Help us Host De-Worming Clinics for Kids Here in Our Village!

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If you’ve read our blog for any length of time, you may know my (Cindy’s) desire to do more to serve the folks in need here in our community. We had a family car for few weeks, during which time we went out together once, but otherwise it has been very difficult (and/or costly) to get us all out and about. I don’t go out much personally, either, as there are many household and  homeschooling responsibilities demanding my consistent attention. I don’t mind it, as I do believe that a woman should be busy at home and committed to discipling her own children. However, I not only want to serve others, but want to give my children opportunities to do the same. It would seem sad, indeed, if we were here in Africa where there are so many needs and we did not do our best to meet them.

Another impediment to “doing more” here has been the language barrier. We continue our Swahili study but don’t practice enough and aren’t learning at a very great speed. Unfortunately, we’re surrounded by just enough English-speakers that they are gracious enough to speak it with us and so we aren’t forced to use the Swahili we do know. Equally unfortunately, most folks here don’t speak English. So even when I make an acquaintance, “want” to go further in a discipleship context, or want to implement projects of various kinds, there is this very real limitation. When Marc goes on missions, he brings along a very gifted translator; day-to-day here in the village, I of course don’t have that luxury.

I’ve made this a matter of continued prayer and have been very glad to see the Lord bring me many opportunities to give and help others in small ways. And last week, I was percolating a few larger-scale ideas that I’m excited about and might actually be able to execute. One is a series of medical clinics for the local children. Quite a few of my neighboring Mamas have visited over the months, asking for medical assistance for their children. The most common problems are intestinal worms or amoeba,and ringworm. These are easily treated but the unfortunate reality for most of these families is that they can treat these conditions or the family can eat supper. I’m able to help one-on-one, but doing anything bigger has seemed an impossibility (due to my home constraints and language inabilities, see above).

It occurred to me that I might collaborate with one of the woman in our local fellowship, who is a social worker. Her role has specifically been to facilitate medical clinics and help meet the needs of the disadvantaged in our community. When I approached her with the idea of doing a de-worming clinic, she was very excited and more than willing to help. Apparently, at one time these had been fairly common but have recently been less so, due to lack of funding. Only one such clinic has been offered recently, at a local school about a month ago.

I asked her if she could coordinate with the village elders and help me find a suitable location. She was ready to do weekly clinics at multiple locations and offer a range of treatments for all kinds of basic illnesses, but I had to slow her down and explain that right now I’m not sure what our funding can support, and I wanted to first do a “test” clinic, starting with just de-worming, to see what the response would be and how much more we could continue to do. She assured me she understood and would get to work on it right away.

Today, after our morning home fellowship, she told me she is organizing three “test clinics”–one right across the street at a local church, one in the village center, and one at a nearby market. I had to keep from reminding her that “test case” meant one clinic, as I’m not sure we can financially do more right now. I know the need is there, and I guess we’ll just have to step up to meet it.

045In our very immediate neighborhood I can count at least 40 children who regularly come over to play. Many more mill around outside our gate. There are many children in our area, and this is a very basic medical service that would meet a very real need. We’re starting with the de-worming because it is also the cheapest to treat. 50 shillings per dose is all it takes–about 60 cents. We have to buy the medicine in advance of the clinic, and neither I nor Rose (who is coordinating for me) know how many children to expect; however, we both estimate at least 200 here. In town and at the larger market across the way, we’ll probably need more–300 to 400 doses. For a round number, let’s say 1,000 bottles of de-worming medicine will be sufficient for the need; that will cost $600. (Marc also wants to make copies of The Two Kingdoms tract available, which cost about 8 shillings each to print.) That’s a lot more than I expected when I talked to Rose about hosting a clinic to serve the kids in our neighborhood. Will you help? If assisting with this project interests you, please visit www.KingdomDrivenMinistries.org/donate to make a tax-deductible donation. Just earmark it at checkout for “Children’s Clinic.”

I’m not much of a fund-raiser, but if God is in this project, I trust that HE will provide. I have lots of great ideas for service projects I’d like to implement in the future and if this is a big disaster (knowing me) I’ll probably get discouraged…so more than anything I do appreciate your prayers! I’ll keep you posted with dates and other details as we get more organized. God bless you!

