Taking It To The Shags

The past week and a half, Rebecca and I've been "going to the shags," or if you're not familiar with Kenyan slang, "visiting the villages." Last update we mentioned a trip to Massai land with our friends Karis and Abby. This was an absolutely incredible experience for us to visit one of the most traditional tribes in the country, and also to seem some of the great kingdom work God is doing through our friends and their mission organization, World Harvest Mission.

Sunday we arrived at a little church in the middle of several traditional Massai villages that marked the real destination for our trip. George has been doing an evangelism/discipleship technique known as "storying the gospel" for quite a while, using stories and pictures from the Bible told in chronological order to try to help preliterate, animistic societies to really grasp the "big picture" of the gospel. George has helped this little Massai church tremendously, and many of the believers there first came to know Jesus after listening to George tell stories under a tree behind their village.

On this particular day we got the chance to help out with the storying, and for a full day we told 42 stories covering the Bible from Genesis to the Ascension. In the in between times, we sang songs, danced, and worshiped together. It was really beautiful to see how God is moving among one of the most traditional groups of people remaining in Kenya. Furthermore, this really resonates with Rebecca and I, who have come to believe that the "systematic theology" approach that we often bring to the Bible can actually manipulate the text, taking away the beauty and full truth of God's big story. The Bible is not predominately a set of theological statements or even discussions, but stories, and when we ignore this, we take God's big world-saving, kingdom making, metanarrative, and turn it into a "manual" on how to gain an individual salvation. We're missing half the point. Storying the gospel helps missionaries bring the full gospel to another culture, without baptizing them into our own sinful misconceptions of God's word.

Afterwards, we spent the night in one of the Massai villages. When many of you heard we were going to Kenya, you probably envisioned us sleeping in a little mud hut in the middle of nowhere. That's a far cry from our Nairobi apartment, but that's what we got out in Massai (check out the picture). The Massai are primarly goat and cattle herdsman, and the goats actually sleep in the house with you. Drinking chai, visiting with these people who still live in a world of polygamy, female circumcision, semi-nomadic lifestyles, mudhuts, and the rest . . . really a potentially once in a lifetime experience. And then, sitting in dark, hot, smoky huts, to listen to members of that community tell their stories of how they met Jesus . . . surely this is the kingdom coming!

After this trip, Bec and I had planned to head out to Ngare Ndari to visit the group where we are researching butternuts to spend the weekend with Jedidah and John, two of the farmers there. God had other plans, however. Thursday morning we got the call that Rebecca's grandfather, Jim Hart, was likely going to pass away in the next day from his battle with lung cancer. Bec got on a plane to Atlanta that same day, and made it in time for the funeral this week. She has truly felt God's blessing on her time with her family so far. We obviously appreciate your prayers for her and her family during this time.

So that left me to head out to do the work with our Meru group on Friday, and then to head to Ngare Ndari for Saturday and Sunday night. While not nearly as rural as Massai land, this was another great opportunity to stay in a village with a family, to get to know the groups better, and to build relationships with new friends with whom we are now working. Jedidah and John (see picture) were incredible hosts, and I really loved practicing my KiSwahili with everybody. Sunday, as is the custom, they asked me to preach, and so I preached on Luke 4, where Jesus quotes from Isaiah and declares his kingdom purpose and mission. Again, we feel so blessed to have been welcomed into communities and invited into homes, to share hospitality with brothers and sisters here. This alone is a sign to me that God is working through our time here in Planting Faith.

This week I'm meeting with the entire farmers group from Mang'u, and continuing to work on a pilot project proposal for our local partner here. As we explained previously, we want to test some of our ideas and lessons learned from our current work, and that's requiring a good bit of research, discussion, and study on my part. And then the week after we're heading to the Coast for the Easter holidays (Easter and Christmas are the big holidays here).

Thanks for your prayers and kind notes. Please keep praying for us as we seek to learn the language, build relationships, and generally immerse ourselves in this culture. Pray for our farmers as they wait for rains (if the rains fail, it could be a real disaster here), and that we would be wise in designing and implementing programs for them. Pray for Rebecca and I in our relationship together, and stay in touch! We our now anticipating Easter: Christ is risen, and coming again! Behold, the kingdom is coming.

Peace,

Michael

When A Kenyan Says Run . . .

First and foremost, thanks to everyone who's keeping track of us, and all of those who wrote such encouraging notes on our last blog. We really love the comments, and the tracker tells me we've had over 400 visitors since last month, which is so cool.

