October update: Safari squared
/Happy October! Update below, with Rebekah‘s comments in italics.
Pray requests up front:
-Language and culture: we have so much to learn! Please pray that we would ALL (speak for yourself - I’ve arrived) apply ourselves to learning Swahili and Tanzanian culture so that we can truly be a part of our community!
-Bible studies: we have a handful of Bible studies happening around the area, please pray that we would be adept at training others to study the Bible for themselves and that God would be glorified through all our efforts.
-Personal holiness: please pray for us all as we strive to honor God in our daily lives through reading his Word, prayer, fellowship with other believers, etc.
It was a weird month, to be sure! We spent most of the month on the road, as we drove up to Nairobi, Kenya for a meeting. It was a meeting for all of the missionaries in Sub-Saharan Africa who had been on the field for 18 months or less. We stayed a week after the meeting for some medical appointments.
One of the Bible studies we’re doing is in a village called Mlole (pronounced: m- lo -lay), here in the Kigoma municipality. It’s a study of “seekers” mostly, Muslim men and women who are open to reading and talking about the Bible. We spend time reading together and talking about the passage. There is one believer there, a Muslim background believer named Juma who became a follower of Jesus through our “bucket ministry”. Juma is a middle-aged man who had a truck and drove for living before a large stroke left him with partial paralysis on the left side of his body. He is now disabled, and had been largely abandoned by his community. We first met when we brought a bucket full of medical/hygeine supplies to help him and his family out. He and Rehema later decided to follow Jesus, and now he is a regular at our weekly bible-study. His health challenges are difficult, but every Tuesday morning will find him slowly shuffling down the road with his cane and his Bible to sit with us for an hour or so. I’m excited to see this study go deeper- it is a neat example of how using healthcare strategies helps us get to the Gospel!
The trip to Nairobi was great. It started with 20 hours of driving and 2 hours at the border over 2 days. We drive a 2010 Toyota Land Cruiser built for function over comfort, but it’s fun car to drive as it can go just about anywhere, and it’s almost as practical as our old Dodge minivan.
We arrived in Nairobi, went to church (at an English-speaking service!), and then drove up the mountain to a conference center for the first week. It was wonderful to see some familiar faces, hear about everyone’s first year and a half, commiserate together about the common challenges we face, and eat really good food that we didn’t have to prepare!
The week was filled with workshops, seminars, and the like. It was a good reminder in a lot of ways! Mostly we really loved catching up with lots of friends, most of which we hadn’t seen for 18 months or more. We were also encouraged by older missionaries who have experience on the field and were helpful as we talked about strategy and mission in our location.
The kids also had a blast! For the conference, a church in TX brought in a whole team of volunteers to do childcare and coordinate the youth activities. They showed our kids so much love, and the youth teams really connected with and encouraged Elijah and Judah.
After the conference we went down to Nairobi and spent the next week with medical appointments, shopping to stock up on some things we can’t get here, and catching up with old friends. We did our first 6 months here in Africa in Nairobi for language learning, and have a lot of really great relationships there that we cherish.
In Nairobi Joel got to go to an EPIC Harry Potter themed birthday, Judah got his face torn up by a dog, and Elijah got to continue with online high school(yay!). We really did have a blessed time! We got to go bowling and eat Indian food thanks to a generous gift, and got fast-food TWICE(not a thing in Kigoma).
On the way home we took a small detour to drive through Lake Manyara National Park, and while we didn’t see the tree-climbing lions the park is famous for, we got up close and personal with some elephants, giraffes and baboons. We arrived safely after a third day driving. The roads in TZ are notoriously good, thanks to the last president who made infrastructure one of his top priorities. There is about 3 hours of really rough dirt between Kigoma and the next big town(Tabora), but after that it is remarkably smooth sailing! One of the other nice things about the roads here are that there are hardly any cars. When you cross into Kenya the density of cars increases significantly, making driving much less pleasant.
I actually wrote my own summary of the Nairobi trip before I saw Josh’s, so here’s mine:
Where to begin? We made the trip up in just two long days of driving and were able to laugh Saturday evening into the night with sweet friends that loved on us well during our 6+ months that we lived there on the compound last year before moving to TZ. I was able to get some plant shopping, a sushi lunch and much needed girl time with my dear friend there as well that weekend before the conference. We attended the same church that Sunday that we’d attended while living there last year, Emmanuel Bible Church. We like to describe it as a sister to our sending church back home. They are similar is many, uncanny ways. And, it’s in English. It was hard for us to understand the whole concept of “heart language” until moving to TZ and not being able to attend an English speaking church. I choked up and then full on wept through a hymn we sang, as it’s one of my favorites, and to sing it and hear it sung in English for the first time in a year was completely overwhelming. The conference started later that day and we were there through Saturday morning. It was exhausting emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually, but refreshing in all the same ways. We learned a lot, contemplated a lot, had many very important conversations that lifted burdens from our shoulders and felt loved and cared for in ways that we truly needed. Our boys were loved on so well all week long by the volunteer team that had come from the States. They went above and beyond in blessing us all in various ways. We headed back down the mountain on Saturday morning and that’s when our medical stay at the compound started. For those of you who track my posts, Judah was bit (or scratched - we aren’t totally sure) by a large dog that spooked for some reason. The laceration was severe enough that a plastic surgeon was needed and we felt humbled by the Lord’s provision of one available in Nairobi, on a Saturday night. Joel attended an epic Harry Potter birthday party that same afternoon, we went to Emmanuel Baptist again the next day and medical appointments started on Monday. In between medical we were able to get some stock up shopping done, take a bowling trip with boys with fun money we were gifted, hike with sweet friends that we hadn’t seen in 18 months, eat fun food, rest and enjoy cooler weather, and got clean bills of health for both Josh and me! We extended our trip one day, taking a vacation day to enjoy one last meal with sweet friends and then we were off on Saturday morning to cross the border back into our host country. We crossed the border in about 45 minutes, while lacking 3 documents we were supposed to have! Woop! We took three days to drive back home, stopping along the way to visit a sweet friend in her new home, drive through an animal park and spend the night at a hotel with a pool, but that also had a soccer game after party that went into the late late night - that choice of hotel was a mistake. We made it home this past Monday, the 24th, car trouble free! There, that’s about as short as I can make the description of our trip to Nairobi.).
That’s the update for this month!
As always, we covet your prayers, and appreciate your support! In early December my parents will be arriving to stay for a few weeks, and we’re looking forward to their visit BIG TIME!
You can follow us on Facebook at our group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1072012219992846/
You can support our work specifically by going to https://www.imb.org/generosity/give-now/, and choosing “missionary or team” under the “Where do you want your give to go?” dropdown. Then type our name in the first box and SSAP for the “affinity or country” option.
There’s also an opportunity to help us fund a trip for Elijah and Judah to go to South Africa for a TCK camp here soon. You can email us at the below address about that.
Finally, send me an email at m28Storeyfam@gmail.com with any other questions!