Perspective

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During our pre-move training in VA we had week of listening to video testimonies about language learning. Some of them were disheartening, some of them encouraging. We were told by a speaker, in jest, that he sets his bar of expectation really low because then he can soar over it like super man. Obviously he was simply providing some levity in the discussion about the challenges to come in language learning, and all areas of life as a missionary, but I appreciated hearing from this very seasoned, wise man to be careful of our expectations of ourselves. Language will come, it will, but it’s going to come after many a hard day that beget an exhausted mind. We are in the thick of it, being in our 11th week of language. Kiswahili, we’ve been told, is relatively easy to learn. Easier than most.  Easier is the key word there. Not easy, just “easier”. Some days our language teachers say, “see?! It’s easy!” And then in the same conversation they will say, “Sorry, Kiswahili is very confusing sometimes.” This process, these past 11 weeks, has given me a whole new respect for our brothers and sisters that have 2-3 years of language ahead of them. It’s hard for me to imagine continuing this current season of life that long. We are doing well, but we are weary. We are the first to be allowed to homeschool and do language simultaneously, and it’s obvious why there were rules against it. While we are figuring it out, it’s taxing. The distractions during our morning language sessions and our afternoon sessions are constant - very different than the typical of having kiddos in international school (but home in the evenings) and us being in uninterrupted language for 8 hours a day. 

One of the challenges that I’m facing, that I did not anticipate, is feeling utterly drained relationally. I’m not an extreme introvert, really more of an “ambivert”, but the interaction is pretty constant from the time we wake in the morning to the time we fall into bed at the end of the day. It’s constant interaction with our boys, which I’m used to, but then you add in Phoebe to help us keep our house afloat (she is truly indispensable and we LOVE her!) and George who helps us put our language training into conversation. Two other people in our home every day of the business week is tiring, as easy as they are to having around. We love them both, but as it is with most families I would assume, having others in your home constantly just changes the family dynamic. We can’t give language our full attention and we can’t give our children our full attention, and for me in particular, my brain is constantly divided.  Josh, in his man brain, has an easier time jumping from one cognitive square to another, and focusing on what he’s currently working on. For me, all the things interact. A big ol’ heap of spaghetti noodles tangled together in what ends up being a tired emotional mess of a brain. When Zeke hasn’t slept well, which is the norm right now, (because our current living space is very small and all sound reverberates, making it very difficult to keep things quiet for him during his sleeping hours which are longer than the rest of ours) he’s incredibly volatile and I have a very hard time focusing on forming sentences in Swahili when he’s breaking down for the 20th time in the room next to me. He wants me constantly, which isn’t possible right now (or ever). 

Understanding the general gist of a sentence spoken to me is coming along, slowly, the translation is getting easier during class and home work time, but trying to put things into words takes a lot of head in the hands, eyes squeezed shut tight while searching for the right words and sentence structure in the “iceberg” of information I’ve learned. George often tells me, when I can’t remember the definition of a word, “Rebekah, I know it’s in the iceberg somewhere. You will find it one day. Tanzania is coming soon. You will have to find it then.” He is patient, challenges me (sometimes to tears, after I’ve excused myself to the bathroom for a break)and feels like he’s part of our team as he works with us to be able to proclaim truth to the lost in Tanzania. I am grateful for him and his servant heart and the time he spends with us. But, some mornings when I hear his car wheels crackling along the gravel driveway and his squeaky breaks singing as he pulls into his familiar spot, my heart sinks as I hang my head and close my eyes, wishing I could lock myself away in my room with some noise cancelling headphones and watercolor the day away. I’m just.so.tired.  