As some of you may know, I officially got older last week. I am now a 23 year old! Which is actually very exciting because, as Rachael, my math-loving sister reminded me, I am now "prime." Michael took me out for a nice dinner on my actual birthday, and then some friends said they wanted to take me out again the next night. Much to my dismay, the little outing with friends turned out to be a magnificent surprise party that my wonderful husband organized! Karis, Abby and Lydia did a great job of distracting me all day (I went with them to an aerobics class they teach in a high school in the Kibera slum) while Michael shopped, cooked, and got everything ready at the Tiptons' house. I was just thinking I was going to run inside to grab something and all of a sudden... "SURPRISE!" and I saw (quite literally) every single person I know in Kenya standing in the Tiptons' living room and telling me happy birthday. It was so great. And yes, I was SO surprised even though Michael assured me that it had been "so obvious" and that he "couldn't believe I didn't know." So either Michael is great at surprises or I am really oblivious, not sure which. :) The salsa, guacamole and hamburgers were overflowing, and it was just a great evening being with friends.

Okay, now Michael is taking it from here. . .

The past two weeks have been absolutely incredible. We finis

hed the forming all four of our new groups (200 farmers!), and delivered the sunflower seeds and fertilizers to the groups. It was so much fun to see all the farmers picking up the seeds, loading up their bicycles, and heading back to their homes to plant, so obviously excited about the project. These meetings also gave us an opportunity to make sure that the monthly savings

 portion of the project started out well, and also to plan our next meetings to begin doing the training.

And speaking of training, Rebecca, David Gitari, and I did our first training together

 with one of the sunflower groups in Meru. In addition to the trai

ning on small business management, we've decided to do some preliminary training on group formation and management from some Chalmers Center material (the Cha

lmers Center develops and distributes information and training on church-based economic development around the world. They're based out of Covenant College). So last week, Rebecca and I did a participatory activity on "tabia njema," or "good habits." The purpose of the activities was to help the

 group think through the importance of forming and following good group policies even during difficult times in order to succeed in the project. This involved us facilitating the group in group discussions, scenario skits showing what would happen if the group didn't follow good habits, and Biblical discussion on how God calls us to be disciplined in our lives. It was really fun, and both of us got very excited about continuing these kind of activities with the other groups.

Meanwhile, some of you will remember that I spent close to a week visiting farmers who were not delivering fruit (either because of crop failure or because they are selling their products outside the group to avoid repaying their loans) with the leadership of our passion fruit group to try to get everybody back on track and to assess our situation. Manua, Chege, and Monene, the three primary leaders in that group, are the dream team of group projects, and I had a great time just being with them. But by the end of the week, all of us were a bit discouraged, and I think we were all wondering if any of our meetings had done any good.

But this week, I met with them again, and the last two weeks the farmers have doubled their yields in passion fruit, with many of the farmers we met with making good deliveries these last two weeks! Our work is literally and figuratively yielding fruit. How about them . . . passion fruits. The guys seemed really encouraged, and Rebecca and I definitely feel like we're really building rapport with the leadership and generating new energy from within the group.

Then this week, Rebecca and I played host to a team of predominately retired Brits who have supported one of our aloe vera groups, and who wanted to come and help the farmers actually do the planting. They came through an organization called Hand In Hand, which partners with Christian development work internationally. Check them out online. 

Rebecca and I were totally amazed by how chipper and excited these guys were! In this particular project, 30 farmers who have little or no land of their own are planting together on a demonstration farm run by our local partners, Christian Community Services (CCS). So Monday, 16 Brits, 30 Kenyans, and Rebecca and I actually rolled up our "trousers," threw the aloe vera stems in the "boot" of the truck, and planted 2,400 aloe vera plants. It was "brilliant," and gave both of us the opportunity to really get to know these farmers well. Because I had to play errand boy for much of the day, Rebecca in particular made a huge splash with the farmers, who renamed her "Wawera," which means "working woman" in their native language. It was a truly beautiful day.

The next day we went back out to individual farms to help plant more aloe vera. The Brits were totally overwhelmed by the generosity and care of the farmers, but none of us knew on Tuesday just how much we'd need it.

Wednesday we went back out to finish the individual farms, and ended up having one of the most terrifying days of my entire life. Fifteen minutes after starting in one of the farms, I was standing a little ways away talking with  one of the CCS project managers, when all of sudden I saw everyone running towards me and shouting, "Bees! run!" Never having had much of a fear of bees, I naively paid little attention. "Typical," as my last entry pointed out. The next twenty minutes were filled with sheer, hellish chaos, as a swarm of thousands of angry bees literally attacked us. Most of the Brits made it to the busses with a few stings, but three of them were stung so many times that they became disoriented, and couldn't escape. I, who hadn't been stung initially, ran up to one man who had a blanket over his head, and was screaming for help in the midst of a cloud of bees, and dumped some dirty water on his head, helping him momentarily, but attracting the bees to myself. After escaping to a hut, I looked back, and realized that Roberta, the 72 year old matriarchal British team member, was still being viciously attacked. This was possibly the worst moment of my whole life. A Kenyan woman helped me fill up a bucket of water, and I ran out, dumped water all over Roberta, and told her to follow me, but then the bees swarmed me, and I was running, and she, I found out later, was too confused and shocked to even know which direction to go. The bees chased me for over a hundred yards, and then I dove on the ground, rolling around in the dirt, trying to get them off. But these bees were not going away. Finally the vans came back, and I managed to get in. 

