Pure Christianity

Picture of the Week

Butterfly dressing up like a mom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Christmas tree.

 

 

 

 

 

Playing dress up.

Trust?

2009, what a year you have been, and you’re not even finished yet.

I have mixed feelings when it comes to reflecting back on the year. I approach self examination apprehensively. It is no easy task for me.

Why? Mostly because I screw up so often. I get it wrong on such a regular basis, that it is easy to miss where I get it right. Depressing.

Also I’m human, and tend to judge those who fail harshly. Know what I mean? When someone burns me, it is harder for me to trust them the next time around. I just don’t believe them, or feel that past failure points to future failure.

I judge myself the same, and the pattern of my life seems to indicate there is some truth in that judgment. I do tend to keep on missing the mark.

I’m trying to stop this. You see our Father(the one in Heaven) does not do the same.

Even though I have failed God on so many occasions, that I can’t even recall all of them, He does not hold it against me. He still trusts me to do what He has asked me to do. He still believes in me. (I believe, Lord help my unbelief.)

He has not removed me from “ministry” till I can get my act together. No. He just keeps on making it possible for me to be here in Kenya.

I hope that as we reflect back on the year, that you will be able to forgive me, and trust me. I will try and do the same for you. Don’t worry, I’ll leave out most of my failures, and leave you reflecting on the successes. Plus I tend to believe that our successful care of orphaned/abandoned children balances out all my failures anyway.

Cold

I’m still fighting this cold. Which means I have to refrain from writing, as I tend to get irritable and offensive when I have a head cold. (I’ve already threatened a few people with damnation in hell, and seem to have hurt Kate’s feelings more than once in the past week.)

Nothing serious, I just don’t handle stuffiness, runniness, coughing, and sore throats well. Thankfully I rarely get colds. NyQuil and Tylenol cold are my friends right now.

Otherwise life goes on. Today we plan out the menu for the week, and I will go buy all the groceries etc. that we need. (If you have any good recipes that can serve 20 people, and don’t require any packaged mixes, please send them our way.)

I’ll also be stopping by the post office, as I am waiting for my new Star Trek DVD to arrive. I’m trying to be patient.

I'm back.

Kate here. I haven't written an article in quite some time. Johnny has done well keeping up with things on this side (ie. the virtual side of things).

And I've been 'keeping it real' by giving birth this past Saturday evening in our home.

I have to admit, it was the best birth experience ever. I will spare you all the details, (even my children weren't aware of what was going on). In fact, I told my children, "We are going to have a baby today," and they just looked at me like, 'How is that possible?' None of them realized that mean I was in labor. I guess they expected more 'drama.' LOL.

Anyway, Éowyn is 5 days old, and I'm just now getting my groove back as far as sleep, tidying, interaction with people, and 'work,' and any other stuff that was 'normalcy' before Éowyn decided to exit the womb and enter our world. She is the calmest most content baby I've met. Very sweet. Just like her wonderful daddy. :)

Thanks to all of you who care about us and are apart of our family dynamic through various forms. We love having so much encouragement around us.

~Kate

Picture of the Week

Here we are in front of Menengai Crater in Nakuru.

A Future and a Hope

Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV) For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Put aside the context for the moment, and just think about what is conveyed in this sentence. Don’t try to think about prophecy, doctrine, principles, just let the emotion of the phrase roll over you.

I believe, with all my heart, that this phrase represents God’s heart towards us.

He is thinking good thoughts. Thoughts of peace, and not evil. When He thinks of us, He’s not like Santa with his list of who’s naughty and who’s nice. Nope. He only has one list. The list of who He loves, and everyone, absolutely every single last one of us, is on that list.

When we started the orphan care project, (the word project so does not do justice to what we do, life describes it so much better. It is our life and not just our project.) this phrase from the book of Jeremiah captured our intent or purpose more than anything else.

We want to provide or at least facilitate a hope in the future for our kids, who otherwise had no hope even in the present let alone tomorrow.

We see this as simply doing what our Father does. That is loving everyone, even those who have no apparent value.

December Needs

It was once suggested that we have a thermometer or something on the side bar showing how much money we needed for the month, and how much has come in. I’m not sure I can do the thermometer, for personal reasons, but I thought this list might be helpful. This way, if you want to help with a specific thing, you can. So here is the list in U.S. dollars:

• Rent on girl’s home (which is our home as well:)     $675.00
• A week’s worth of food for both homes:                 $206.00   (26 people plus usually a few extras each day) 1st week 2nd Week
• Electricity at the girl’s home:                                $ 88.00
• Electricity at the boy’s home:                                $   8.00
• Water at the girl's home:                                       $ 40.00
• Water at the boy’s home:                                      $ 20.00
• Cooking gas:                                                         $ 26.00
• Cook at the girl’s home:                                        $ 88.00
• Housekeeper at girl’s home:                                  $ 74.00
• Support Staff at boy’s home:                                 $ 68.00
• Household cleaners, toilet paper, etc for a week:    $50.00    1st Week 2nd Week
• Personal hygiene products for week:                       $38.00    1st Week 2nd Week
• Internet                                                                $150.00

That should cover the basics for December (not including aid to the community). I will put up January’s soon so we can get a head start. January will include school related expenses that we don’t have in December. Also this is not every single expense. There are things like getting the girl’s hair done, karate, etc. If you don’t want to designate then we will just take care of whatever is the priority at the moment. Or if you want to designate your gift for something not on this list, then let us know. We do our best to spend the money how it was intended by the donor.