Aside from language, we are doing well, considering. Im realizing I thought as justing to life here would come more quickly. We’ve lived overseas before, but with the military. There’s just no comparison. We are learning to live in a much smaller space than we’ve ever had to live in with our five VERY energetic boys. We could do 1400 sqft long term, but my hope and prayer is that we don’t have to. I know the Lord will work on my heart, to be content with our home in Tanzania, how much ever space it provides for us to spread out a bit. I know we need to learn to live like Africans, but I also know there is a balance between living like those we are among, and maintaining sanity and family health. I don’t know where that line is, and I’m assuming it will take years to find it - we pray for wisdom in that. We’ve come from a house that was much larger than we needed in a country that thrives on and idolizes ease and simplicity, to a place where day to day life takes so much more effort than we’ve ever had to expend. We are realizing now, simple life is an expensive life. Our teacher, Christina, told us during class yesterday that Tanzanian’s have a phrase, “easy is expensive” - and it’s so very true. The “ease” and privilege of life in America comes at great financial cost - from well maintained road systems, to healthy farming that means you really could just eat an apple straight out of the bin at the grocery store or drinking the tap water (or even just brush your teeth with it) without worrying about getting intestinal worms or giardiasis, or cholera. And here’s the reality, I REALLY miss that ease. While there’s things I love about not living in America, there are things I am desperately homesick for, and one of them is normal and consistent digestive processes, and being able to hop in the car and drive to our local Walmart neighborhood market knowing I can be there and back within 20 minutes. Being able to buy packaged ready to eat food at a really low cost is not a thing here. Soaking fruits and veggies in very diluted bleach water before consuming is an absolute must. This cannot be skipped. Meat is painfully expensive, and has become a garnish for our main course instead of being the main course. I realize saying these things shows the privilege I’ve lived in. I was well aware it isn’t this way everywhere, (really hardly anywhere) outside the U.S., it’s just an adjustment. A difficult one.

Please understand this, I am REALLY trying to not sound like I’m complaining. I’ve have done it, I have complained, but I’m not currently complaining. Just processing through what is causing the weariness, at least a few of the things that are. And just as I’m typing this our team leader in Tanzania messaged our group chat to notify us that the water well they’ve been digging all week in a remote village in TZ has finally reached water. Immediately my eyes stung with tears and I could picture the villagers dancing and shouting with joy. This community will no longer have to hike miles to carry buckets of unclean water back to their homes. What a merciful thing for the Lord to provide for this village. He has proven he hears the prayers of the righteous, to those who’ve heard the gospel from our teammates - they now see the one true God hears and answers! I’m also thankful, while knowing this water reached has nothing to do with my current circumstances, that this news came as I was typing this. I do feel like it’s merciful of the Lord to give me perspective on all the things we are experiencing, over and over again, this just being the most recent. We have tap water that can be filtered. We have a car to drive to get groceries. We have electricity (we can learn to live with it’s wild inconsistency), and we are rich with His mercy and saving grace!

Praise the Lord for his provisions and for his mercy. He is worthy of all the work and hardships and drastic changes in lifestyle! He truly is WORTHY!

on another note, here’s a couple things we’ve been up to the past few weeks - the pictures don’t upload in the order I select them, and it’s probably operator error, but I’m not going to arrange them in order, because who cares?

  1. Safari park for Josh’s birthday

  2. Kurura Park, nestled in the middle of the chaotic city

Homesick

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Homesickness weighs heavily on me these days. Spring has always been the sweetest season to me, and I’m finding that even though I am surrounded by perpetual green that shelters beautiful songbirds and vibrant florals, I long for the fickle cold climate spring season where everything new is emerging from it’s long winter slumber.
In the past couple of weeks my mom and her husband moved from their house where they’ve lived for many years, into an older home where they used to live. While their new/old house is familiar to me, the boys only remember the home they just left. I was surprised at how sad I was that they moved, not because I loved their house, but because it was familiar. It was, “Nanny’s house” to our boys.
My grandparents owned a farm in southern MN and a home in Roseville, MN. Those two homes hold much of my childhood memories and I will always miss them deeply. I want this constancy for my boys, but it won’t happen.
My dad just messaged me saying they are seeking the Lord about the next step in their lives, which likely will mean the sale of their current home (again, the only home they’ve had that my boys know, and where I’ve spent much of my time with them over the past decade). I saw the message and immediately felt the lump grow in my throat. The tears forced their way out as I let me head fall in my hands. I am eager to see where the Lord leads them, but heartbroken for their and my loss of their home. There’s so much change and transition happening in not only our lives, but many others lives around us. Leaving is so hard, even when it’s someone else leaving the home they’ve lived in that you love