Farming God’s Way and Kingdom Driven Ministries

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We have a solid first-tier of disciples here in Kenya (small in number but mighty) and a handful of others who are coming along, slow but sure. It is time to help them run with the vision for expanding the Kingdom of God. But just as we wazungu utilize the Two Kingdoms tract and the pamphlet of the teachings of Jesus to simplify the process,  they want to, too. That costs money, of course. We receive donations that fund this, and we also are able to offer  financial gifts to kick-start or expand businesses, provide food and medical care, subsidize funeral expenses, and whatever else seems needed at the moment. These folks are so hand-to-mouth that to be able to engage in Kingdom living and giving on this scale seems like an impossibility, and Kingdom Driven ministries (in the form of missionaries living here, anyway) isn’t going to be here forever. What then?

And so it begins: we’re taking what we’ve done here on the ground in terms of “making disciples who make disciples” and trying to make it self-propagating (i.e., not reliant on a constant influx of Western money). Marc is, of course, primarily the one involved in making this happen and he’s trying to begin with projects that will be successful, will replicate, and are not too difficult to implement. He’s looking at all of the strengths of the current discipleship here, determining what level of involvement they want in a project, what their giftings are, what the various returns on investment will be, and so on. (God is really utilizing the project management skills that Marc honed as a professional in the US!)

First up: buying large bags of dry beans. Right now they sell for about 100 KSH per kilo, but in a few month’s time they’ll be up to about 140, and in just shy of a year they might go as high as 200 KSH, if past performance is a reliable indicator. I don’t know how many kilos we’ve bought so far (I’m a blogger, not really involved in the operations!) but currently it’s stored in our office. Kingdom Driven Ministries has purchased a very small plot of land locally to build a storage building, but that can’t be completed until after the maize is harvested, in a couple of months’ time. Here’s what it looks like:

beans

Also, Marc has had a vision for teaching and equipping locals with the Farming God’s Way agricultural method, but he also wants to utilize it to profit the ministry so that the funds can be used to support Kingdom expansion and meet practical needs within the community. Project Number Two: KDM has leased a plot of approximately a half-acre, which will be farmed for maize and beans beginning early in 2014. An immediate need is to prepare the land by gathering large amounts of appropriate mulch. In a place where you very rarely get something for nothing (and where wazungu generally get charged double the usual going rate), Marc was thrilled a few days ago to get offered a free supply of non-flowering grasses from the property of a local muindi (person from India). He immediately mobilized several workers–one volunteer manager, a couple of Kingdom Christians who were in need of work, and several others from the community. The first day, we paid from our personal funds to gather some more mulch for our own garden (which this year functioned as a Farming God’s Way test plot). Today and tomorrow is earmarked to collect for the KDM field. For about $15 per day, we can gather as much as we want (mulch is free, only a daily wage is paid to the workers, at the rate of about $3 per person per day). Since the field we leased is currently home to someone else’s maize, we’re storing the mulch in our front yard.

mulch on bike
Isaiah is providing labor (50 KSH per day, 1/4 the adult wage) and assisting by running loads of mulch from the field to our yard on his Suzuki. Silas is using Marc’s Yamaha. Together, they keep things moving pretty quickly.
mulch pile
Jubliee (age 4) is not much help, but she feels very big standing on top of the growing mulch pile.

The kids are having a blast tumbling on it, throwing it around, building things with it, and whatever else they can think of. We’re excited about what it will do for funding future missions, not to mention how it is currently profiting our local community by providing several days’ labor for quite a few people. We are thankful that the Lord has provided a free source for this necessary ingredient for successful farming, which could have potentially been very costly.

We trust you are rejoicing with us in seeing how God is moving in East Africa for Kingdom expansion! We appreciate your prayers, and if you wish to donate to this or other work, you can do so here: www.kingdomdriven.org/donate. To give specifically to this project, you can give a general donation and earmark it with a note upon checkout, such as “Farming God’s Way project.”

On Creativity and Supporting the Local Economy

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This morning, I was busy canning French beans (regular ‘ol green beans, which they don’t really like here but which we weird wazungu not only eat, but put in jars to save for later). One of my near neighbors, who now helps me with wash, was watching the process intently and ended up just shaking her head and laughing, saying, “You are funny!”

