these people!

PS I told Heather that Trevor would be me while I was gone. I said he could do her hair and help her make toast and call Talhia if she wanted to go up and play. When I told Trevor that he had to be me he said, "OK, but do I have to blog?" Ha ha!

And PSS Today is my wonderful dad's 75th Birthday!! Happy Birthday, Dad!! Of all the places in the world I could be, I wish I could transport myself for the day to be with you!