I find myself daydreaming about driving down the familiar highway to our home in Bellevue, NE, coming home from a long road trip. We always pulled in in the late afternoon or early evening, unlocked and opened the door so relieved to soak in the familiar -home. The boys would immediately run through the house and out the sliding door to our back deck, where the shade of the huge maple tree would be inviting us to sit and take in the quiet summer evening after our long journey. Perhaps a neighbor would be mowing, Cherry would be elated to have us home, Zeke would make his rounds inspecting each sprinkler and the squeak of the boys on the swings would bring delight to our hearts.
It’s the end of May, so school would be complete and a beautiful summer would lay ahead to be enjoyed with the travel, the visits from family and friends, bike rides to Culver’s with our boys, early morning bike rides with close friends, evening walks on our favorite path just a block from the house and ample time with grandparents. Grocery shopping would be simple, as we’d memorized, over time, what each isle held and we’d be relieved to fall back into our rhythm of life at home. I am a home body, through and through, as are a couple of our 5 boys. Leaving was remarkably painful, and as we’ve settled into a rhythm of life here, my homesickness has grown greater with each day. I’m sure it will fade at some point, but as for right now, I struggle to maintain bravery when I’m sent a picture of my mother-in-laws beautiful garden where we spent many evenings, or the vast Wyoming landscape with it’s stunning sunsets, or the Wyoming mountains where I spent much of my childhood. It still feels surreal that we are half a world away. It continues to feel like a long trip - that we’ll soon return to our familiar home with it’s familiar smell and sounds and settle back into our life that we knew.

Here, in Nairobi, the days turn in to a blur - they all run together as we strain our brains to understand and communicate in a language we’d never before heard. Our boys try to focus on their school work when all of their friends on the compound here are out for summer break and play happily and noisily, outside our windows. We are still getting our feet under us with running errands and grocery shopping and navigating the challenging traffic patterns in the city. Today I took Ezekiel and drove to a store 25 minutes away, by myself, and had a very productive shopping morning for household items we’ve searched for at several other stores. I was delighted that I finally had the know how and confidence to tackle this task without Josh, who stayed home to do school with the boys.
Yet, the more we settle into life here the more I realize, Nairobi doesn’t feel like home. Our apartment, while familiar, doesn’t feel like home. We know we’ll be moving south in the next month or so, and that always causes a twinge of pain in my heart, as I’ve grown to love the people we are doing life with here.

There’s more leaving to do.
There’s more transition to do.
There’s more learning to do.
There’s more culture shock to experience.
There’s more grieving to be done.
There’s more new to come.

I want Africa to feel like “home”, but I anticipate that is going to take a long time. In the meantime, I am learning to live with the nearly constant longing to be where we came from and where we are going, all at the same time, while fighting for contentment and joy in this season of life where the Lord has us.

Below are some pics of the last month - not in order, because it’s too much work to drag and drop them in order - for some reason they don’t upload in order. :/

Nairobi national park

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We took a break from school with the boys on Friday morning and did a field trip to the Nairobi National Park. We were able to get resident entry rates and drive our own vehicle, which made the outing very affordable! While we only had time to drive through about a quarter of the park, we saw many animals! It was surreal to see them in their natural habitat from our car windows instead of behind thick glass or tall fences in a zoo. The roads on the park ranged anywhere from meticulously combed gravel roads to severely pitted and rutted out roads, with wheel deep water filled mud traps. There were several instances where we couldn’t back up but moving forward meant driving half through the shrubs on the side of the road while trying to stay out of the ruts. We never did get stuck, though there were some close calls! It was such a fun experience for us as a family, and a wonderful break from our normal routine. We were strongly urged at the gate and when we came up on a few park rangers out on the plains, to stay in our car and not let boys hang out of windows. There are designated picnic spots but walking along the roads outside the picnic areas is strongly discouraged. None of the animals are sectioned off - they all have access to the entire park. These things are, aside from the fence around the entire property protecting the park, in their natural habitat. Once inside the parks fences, this is just like any other safari. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Week #2 - unexpectedly difficult

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We were supposed to start language on Monday but there were some delays in schedule rearrangements with the school, so we had the day off. We did school with the boys in the morning and then Josh and I ran errands during nap time to find some household items we were still needing. It was neat to get out and run errands together. This felt like something familiar in the midst of so much change. All 7 of us developed significant lower GI symptoms that kept the bathrooms occupied most the day. This, now a week later as I’m writing this, has not totally resolved.