The big boys had gone to the market for me, and most of the other children were busy helping Marc sort our dry bean harvest in the front yard. That left Hannah and Jubilee in the living room, happily playing–but I wanted to give them something productive to do that would capture their attention for a while. I remembered when Rebekah was young, introducing her to sewing with lacing cards like this (photo courtesy of Amazon.com):Product DetailsOn occasion, I had also made my own sewing cards by cutting various shapes out of colored paper and laminating them, punching holes with a hole puncher, attaching yarn, and threading it on a plastic needle.

With a burst of creative energy that I admit I’ve rarely experienced since we moved to Kenya, I decided to make the girls some lacing cards. Colored paper is hard to come by here, never mind contact paper, and I wanted something durable. Fortunately, someone had recently thrown a small box in the garbage can, so I retrieved it and cut a couple of pieces of cardboard from it. Hannah fetched our hole puncher and I found some yarn that one of the boys had left on the kitchen shelf (as we so often forget that there’s “a place for everything, and everything in its place”). Having no nifty plastic needles, I decided to improvise by putting some duct tape around the end of the yarn. I made a heart and a flower, and the girls colored and sewed them while I worked on the beans. Here’s Jubilee’s heart:

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So passed a busy but relatively quiet morning. When Rebekah was done with her morning’s work, I asked her if she wanted to make some sewing cards for our neighborhood little girls. She said, “Oh, they do sewing like this already. They use small sticks for needles, long grass or straw for thread, and leaves to sew together.” And I thought I was creative! The simplicity of life here and how much these folks can do with so little never ceases to amaze and challenge me.

And totally unrelated to the morning’s activity, while I was looking for the yarn which I remember having last seen on the kitchen shelf, I also tried to count our mound of eggs:

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Each layer holds 30 eggs, so we have sixty, plus the additional eggs mounded on top…maybe 80? I am thankful, as for a long time after our arrival here, getting eggs was hard. We could usually only muster 3-4 eggs every few days, which was enough for miscellaneous baking, but never enough to have, say, scrambled eggs for breakfast. We got our own chickens not too long ago, but they’re certainly not American Leghorns that lay an egg every day. Out of our 7 (?) hens, we only get 1-3 eggs per day, and after they lay 5 or 6 eggs they want to go broody, so they’ll stop laying for quite a while, even if they’re not sitting on a nest. A good breakfast of eggs for us is a couple dozen at least, so left to our own devices that rarely (if ever) happens.

But lo and behold, it seems that word has spread far and wide in our small village that the wazungu like eggs. Almost every day (usually in the evening, as the Mamas are starting to prepare supper) we have someone come to the door with one precious egg, or maybe two…sometimes a half-dozen. Most always, they come with their bag of dry maize in hand as well. And as we give them their twelve shillings per egg, we watch them run next door to the mill, where they use 5 or 10 of those shillings to grind the maize to make their evening ugali. One older man comes frequently with larger numbers of eggs, though no one is quite sure where he manages to find them. Unfortunately,we’ve noticed that he doesn’t spend his egg earnings so wisely. Sometimes Marc shakes his head over spending so much money on eggs (a dozen eggs here is about the same price as its American equivalent, which tells you that they’re comparatively expensive), but we use them and are thankful for the protein, since we only eat meat once or twice a week. And we’re glad to be a small cog in the wheel of our local economy.

Field Day, Africa-Style

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I remember having a Field Day at the end of every school year–outdoor fun and competition all day long. Frankly, not my favorite day, because I’m far from athletic, but still–it was fun being outside with friends and not stuck behind a desk.

Yesterday was what I called our “Field Day–Africa-Style.” It started with us dragging our beans out to dry on a big tarp first thing in the morning. We’re waiting until the pods are completely dry so we can beat them with a stick and get all the beans out. We tried some yesterday and found that they were still too wet. Well, several of our smaller kids decided that they wanted to shell beans by hand–it was “fun!” Not to leave them to their own devices, I jumped in to help. Next thing I knew, a few of their regular playmates were called in to help. Here we are (and as you can see by the photo, our oldest, Isaiah, on the far left, wasn’t one of the ones who thought hand-shelling beans was “fun”):

shelling beans

Of course, after we had been working for about an hour, the children went off to play kati (the African version of Monkey in the Middle). The littles commandeered the swing set. Eventually I heard cries of “Ume kufa!” (“You’re dead!”), indicating that the game had morphed into their version of freeze-tag. By noon I figured no one would be going home, so I started making beans and rice for a crowd. Mama Manu, who helps me with laundry, finished up that task and offered to beat the beans. She said they don’t wait until all the beans are dry–they beat them every day to get out what’s ready, then leave the remaining pods and do them again the next day. I don’t say “no” when someone offers that kind of help, so she went to work. Of course, her daughters (who had been playing) got called in to help clean the chaff off the beans after they were beaten. (Wish I had gotten a picture of Enoch (age 2) “helping” Mama Manu with his big bamboo stick!)