I'm still putting together the pieces of what happened: of how the CCS staff personally made sure that Rebecca got away before returning to help the others, of how we shouted into the cell phones flying back towards the road trying to find which way to the hospital, of how the Kenyans literally risked their lives to go back and forth in and out of the chaos to rescue members of the British team, and how finally one of them managed to get Roberta into the van, semi-conscious. Rebecca and I worked together to get those worst effected into the emergency room, and we realized that at least five of us (including me) had been stung 50 times or more, and that Roberta had been stung over 500 times.

That was two days ago. We're all ok now, and since that time I've laughed and prayed together with Roberta, thanking God for her and all of our safety. It is truly miraculous that nobody was allergic. If they had been, they would have died. And it's truly miraculous that Roberta hung on after having enough bee stings to be life threatening whether she was allergic or not. God protected us. It was an awful experience, the scariest of my life, and as the guy responsible for the team, it was incredibly trying. But it was also a powerful reminder for those of us who came across the globe to try to help the poor in Kenya that we can't do it. We can't save "these people." Whether it's wondering whether the community will develop economically, or whether we'll survive the bee swarm, it is Jesus Christ alone who does the work by the mighty power of His Spirit. We're not brave enough, we're not strong enough, and we're too darned human in any case. And in this case, he didn't even do the saving through the white guys. Three of us tried to help Roberta, and ended up much worse off and her no better, but it was the Kenyans who, at great personal risk, were able to make sure that she got out ok. The British team is still pretty shaken up, and the temptation for all of us is to freak out and go into shell shock was real. But Jesus Christ protected us on Wednesday, and the Rhodeses sure as heck aren't going to let bees make us live in fear. No, we've had a powerful reminder of our own humanness and of the powerful, incredible, protecting love of God that was on us all. And for that we're grateful.

And we've got a ton of great things to look forward to. As I write this, we're preparing to head down south to the Masai Mara with our good friends, Karis and Abby. We're going with their mission team to witness and be a part of an evangelistic initiative known as "storying the gospel," where the entire Biblical story is presented in the epic genre which many tribal people groups use in the telling of their own religious stories. As an English/Com Dev major, this has always been immensely attractive, and I am totally stoked about seeing it in action tomorrow. Oh yeah, and it's the best place to see animals. The week after that, we're heading back to Ngare Ndari, and have actually been invited to stay in the home of one of our farmers. This is so exciting! Jedida is the woman's name, and we just feel that this invitation is a real sign of our building rapport with her group. They asked me to preach and Rebecca to sing on Sunday, so it should make for an interesting Sabbath either way.

Work is good. We are good. The Kenyan people are beautiful heros from here on in our eyes. And Jesus Christ is good. He is bringing His kingdom. Pray that we would continue to see that, and participate in it. Pray that we would continue finding new ways to do His good work. Pray for the British team who is still struggling emotionally. And pray that Jesus would be drawing us all to Himself in new and radical ways that challenge us to wade out deeper into the kingdom that He is bringing, that He has in fact brought in His life and resurrection, and that we will see come in full when He raises us up to new life in Him at the beginning of all things.

Peace,

Michael and Rebecca

P.S.- Keep commenting and emailing! We miss all ya'll, as we say in the South, and love hearing from you!

Whistle While You Work

So much for the "slower pace of life;" the last two weeks have been absolutely crazy. We've been working on a number of different projects, and we want to catch ya'll up to speed on the work and where we're headed.

The biggest agenda lately has been meeting with and getting four new farmer's groups ready to begin planting before the fast approaching "long rains." Each of these groups has about 50 farmers, with 2 groups preparing to grow and process sunflowers to make sunflower oil, and 2 groups growing aloe vera. This endeavor has had Rebecca and I running all over the place, drinking boat loads of chai, and meeting an incredible number of great people. With all these groups we're partnering with the Anglican church through an organization called Christian Community Services (CCS). David Gitari (the guy standing in the picture) the CCS staff working with our groups, has become a quick friend and partner in the work.

The biggest issue is that before the groups can receive the in-kind loan (seeds and fertilizer necessary to begin planting) they need to understand and agree in writing to the conditions of the project. Our primary purpose is to form groups that will produce and market a crop, repay their loans to a group owned account, and then afterwards manage a revolving loan fund within the group that would allow the community to have access to agricultural loans for a long time into the future. Considering that most of you are probably still a bit confused by that last sentence, you can imagine how difficult it is to explain the concept to a group of 50 subsistence farmers, a few of whom are completely illiterate.