Tuesday I woke up with very poor hearing and as the day progressed it worsened. I found myself anxious that perhaps I was developing the first symptoms of Meniere’s disease in my right ear. I’ve had it in my left ear for over 11 years now, but have never had any of the symptoms in my right ear until that day. The symptoms all seemed to match up with how it presented on my left side all those years ago, so I was really struggling to maintain focus on anything other than my ears. Language was fun, but a struggle as I wasn’t hearing the words correctly. I had female issues happening as well (for the sake of remembering accurately the emotional challenge I was facing), so being level headed about anything was a truly difficult task.
Wednesday I woke up and my hearing was even worse. I struggled to understand anything anyone was saying and couldn’t figure out what certain sounds were that I was hearing, like thunder, that sounded like a truck revving inside of a tin shack. We were scheduled to get our fingerprints done for citizenship early that morning, so we were up and out the door before our boys were up. Elijah was left in charge, and we hoped for a quick trip to the government office and back, but it took much longer than anticipated. Between the hearing difficulties, masks and thick Kenyan accents (though they all speak english), I wasn’t picking up a single word of what was being spoken to me. Josh translated loudly for me, explaining to the employees that I was hard of hearing. I could feel the emotional breakdown welling up. I took a nap when we got home, exhausted by the outing, and was up in just enough time to scrounge up some lunch (with the very little appetite I had) and sit down for language. I fought my way through it, straining to hear and understand what our teacher was saying on the other side of the computer. At 3:30 we had a local woman come to talk to us about the possibility of her helping us with the household chores and caring for boys while we are in language. My friend, Sarah, explained to her that I could hear very little of what she was saying, and she and Josh shouted to me all the things Phoebe was saying. I barely held myself together during the “interview” and after Sarah and I walked Phoebe to the front gate of the compound to see her off, I broke down in the parking lot explaining to Sarah the fight for joy and hope that I was struggling to win. She came back up to the apartment with me, laid her hand on my shoulder, knelt to her knees and began pleading with the Lord to sustain me in this storm. She praying for healing, for relief, for hope and joy and cried and grieved with me as I broke down on the couch. I posted on facebook and wrote to our family friends, begging for prayer. Trying to distract myself from reality, I worked on a project I’d been waiting to do for several days. I had a couple light kits I’d ordered on amazon that I planned to make hanging basket lamps with. I had the baskets and the kit and the lightbulbs, so I went to town cut holes in the bottoms of the baskets, just large enough for the light sockets to fit through. The electrician that works on the compound was going to stop by but had forgotten, so I just plugged the lights into a converter and turned them on, since I was using 220 lightbulbs anyway. I was really excited about how they turned out. Off went the nasty fluorescent lights! That evening Josh and I sat down to do something that felt familiar and tried to watch one of our favorite shows together. I was exhausted from struggling to hear all day and couldn’t follow the dialog, so we went to bed. As I lay in bed reading I decided to dig out some of the allergy meds I’d brought but hadn’t been using and got aggressive with some reverse valsalva maneuvers to try to pop my eustachian tubes, but didn’t notice any improvement. I cried myself to sleep after pouring over several Psalms.

Thursday I woke to slightly improved hearing. Things still sounded weird, but I was elated to be able to understand what my boys were saying at the breakfast table. The boys and I all woke up with sore throats but hoped it was due to the allergy season here in Nairobi. Phoebe was at our door at 8:15, 45 minutes earlier than expected. She said hello, asked how we were, asked how I was feeling and went straight to work finding all the cleaning supplies she needed. The bathrooms were squeaky clean within 30 minutes of her arrival and she bustled her way through the rest of the apartment, leaving in her wake shining floors, made beds and a washer and dryer consistently running. It was a huge relief. I sat on the couch pouring over the previous day’s Kiswahili vocab, wondering how on earth I was going to be able to keep up with the pace at which our teacher is moving us through the lessons. Our lesson was done at 3:00, Phoebe was out the door to catch a bus home by 4:00, and I noticed I was starting to feel a bit under the weather, but my hearing was fully functional again. I praised the Lord for his mercy and rejoiced at the normal sound of the thunder and rain outside the bathroom window as I washed my face before bed.