Mama Manu, hard at work
Mama Manu, hard at work
Little girls "helping"
Little girls “helping”

After the beans were cleaned off and set out to dry, most of the kids went on a “treasure hunt” of sorts, gleaning the piles for coveted “zebra beans”–they have a pretty, black-and-white swirl but were very rare in our harvest.

How many zebras do you have?
How many zebras do you have?

Then lunch, for two adults and 19 children, followed up by dish-washing on the veranda.

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Then, more play! Jubilee and Enoch had to go in for a nap, but the rest of the little kids hit the swings once again and the big kids decided to set up for volleyball.

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Volleyball net, take one: FAIL. Can’t see through it…oops.
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That’s better…
Mama Manu went home shortly after lunch, but the kids stayed on for volleyball. Our neighbor’s boy, Eliya, ended up coming over and was boasting so much about his fame as a player that the game ended up being Eliya vs. Everyone Else. I never did find out who won, though. Eventually the little ones got tired of sitting in the sun, so Micah set up his watercolor paints on the shady veranda and the fun continued:

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I kicked all the kids out at about 4:00, after a long day of work and fun. And there you have it, our first “Field Day,” Africa-style!

 

 

“I’m Afraid he’s going to be…an Engineer”

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Don’t get the wrong idea…we don’t watch Dilbert…but when Marc was working with a bunch of engineers, this little clip made its rounds in the office so everyone could get a chuckle out of it:

Marc immediately thought of our son, Isaiah, who (except for the “utter social ineptitude”) has had “The Knack” since he was just a little kid. Back in Indiana, his favorite thing to do was post requests on Freecycle and see if he could score electronics or things with motors that he could fix. If they weren’t fixable, he’d take them apart and save anything he might use for a future project. He’s made some really neat stuff, including a motorized bicycle (using an old chainsaw motor), a homemade BB gun, and a small blender (though not suitable for much besides having fun). Not only that, he’s constantly fixing things around the house (yeah!!) in addition to being our on-call tech support guy. Here in Africa, he’s also become quite gifted at small engine repair and regularly fixes motorbikes.

The down-side of this great trait is that his corner of the boys’ bedroom usually look like this (and, yes, he made the desk himself):

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I’ve learned to close the door or just not look too often. Unless there’s a window of opportunity for room-cleaning, which doesn’t happen as often as I’d like.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago he had a neat idea to make a portable sprayer, using a broken well pump that Marc let him have and some assorted parts he’d collected (see the blue bin in the photo above). He was thinking it would be useful for the garden, but I was thinking pressure washing, so he made two different nozzles. Here’s the finished product:

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Yesterday we harvested our beans and used Isaiah’s new invention to spray the weeds remaining in the field so we can re-plant in a couple weeks or so.

Today I was going about my least-favorite-task-of-the-week, beating and hand-scrubbing our area rug from the living room. (I regret that I ever complained about vacuuming. What I wouldn’t give to be able to vacuum this thing–I’d do it EVERY DAY!!) The easiest method for this is to roll up the carpet, carry it outside, and sling it over the kids’ swing set. After beating it with a broom handle and ripping a few holes in it, now I use some flexible hose instead. Then, I fill a basin with some laundry soap and water and dip my brush in it. Bit by bit, I scrub the whole carpet, continually dipping the brush into the cleaner as I go. It’s a messy and time-consuming process, usually taking me 1-1/2 to 2 hours.

Isaiah asked if I could “pressure wash” the carpet using his new sprayer. My only reservation was that it would get so wet it might not dry before the afternoon rain. Then what? But I figured I’d give it a try. To my great surprise and joy, it worked wonderfully, though I did do a quick scrub with a brush on top of the spraying. Though it’s not perfectly dry yet, it seems it will be before the sun goes away. And, good news is, it cut my carpet-cleaning time in half!