I will strike through what has been taken care of. Of course these expenses will also be around in January, so if you had your heart set on helping pay the cook, don’t worry there’s always next month.

Almost forgot, I will put a link to this article on the side bar.

Checks can be made out to Kenya Fund and sent to: (include a note if you want to designate for a specific need.)

713 West First Street
Beaver Dam, KY 42320

or you can use Paypal, there is a space to include a note, if you want to designate. Use back2kenya@yahoo.com

Cure for Poverty?

A tough one:

What aspects of Western culture do you hope to share with your girls and which aspects to you hope they don't adopt? I imagine just like medications, sometimes the cures for extreme poverty might have some serious side effects. Have you found this to be the case? In what ways?

Like most Westerners finding themselves working with extreme poverty, I have had many ideas how to eradicate it. From the beginning, I have realized that I could not/can not solve the problem of world poverty. Yet I believed I could solve the problem of poverty for individuals. I hoped to enable them to learn to fish, and therefore feed themselves for a lifetime.

Notice the past tense in that last sentence. No longer can I say that I have any kind of solution for poverty, even on an individual basis. The causes of poverty, at least financial poverty, are beyond my control.

The basic assumption is flawed in my opinion. The assumption being that to solve the problem of poverty we need to get more money in the hands of the poor. If we can only do that, then all will be well.

Like the question above implies, this usually just brings about more problems than solutions.

Take a middle class Kenyan as an example. Most of them are just one emergency away from poverty. Just one major illness, car accident, loss of job, death of a family member, or some other unforeseen circumstance will see them moved back to the slum.

Money is not necessarily the solution. In fact it could be the problem.

Poverty is not only the absence of money. I don’t have any money, yet poor is not an adjective I would use to describe myself. We need to learn to free ourselves from the clutches of money. As a people we need to understand that there is more to life than acquiring possessions. Life is about life, not material objects. No matter how shinny they are.

What I want to share with the poor here in Kenya is decidedly not an American ideal. In fact it is very much un-American. It is something so foreign to the world, that most cannot get it. So counter intuitive, that we can be forgiven for not getting it.

It is this:

Blessed are the poor.

 

 

Ask Johnny and Kate Week

A Plethora of Questions

Sometimes I wonder if people really understand how slow I am. Which means I talk slowly and listen slowly. I had to read this a few times to get everything to stick in my mind. Great questions, not sure if I can answer them all. There are still so many things I don’t understand myself.

I have a few questions.  How did you go about selling your stuff to go to Africa?  How did you pay off “debt” before leaving the country?  Also, did you have any financial support when you left America?  Was it hard to TELL others WHAT you were going to do as missionaries in Africa? 

I can tell you for sure that it was no easy decision to pack up and leave Texas. I knew then that I was turning my back on everything that was normal for my culture. I was abandoning what was important in the practice of my religion. I was leaving family and friends behind. I was leaving the things I enjoyed behind.

However the desire to be where God wanted me to be, was more than I could handle. So I had to pack up and go. Little did I know at the time that God had me do what I did, not for some grand ministry, but just so He could be closer to me.

Once we decided to go, we did just that. I gave notice at work, and we started packing. Selling our stuff was pretty easy. Well actually letting go was hard, especially since you never get what you feel something is worth.

What did not work out was selling our house. I did not put enough effort into selling it before we left, and we ended up losing it our first year here in Kenya. We simply did not have enough money coming in to make payments on it. I should have put it on the market sooner. Tough lesson.

I really felt like God asked me to avoid traditional fund raising methods, and just trust Him. So all we did was send out a letter, and speak at the church we were attending at the time. We ended up landing in Nairobi with 600 dollars. No house, no car, nothing.

It was tough to trust God, but we eventually learned.

It was not hard to explain to others that we wanted to be missionaries. With the exception of a few family members it was well received by everyone. The tough part for us is asking for money, so usually we just don’t do it. Most people appreciate what we do, even if they do not understand our faith all the time.

This post was part of Ask Johnny and Kate Week. (If you follow this link and scroll down the article you will find a list of the questions and answers so far.)

Culture Question’s Answer…

QUESTION: What is the biggest cultural difference's that you see as people living in another country raising children from that country along with your own?

Intermingling our children with Kenyan children, living as brothers and sisters, exposes many cultural differences. In fact, we’ve actually morphed our cultures together creating a hybrid culture. (Sounds cool, huh?)

Some differences between our Kenyan family and American family we’ve noticed deal directly with parent to child relationships. For example, as American parents, we tend to be much more ‘affectionate’ with our children. We hug, kiss, wrestle, play games, etc… Our Kenyan kids were a bit uncomfortable with all this affection at first. Now they soak it up.

Another distinction between our cultures is that we tend to value our children’s opinions while generally speaking, Kenyan’s don’t. For example, when I got my little Mini, I asked the kids what colors I should paint it. I allowed them to vote. One of the girls came up to me and said, “We aren’t used to Mother’s asking us what WE (children)think!”

Also,Talking eye to eye with our Kenyan children was very difficult (and sometimes still is for them). They tend to look at the ground and whisper, but slowly by slowly, they are learning we value their opinions and are gaining confidence with their abilities to communicate with us grownups. This variant was not due to language issues at all, as I’ve noted how they interact with my bio-children in a different manner.

There are other cultural differences that could be pointed out such as table manners, hygiene, verbal manners, language (what words we deem offensive they do not, etc….),  but I don’t want to make this too long.

Keep asking questions if you’ve got ‘em! And if you want me to expound on this topic, I can!

~Kate