Friday morning I woke to faucet face. My eyes and nose were constantly draining. Phoebe came early again and got right to work. She quizzed me on vocab now and then and encouraged me to just speak and speak as much as possible. I sat to review the vocab and was really struggling to keep my composure, as I was finding it hard to remember anything, so I took a break to teach Phoebe how to make the strawberry rhubarb crisp that I had mentioned to her the day before. Strawberry rhubarb is a flavor of my childhood. I grew up eating everything strawberry rhubarb because we had a garden full of both. It’s intensely nostalgic for me. I never expected to see rhubarb in the market here but happened upon it and was elated to find that it was cheaper than anywhere I could ever find it in the states (except my mama’s garden). We baked it together and let it sit on the counter to cool for a snack after language. By the time our language lesson rolled around I was in full blown cold mode. I blew through half a box of kleenex during language and had a really hard time focusing. I was going down hill fast. Josh was clipping right along, answering in beautiful kiswahili the questions that were being asked of him and I was struggling just to focus. I was asked a question, fought my through it, having to look most of the words up and then excused myself to go to the bathroom. I sat on the edge of the tub and cried hard for several minutes before gathering composure, trying to cover my red face with make-up and returning to the lesson. Our language teacher said she was sorry I was feeling so crummy and that she hoped I could rest over the weekend. Phoebe and Josh and I enjoyed a snack of crisp and tea after language and I we sent some home with her for her husband and son and herself. I crawled into bed early that night, after padding around the house lethargically picking up after the hustle and bustle of the day. The boys were all feeling noticeably crummy, but had enough energy to play a really obnoxious and loud video game with Josh in the living room, so I closed the bedroom door and started a quiet movie in the dark with the fan blasting on me. I could feel the fever coming on fast.

I woke on Saturday, overheated from fever and feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. It was a much needed down day. The worst of the cold hit in perfect timing over the weekend and I was so thankful that there was nothing that needed to be done, other than language review and homework. I lived on pain and fever reducer meds, alternating between laying on a blanket and starting at the incredible blue Kenyan sky through the canopy of ficus trees, and writing vocab words as many times over as I could stand.

Sunday I woke still lethargic, but the fever was finally gone. The McDonald’s were scheduled to come spend the day with us and we were thankful for the company. Judah and I made a run to the closest food market to pick up a few last minute things we needed and we got home just as the McDonald’s pulled up. I’d not been off the compound by myself yet, and figured this day was the day to try, if ever there were one. I supposed that if I could make my way around without Josh’s help when I felt this awful that I should be able to do it when I felt fine. Josh assured me that this was strange reasoning, but encouraged me to go if I was up to it. I was thankful for Judah’s company and help in the market. We grilled burgers and ate chips with our sweet friends and it tasted like the most American meal we’d had since getting to Kenya. It felt like perfect timing after a really difficult week. After laying Zeke down for a nap we wandered over the have coffee and dessert with a couple here that invited the four of us adults to come. We laughed the afternoon away telling stories of outrageous experiences throughout our lives. The McDonalds stuck around for popcorn, strawberry rhubarb crisp that I’d made for Heather’s birthday that was the next day, and then headed out to try to get home before the Nairobi county curfew. What is the McDonald’s and headed home we turn on our home church’s service to stream it. It was so neat to join with them, even from a world away. Judah and I both broke down during a familiar song and felt homesick for the people we love so dearly in our congregation there.