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So if you have a budding engineer in your family, don’t despair. Let ’em take stuff apart, overlook the mess,  put up with the single-minded focus that makes projects preferable to breakfast, keep encouraging the successes and sympathize with the inevitable failures, and enjoy the fruit of “The Knack” when you can.

The Ugly Consequences of Sin

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Our twelve year-old has always loved animals. Every time I upload photos from the camera, I laugh at how many pictures like this unexpectedly show up:

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It means that Jonah has snuck the camera away to photograph one of his latest “finds.” I’ve been surprised by chameleons, snakes, box turtles, butterflies, snails, and more at various times over the past few years.

When we moved to Africa, one of hardest things for Jonah was giving up his beloved hamster. He’s wanted a pet and the family cats don’t count because they belong to everyone. He wanted something cute and cuddly all his own, and though chameleons abound here and they’re fun to play with, they’re not exactly what he was looking for.

Then, just the other day, our neighbor’s boy showed up with something unexpected: a wild rabbit he’d caught. Somehow he knew that the wazungu house was the right place to try for a sale. I summoned Jonah to the door.

He wanted 250 shillings (about $3). We’d paid only 100 shillings each for our domestic rabbits and I whispered to Jonah that he really should negotiate aggressively on the price. But he was already in love, and I think our neighbor knew it. Jonah tried to offer 200, and he was refused. Back to his room he went to get the money.

Since it was evening, we made sleeping arrangements for the new bunny, quickly named “Sungura” (which means rabbit in Swahili, since Jonah didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl). By morning, it hadn’t eaten any of the greens that Jo had collected for him, so Jonah fed him baby formula from a syringe every couple of hours and the rabbit never left his side–even while he was doing his school work. Jonah was tickled that the rabbit continually licked his face and neck, and when Jonah would move away from the rabbit on the couch, it would quickly move over and snuggle to his side. Finally, the perfect pet! Just what he’d always wanted.

That evening, Jonah typed out an email to family in America and of course, told them about Sungura. We had just finished supper, so I told the kids they could go outside to play. I glanced over the email, clicked “send,” and looked at my inbox. Suddenly I heard loud voices outside and so I got up to see what was the matter. Before I got to the door, Jonah was inside. He had composed himself while in the yard, but as soon as he made it to the privacy of the living room, he erupted in sobs.

Through his tears, the story came out: he’d brought Sungura out to play in the great outdoors. Of course, all his siblings were excited to see the rabbit run around. One (who shall remain nameless), started chasing the tiny rabbit. Jonah yelled, “Stop! Don’t do that!,” knowing that his sibling might inadvertently step on the creature. His sibling didn’t listen, despite several warnings. Suddenly, a foot met the unfortunate rabbit’s neck. Blood immediately spurted from its nose. I ran outside to see what could be done, but it was, of course, too late and too serious.

The sibling was disciplined, and we all cried. It was an “accident”…but it wasn’t. This particular child has struggled to respect the word of older brothers and sisters lately. When corrected by them, this child has been obstinate about NOT listening and NOT following their direction. The rebellion has been obvious to everyone. It has been corrected by parents and siblings alike, and we’ve also tried to teach through the Word of God the importance of listening to wise counsel, obeying older siblings in the absence of Mom and Dad, and so on. To no avail.

If it had been an unfortunate accident, there would have been no punishment. But it wasn’t. It was sin. And this time, there were consequences. Unfortunately, it was not to the child only but to a beloved brother.

It was  a quiet and sad evening in the Carrier home. But we had some good conversation as a result. The brother forgave and his sibling repented. I know it is for God’s glory and our good.

But the boy still misses his bunny. He’s still a little sad. And things are still a little quiet as we all process the sadness of this circumstance and meditate upon the ugly consequences of sin.

 

“Idleness Teaches Much Evil”

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I’ve often heard the expression, “Idle hands are the devil’s work,” and wondered where it came from. I hear it quoted like it’s Scripture (similar to phrases like, “the Lord helps those who help themselves“), but I never knew the origin. So I was intrigued when we started reading the Wisdom of Sirach (from the Septuagint) and we stumbled upon this: “Put him to work that he may  not be idle, for idleness teaches much evil” (Wisdom of Sirach 33:28-29). I’ve often seen this to be true, and the Scripture I usually remind our children of when they start having “too much fun” is Proverbs 29:15 (ESV): “a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.” That’s usually followed by a request for help with some chore or another.

