Some more

10-25

            It was Kamotho’s birthday a couple days ago. So I got him a cake at the bakery a few blocks away. I brought it to the office. He was super thankful and said, “This is the first party I have had.” I was happy to do that for him. Also made me a little sad that nobody has ever done that for him. Maybe it’s a cultural thing that many don’t have lil parties. He brought the remaining cake home to his family.

            There was a time (and I still fight this urge) when I would always think, “Am I making a difference in this person’s life/ making a difference for God/ making a difference in the world?” That sort of thinking, at least for me, is like wearing chains. It binds you to a standard that is not for you set. (Hold on! Fatty spider on the wall. Too big to let that thing live in my bedroom. Dang! It escaped under the door. Hopefully it won’t attack me and suck my blood.) And it limits you. And it makes you focus on something that is not supposed to be focused on. In my somewhat humble opinion, which I believe to be true, we are supposed to focus on God. By focusing on God and pursuing him, he puts things in our path that will be handled by us properly (making a difference) because God is working through us. And we make a difference in that person’s life and our life is changed and our relationship with God becomes stronger. When the goal is making a difference in someone’s life and we fail, which is not uncommon, we fail, and our life revolves around our success or failure. But if our focus is on God, and we inevitably believe that it is God who ultimately makes the difference, then the pressure is taken off of us and we can then pursue people with a heart that is truly free. None of that probably makes sense. But I don’t really care at this point. Just getting stuff out of my head. What made me think of this was that I was reading what somebody wrote to me. They said they saw how I interact with other people (I’m being vague) and how they look up to me. When I see this I kinda laugh because I don’t feel like I do anything to try to get people to look at me. I just try to pursue God. God is constantly changing me to be who he wants me to be. Looking back at my college and before days and even after, I always felt like nobody (as in most, other than my mom. Love my mom) saw me. It was like I was working in the shadows.

            As an introvert by nature I don’t crave the spotlight. It’s ironic cuz I have been placed in a leadership role that is in front more often than my skin wants to be. It’s a funny thing how God works. I long to see what he sees.

             I ate my first apple in over a month, and by golly, that was the best apple I’ve had in a long time.

10-26

            On top of the little mountain behind the school is a decently large cornfield. We went up this morning and harvested. For someone who doesn’t grow his own food, it’s pretty cool to shuck the corn and be amazed at how food grows out of the ground. You mean it doesn’t grow out of grocery stores? No mam it does not. How reliable on God are we? More so than I could even imagine. I can’t make that stuff grow. It is purely by God’s grace. Walking through the field doing this with the dozens of students, getting stickers all over my clothes and socks from the weeds, I realized that this was good. After getting through it all and piling up the maize in piles throughout, we got big bags and filled them up to be carried down the mountain. And it gets pretty steep. So I loaded my bag almost completely full and heaved that thing over my shoulder. That sandbag training I did with Kevin paid off. I might have been a bit ambitious on the first load. Probably 70 lbs worth, and it was awkward. I adjusted it so that it was as balanced as possible on my neck and both shoulders and headed down. I realized as I was going that if I tripped and fell forward, that would be the end of me. From top to bottom is maybe a little less than a ¼ mile, if I had to guess. Dump the bag where we have church and head back up. I made a total of three trips. Going up was the hard part. The bags were probably about 6o lbs each. The students didn’t complain at all, at least not in English.

10-28

            Not much to write home about. When it rains it pours… literally. Coming home from town today it began pouring. The short walk was quite slippery. Mud and a lot of it. My pants and shoes that the guys happily washed are now not so clean. Sorry fellas. It seems like whenever the front little walkway in front of this house gets washed, it rains the same day resulting in, you guessed it, mud. I finished my 920 page book yesterday. I think that’s the most I have ever read in 12 days. Three books down. Got to find something else or I’m gonna be writing on this thing a lot which will lead to jabbering on.

            There appears to be some changes on the horizon. Pretty excited about them. I don’t get terribly, heart excited very often. But this time I kinda am. We will see if they come to fruition. One of the things is that I am going to be teaching a two week class on social justice in January to some students at Fremont Christian HS. Have I ever done this before? No. Do I know what I’m doing? Not really. But it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while. Kirstin told the lady organizing it about me and said that I was all about it. So if it doesn’t go well, I will blame her. If it’s great, I will take all the credit J. I’ve realized that when things have been super great in my life, it has not been because of my greatness… at all. This is very humbling, and it’s important that I remind myself of this often or I’ll get a big head. And there is nothing worse than a big, bald head.

            Dinner time. What’s for dinner? Funny you should ask. I’ll give you two guesses. Umm, guthiri! Nice guess but no. Ugali and beans!!! Ding ding ding! You got it. Tell him what he’s won. More ugali and beans!!!!

10-29

            Washing machines are amazing. Washed my clothes by myself this morning. And it did not take a short minute. The advent of the machine that washes clothes saves an amazing amount of time. I’m certain that if every Kenyan had a washing machine, Kenya could have one of the most powerful nations in the world. They would have so much more time to solve problems like poverty, cancer, and understand that using butter in their baking delights is so much better than margarine.

            I just attempted making spaghetti. It was horrendous. There’s no sauce in the stores, but they had tomato paste. I watered it down, added some salt, and was going to add some beans that they were serving with the ugali tonight. But they had cabbage instead. First time not having beans. Haha. So I threw some of the cabbage in. No bueno.  I would have been better off eating the ugali and cabbage.