There it is. A really rough second week.

jet lag

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Monday the 5th was our first full day here at our guest house in Nairobi. We didn’t get to bed that morning until about 3am, so we slept until nearly 11. The boys at a quick breakfast of whatever food we could make sense of in our stupor and then went outside to explore. We unzipped Zeke’s tent to try to rouse him but he slept hard until 11:30, when I decided to wake him. We wandered outside to find the rest of the boys and were overcome with the beauty that surrounded us. The compound, while small, feels like an oasis in the middle of this overwhelmingly busy city, full of sky scrapers, traffic jams and buses that use the sidewalks to get ahead of the rest of the vehicles that crawl at tortoise pace down the construction ridden highways. It was the dead of night when we arrived, so we were unprepared for the vast array of shades of green that awaited us in the morning. It’s breathtaking. We found our boys, with their instant friends, climbing trees, digging in the brick red dirt, throwing frisbees and shooting the breeze. Josh, Zeke and I found the back door of our temporary team leaders home and were invited in. We sat talking with them a while and then rounded up our boys around 2:00 for lunch. It was a challenge for any of us to eat, as our bodies were telling us it was 6am, but we forced some food down and let the boys head straight back outside.
We’d were blessed to have ample food available for us when we arrived. Several families from the Nairobi team provided groceries and meals for us, which freed us up to stay inside the safe walls of the compound for a couple days without needing to make a grocery run right away. The McDonald family, our teammates that we’ve been eager to join in language training for the past 6 months, came to visit and we were elated to see them! Our reunion was a long time coming, as the last time we’d seen them was September of 2019 when we stayed in a guest house in southern Missouri to test just how compatible our families are. Here’s our group picture from that trip, and a picture of Heather and I from here.

The boys were all enamored with the various bugs, reptiles and plants around the compound.

Eric took Josh grocery shopping that first afternoon while Heather and I stayed behind to make sure kids didn’t burn the compound to the ground.
The next day I took my first driving lesson with a sweet sister that was willing to sacrifice her vehicle and safety for the sake of my learning. We drove to the mall she shops at most frequently to look at a few household items I’d asked her where I could find, and to pick up a few essential groceries. The grocery store was huge and overwhelming and I found that, Sharon, the friend I was with had to complete many of my sentences for me as I shuffled along in a sleepy stupor, trying to make sense of all the new brandnames and food choices. I came away with a cart half full of groceries, but couldn’t keep a straight enough head to think through all the staples we needed in our kitchen in our temp apartment, so the groceries felt a little discombobulated with I unloaded them onto the counters at home.
The rest of the week was spent weaning ourselves off central timezone living, food and surroundings. Well, maybe weaning isn’t the right word there. We weaned ourselves off our Central time sleep cycle, but everything else was just cut off immediately. Our digestive systems were ok for the first week, but are definitely reacting to the change in diet. Yikes. On Saturday we drove 45 minutes or so to get to the other company compound just outside Nairobi where our friends that we went to FPO are living. They will be in Kenya for two years, as they are short term. Once we move to TZ, we aren’t sure if we’ll be back here before their term is over, so we are trying to get as much time with them as possible while we are here. There are 2 American families and a few Kenyan families living on that compound. Both the American families left for their stateside assignments this past week, and we likely won’t be here once they get back so it was neat to have a chance to meet them.

We spent most of Sunday up at the McDonald’s house celebrating a belated easter, complete with an easter egg hunt with American candy for the kiddos - our boys were excited but the McDonald kiddos were beside themselves with excitement. The familiar American candy was nostalgic for them after 6 months of living here.

We made it through week one without many emotional breakdowns, feeling like we were coming out the other side of jet lag and hopeful for the start of a new week full of gearing back up into homeschooling and starting language learning for Josh and me.

First post from Africa

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To find what our days looked like leading up to us being here, click here. You can back track along the parts of the process we blogged about, though I will say there’s only 3 or 4 posts. This blog will be from the time we left Omaha, NE.

I’m looking at the title of this post, still in disbelief that we live in Africa. It’s super surreal. We are currently in Kenya for language training, which will officially start next week, after we’ve puttered our way through jet lag. We won’t be in Kenya long term, though, as Tanzania is Lord willing, our final destination to make a home and plant roots. We don’t know what our timeline will be there, because the Lord directs our steps and only He knows what lies ahead, but we hope to be in Africa long term.