Case in point: our almost 14 year-old son. He’s had some difficult moments…okay, maybe days…in the transition to Africa. He has a sharp mind and has always needed a project to work on. When he’s left idle, he complains of boredom and here, where good “project materials” are in short supply, that boredom has often turned into a general bad attitude. I understand it and have made many suggestions for profitable things he can do, but mostly I’ve just prayed that God would bring a solution.

He’s taken his own dirtbike completely apart and done quite a few repairs. Other times, it’s been another motor bike in need of repair–along with a driver that lacked the money to pay for parts or service. Most recently, it’s this:

Marc decided that the time has come to get our family a vehicle. We didn’t think we would; we’ve made do quite well with public transport and Marc’s motorbike. However, since his accident he’s needed to hire a car more than once, and when he takes a large team (4-6 people, who lead the Luke 10-style eveangelism teams) out for KDM missions, transport gets expensive. So it seemed that the time had come to get a car–now one of two in our little village!

However, it’s in need of some TLC and, as we’ve discovered, mechanics here leave much to be desired. Marc grew up working on cars with his Dad and has taught Isaiah quite a bit but they’ve never been able to get their hands dirty together very much–until now. They spent Monday and Tuesday at work over the car, and yesterday when Marc left for a training meeting, Isaiah spent the day solo doing some more repairs. He was in his element, and pretty much only took a 20-minute break for lunch. Oh, well, he wasn’t exactly solo–he had a frequent little helper:

Grabbing tools
"Helping"

As parents we are often limited and can’t always give our children what they need. But God can. My son has a heart for God, but he also has an analytical mind and a need to do something productive. Though our opportunities here have been limited, we’ve grown in grace as we’ve weathered all the bumps in the road and the Lord has been faithful. I’m thankful.

My Dog Eats Better Than Some of my Neighbors

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It’s bad enough that we eat better than almost everyone we know. I feel a nagging sense of guilt about that often enough, but the other day, I had a thought that caused me even more consternation: my dog eats better than most of my neighbors.

We now eat meat two or three times per week (up from once a week, since Marc needs the complete proteins in his diet for healing his knee injury). The other day I decided to splurge and get 2 kg of beef and 1 kg of pork to make a meatloaf–a rare treat, but one everybody loves. Unusually, after I eliminated all the fat and bones from the beef, there seemed to be a lot more than usual. I decided that there were a few less bones than usual, which left me with more meat than I needed. I was sure we would eat the meat loaf, anyway, since we rarely leave much left over. I surveyed the bowl full of scraps and said to my little helper, Hannah, “Simba’s going to eat good tonight!” (Dog food is more expensive here than feeding animals people food, so Simba just eats what we eat.)

I looked out the window at the family next door, working hard weeding their shamba and harvesting their sweet potatoes. I wondered what they would eat tonight. And I could guess: ugali, probably with greens, and maybe some beans. We were having meatloaf. And my dog was eating  beef and pork “scrap” that would have been an amazing blessing to these people.

Shame. That’s what I felt.

Not to alleviate the feeling or to pay penance for it, but because I genuinely wanted to bless these hardworking and worthy folks, I sent some beef over to my immediate neighbors and a family a few houses down from us. I was happy to do it…and wished that I thought of doing it more often.

The very next day, the young mother from several doors down stopped by in the midst of her morning’s work. Her hair was disheveled, her clothes worn, and she nearly everywhere had dried mud clinging to her from digging her jembe into the dirt. She nonetheless beamed (and I always love to see her smile, anyway–it’s lovely!) and greeted me eagerly, saying, “Thank you so much for your gift yesterday. I was very excited when Jonah brought it, because we haven’t had meat in a month and I praised God for sending it!”

I want to remember this, so I will continue to send on little blessings more often than I do. I always “give to those who ask,” (see this post, for example), but I admit that I think less often about giving when the need is not obvious. It’s easy to get caught up in our routines, absorbed in what we’re doing, and forget about what it might be like behind other people’s closed doors. But let’s not.

“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. ”
(Matthew 5:16)

Hosting our first African Wedding!