So we begin by asking questions. We ask them about what their groups have been doing. We ask them to tell us about projects they've done before. We ask them why they want to participate in this group, and about what they're hoping to gain. It's absolutely amazing what the groups have already accomplished, and one of my goals is to remind them from the outset that they've already proved they can do great things. On the other hand, they always say the same thing about what they want: more secure food sources, school fees, better homes, better lives.

We then explain that the issues that they face are long term issues, and that by managing a revolving loan fund, they can have access to capital for different projects to help them address those issues for the long haul. And so we then demonstrate, using two volunteers, how the group will receive a loan in-kind (represented by some leaves or what have you), will grow and sell their crops collectively for money (I actually give the first volunteer some cash in exchange for her leaves), and then repay the loan to a group owned account (represented by the second volunteer who takes the money). Then, and here's the best part, we ask them what the second guy, who represents their loan fund, will do with the money once all the loans are repaid. And if we've done it right, drumroll please, somebody yells out, "they'll give us new loans!"

So then we walk through a contract that outlines all the terms that will guide the groups in the manner just described. It's been fun, because after getting here, Horace and I brainstormed a number of changes to try to strengthen the program which I'm now explaining to the groups in the contract. And once they've signed the contracts and paid the registration fee, they're all set to receive their inputs . . . which you'll probably hear about in our next post.

The other thing we've been doing is visiting with the other groups who are already in full swing. Planting Faith wants us to mentor these groups from a microfinance perspective, to help them manage the thing that we're creating with the new groups. So in Ngare Ndari where the crop failed, we visited and worked out a refinancing plan complete with a new savings component, the group doing market research, and a small test plot to see if we can grow butternut squash. In Mang'u, where the group is now selling passion fruit, we met with the leadership, identified all of those who weren't selling with the group, and then went around to their farms to find out what their problems were and to get them on a repayment/crop recovery plan. In Kibete, where the group is just about to harvest a beautiful crop of bird of paradise flowers, we're hanging out, learning how to harvest and package flowers for export, and beginning to talk with them about the future of their group. The picture shows the group meeting with an exporter, who is demonstrating how to harvest and package the bird of paradise flowers.

Soon we'll begin doing the Christian business trainings with the new groups, and before you know it, hopefully planning a new group for next year with even more changes and adaptions based on what we're learning. But that's for another day.

Otherwise, we're having a blast. We've been to a wedding, found a church, practiced loads of kiswahili, made some wazungu (white) friends, and lots of Kenyan friends, and are so excited to continue to see what God's doing. So stay in touch, ok? We'd love to hear from all of you really soon.

Peace,
Michael

Typical

"Typical," I found myself saying quite a bit recently. As in I would hear "A cop was trying to get a bribe off me today," or "my group couldn't open a bank account because their documents didn't have official stamps," or "today I waited for 3 hrs for a meeting with people who never showed up," and my response would always be a quick "typical." A small word that says quite a bit, a word filled with assumed knowingness on the part of the speaker, and a bit of disdain on top. A word that allows the speaker to say, "that's not the way it should be," with no commitment to addressing the problem or acknowledgement that more might be going on.

You know what's really typical? My distinctly American arrogance. My tendency to judge before understanding, to pretend understanding before wrestling with the issues, to make, believe, and act on barely hidden "generalities" that are really nothing short of racist bigotries is incredibly typical. How easy it is to pretend to have the answers, or even to pretend to understand the problems? Or worse, to pretend to understand the individual image bearers of God who we rush by and bump into in daily life?

Everything is so different here. And the easiest way to deal with diversity is through simplistic judgment. But somewhere in between my thoughts of how "typical" the complicated bureaucracy or time management around here is, Jesus broke through in the lives of miraculously beautiful individual Kenyan men and women. John, a young man lame in both legs who gets around by peddling a bicycle/chair with his hands, but who speaks perfect English and is a leader among the Kirinyaga farmer's group. Hezekiah, Monene, and Chege, the leaders of the Mang'u farmers group who visted over 25 farmers in their group to encourage them to get back on track with the group and to keep working hard. The thousands of young children who've grown up with more adversity than the average American experiences in their whole lives, yet who still smile and laugh and play like they haven't a care in the world, and the literally millions of Kenyans who keep returning to their farms year after year, to sow and to reap, to stake their livelihoods on a career dependent on fickle weather patterns, and who have so very little, but who never fail to stop and offer two rich, arrogant, Americans a cup of chai and whatever food is available.

What's typical is how quickly we forget that we don't know everything, and even more importantly, that God is telling us something beautiful in every single person we so often rush past throughout every busy day of our lives. And sometimes it takes going to Kenya to remember.