We left Omaha about noon on Saturday, April 3rd. After saying a very teary goodbye to our dear friends, we made our way surprisingly smoothly through security and to our gate to await boarding. We had 4 carryons with us that weighed a hefty 50 pounds, as they contained the homeschool curriculum we had been told last minute that we needed to bring with us, as no support teams were scheduled to come that could bring it for us (which is the normal way). I asked the gal at the gate if they could gate check these four bags to our destination. She knew from her roster that we were flying all the way to Kenya, and gave my a smile and quietly said, “yes, I can help you with that.” This was a hoped for answer to prayer. Trying to get those bags through the Atlanta airport and 2 international airports would have been miserable. She also bumped us to the comfort plus section of the plane, because she couldn’t find enough room for us elsewhere where we could all sit together. With a much lighter carryon load, we boarded and lifted into the air. The flight was short, and about half way through it I realized my iPad, of which I use for nearly everything was not in my backpack where it belonged. I’d placed it in a bin on the security line, but somehow it never made it’s way back in. We worked through every carryon we had, and were not able to find it. My heart sank. As soon as we landed and had cell reception we were both making phone calls to figure out how to find out if it had been stolen off the security line, or was still in the airport. Long story short, after about 30 minutes of solid phone calls, one number after another after another, Josh was able to talk to the man that was standing at the security desk. He told us to call back later and he’d check the bins. We gave this number to the Padilla’s, who were already half way to the airport, they called him, he checked the bins and found my ipad nestled under a stack of them. He gave it to them, and Francey immediately made her way to Fedex to ship it to an address where one our teammates is currently en route to, to receive a covid vaccine. She’ll bring it back with her when she flies home in a few days. I was so relieved! The Lord continues to show us these tangible ways that he is, indeed, in full control over this process. It’s so reassuring to be walking the road he’s already paved for us and to see that he cares about even the little things, like lost items.
Our layover in Atlanta was 5 hours, but it went by quickly, ending with a delicious dinner of 5 Guys.

All flights were as seamless as we could have hoped for. None of the flight attendants said a word about Zeke needing to wear a mask, they were all incredibly kind and patient with the boys. Our first international flight, we gave all the boys Benadryl and Melatonin and let them spread out in all the empty seats that were available around us. They all got decent sleep, including Zeke, who is a wizard at NOT falling asleep in his carseat. We landed in Amsterdam on time and loitered for a bit before heading to our gate for our flight to Nairobi. The Nairobi flight was mostly full, so there was no spreading out for naps, which worked out ok since we were trying to keep boys awake those 8 hours so we could roll into our guest house and crash right away, even though it would feel like afternoon for us.

The flight was late taking off and we were only allowed to deplane 15 people at a time for social distancing purposes…..after being shoulder to shoulder on the same plane. Some Covid mitigation stuff just doesn’t make sense.

Getting through immigration and customs took longer than we expected and I’m certain we all looked like zombies. Our welcoming crew were not allowed to come inside the airport to help with bags, so it was up to us to figure out how to get our 25 checked bags, 7 backpacks and 5 carryons out to them to put in the cars. Out to them THROUGH customs. Josh went out and talked with our logistics guy and he found an airport employee to help out. We finally made it through customs, only being asked about the piles of homeschool books we were bringing in, and not the 150 lbs of green coffee beans we brought for roasting. We were a bit surprised and very relieved they didn’t confiscate our coffee! Why bring so much coffee to roast, you may ask? Because, believe it or not, it’s actually really difficult to find coffee in Tanzania, because it’s all exported. And it’s not legal for coffee roasters to sell us green coffee beans here in Kenya, so we brought a stock pile to last us quite a while!
With the help of airport staff and our logistics folks, we loaded our luggage into three different vehicles and made our way to our guest house on our compound here. We were given the tour of our place, explanation about the faulty water heater and “widow maker” shower heads, and then left to crash hard for the night. And well into the morning. When Josh and I finally got the boys into bed and then got ourselves into bed, we’d been on the go for nearly 40 hours. We.were.toast!