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Yesterday was a big day for the Carriers as we hosted our first African wedding. Charles, the groom, was a widower whose wife died several years ago, and he recently lost the youngest of his three children to TB. Due to his wife’s death (and his need to work outside the home) and the prolonged medical care needed for his little one, his older two children were being cared for at a local children’s home. Ester is a widow of just a few months, with nine children (the youngest born just weeks before her husband passed away). Both Charles and Ester (and Ester’s husband) had been baptized by Marc earlier last year, and they are part of a solid local house church where they have been discipled and have been growing in their faith. Charles had been Ester’s husband’s best friend for several years, so they have known each other well. Both saw the possibility of their marriage as a way to honor God and bring their children together in a strong family unit, also enabling Charles to bring his own children home. It was an honor for us to assist them in making their commitment official.

Set up and ready for the big event!

We spent the day Monday cleaning the house and the kids greatly blessed me by going the extra mile. I wanted to make sure our plastic stacking chairs were all wiped down, and the chalkboard wall and dry erase board needed to be cleaned off as well. I figured after they finished the bigger jobs like floor-washing, I’d get someone to take care of the little things. But lo and behold, while I cleaned carpets and washed the kitchen floor, the kids  jumped right in to get them done on their own. Not only that, Jonah noticed many of the spots on the walls (which have not escaped my attention, but time does not usually allow me to address them), and he got a wash basin and cleaner and went to work to make the walls sparkle!

After all the work was done, the kids decided to bless Charles and Ester’s kids with some gifts–treats like cookies, lollipops, and gum from a local shop, AND some of the toys from their small box of toys in the living room. Jonah has two Beanie Baby bears that they all like to play games with, and it seems that all their games involve both bears for maximum fun. He thought aloud that maybe they should put one of the bears in the bag for Charles and Ester’s children. One of our littles said, “But then we won’t have two!” And Jonah replied, “Well, right now they don’t have any, and we’ll still have one!” So into the bag it went. Not every moment here is a “proud mama” moment, but once in a while it is nice to see that God is working something in our children’s hearts. I was blessed to see their excitement in giving and to experience the unusual camaraderie over housecleaning.

Also on Monday, I made a wedding cake (my first attempt), and I hoped it wouldn’t be too “un-professional” for the big day. Isaiah did the writing with some colored frosting and a syringe, having had some experience with that when the boys made me a special birthday cake back in December. Marc and Isaiah went shopping for some of the food, including a HUGE amount of beef (8 kg, the largest amount of beef I’ve ever prepared). When they got home, Marc diced tomatoes, onions, and peppers and tried to add that and the diced beef to my 8-qt. pressure cooker–the only way to prepare really good beef here! But alas, my pressure cooker was much too small. Rather than do it in two batches, we decided to use my large pressure cooker/canner, which I’ve only used as a canner and never as a pressure cooker. It worked perfectly and the beef turned out delicious!

On Monday night, the officiating Bishop unexpectedly wanted to change the time of the wedding from 10 AM to 1 PM. This posed a scheduling problem, as we would have to notify everyone, and some were already traveling from some distance away. Not only that, but being on “African time,” we were pretty sure that 1 PM would probably end up being dinner time and we weren’t really sure how to “entertain” everyone until the Bishop made his entrance. Even so, we tried to work everything out and hoped for the best.

We wanted very little to do with directing the actual wedding, as we weren’t sure what the local customs would dictate. It was surprisingly similar to an American Christian wedding, except that the couple didn’t hold hands or enjoy a celebratory kiss after the vows were official. When the vows were taken, they actually held up their right hand rather than holding hands with each other, as is our custom. The cutting of the cake was part of the ceremony, and the bride and groom served bite-sized pieces to all the guests. I was called upon to assist with the cutting of the cake, and I wasn’t exactly sure what to do. The instructions I received weren’t very clear (and the tradition not familiar) so I fumbled a bit and was a little embarrassed, but everyone seemed gracious enough about my misunderstandings.Unusually, filling out of the official paperwork was done during the ceremony as well.

Here’s the happy couple when it was all over, including a parting shot with some of their children:

  

We praise God for allowing us to be a part of this blessed event. Kingdom Driven Ministries was not only able to fund the wedding through donations, but Charles and Ester should also have assistance in purchasing some property. This will go a long way in helping them to provide for their new, large family. Please join us in praying for Charles and Ester as they begin their new life together!