June Update — The Storey Fam

Prayer requests up front:

Language study
Rebekah and I continue to progress(slowly) in Swahili. We ask people to pray as we try to reach specific goals of going deeper in our relationships with Swahili-only speakers.
Mission in Kigoma
There are some wonderful opportunities to partner in what God is doing in the Kigoma region. We are praying for wisdom and discernment to be involved in the right ways/places.
Praise
When my sister Cara visited this month, she brought great encouragement to us, and two suitcases full of goodies! Thanks to those of you that were so generous and blessed us with so much!

Before William Carey(the father of modern missions) went to India in 1793 he famously told his friend Andrew Fuller, “I will go down into the pits, if you will hold the ropes.” This month we have been reminded how many friends and family we have holding the ropes for us through their prayers, communications and gifts. We are encourage to know that we aren’t alone here in Kigoma!

Life is good here in the dry season. It’s the coolest part of the year, usually topping out around 80 degrees in the day, and dipping as low as the 60s at night! (not going to lie here - we definitely chuckled when we started noticing in the clothes markets that they were hanging all the sweaters and puffy coats and snow beanies. While I still think it’s funny that they bundle so much, I’ve found myself under a sheet, linen bedspread and then adding another heavier blanket at night. We are growing into lily livers. Hope we never feel the need to wear a puffy coat or beanie here, but even after just being here for a year, we’d freeze our extremities off if we were dropped into a northern winter!)

Ministry is consistent, though it feels slow at times. I(Josh) started help leading a Bible study weekly with some new believers in Ujiji, and have been working in the Urgent Care section of the hospital. Rebekah is working with some of our team members to do cake-baking classes (which gives us a great crowd for hearing about the sweetness of Christ) using the charcoal stoves that are the primary cooking implement here.

We had a visitor this month! Cara, my sister(#5/7 kids in our family) came for a couple of months in the beginning of June. It was a wonderful visit! She had some trouble getting here, as the first day she showed up to the airport she found out she was missing a COVID test, because the flight was “transiting” Rwanda. She was able to get on a flight a couple days later. Getting here takes 3 days(2 to travel to Dar es Salaam, and another to get from Dar to Kigoma), and is NOT a trip for the faint of heart. Thankfully, Cara is an experienced traveller and handled the trip with all its snafus very graciously.

While she was here we had lots of game time, hiking, kayaking, lake time, and cliff-jumping. We made a trip 6 hours south by car to Katavi National Park and stayed at a very African hotel. We got to see hundreds of hippos, dozens of elephants, and many other beautiful animals. Later in her stay we(just Cara, Bek and I) took a boat up north to Gombe National Park to see wild chimpanzees. Gombe is where Jane Goodall did her chimp research starting in the 1960’s. Today it is one of the few places where you can see wild chimps(there are only about 1500 left in the world).

Overall it was a blessed time. Just having her here was itself really encouraging and sweet, and she and the boys bonded beautifully. We look forward to more visits from friends and family in the future.

Waiting to see Cara get off the plane

Zeke is a VERY advanced child...

Kayaking to the rocks/caves

Zeke took a bit to warm up, but then they got along famously!

Cara and Judah take the plunge!

The rocks the boys like to jump off of

Down by the Katavi River

The hippo pools

Beautiful waterfall on the way back from Katavi

Hiking in the mountains near Burundi

Katavi river

Half the fun of safari drives is getting to stand up!

This was the hippo who was staying at our hotel. He was a bit shy.

We saw a lot of elephants, and got charged by a few!

waterfall!

Eating fresh passion fruit like the sophisticates we are...

Raindrops keep falling on my...camera.

Boat ride to Gombe

Gaia and her two-year old

Jane's peak, where Goodall would go to spot chimp bands

Cara and Helena really hit it off!

We also picked up another member of our menagerie this month- Louise the kitten. She was abandoned by her mother in the field next-door, so we took her in. She’s been a lot of fun to have around, and is serving as an excellent source of therapy for Rebekah and the boys. I’m sure Bek will have more to add…(Indeed I do. We think she couldn’t have been more than about four weeks when we got her. She was still a little alien looking, bow legged, scrawny, and very clumsy in her attempts to be a terrifying huntress. The first few days we wrapped her in a washcloth to feed her milk from a dropper so she wouldn’t shred or bite us. It took us a while to settle on a name, but “Louise” just seemed to fit. She really is a delight . She’s getting ample attention, is fattening up nicely and is much more coordinated in her running streaks, stare jumping, curtain and couch climbing and ankle attacking bursts of tiny kitten rage. She goes into shred mode and one had better watch their ankles, but on the flip side she’s incredibly social, affectionate and talkative. She has been such a sweet treat and I only sort of crack jokes about her being my therapy animal, because mostly I’m not joking.)

In other animal news, we were driving up towards Burundi to hike, and saw a couple of BIG snakes in the road. We stopped to push them to the shoulder, and Joel asked if we couple pick them up later. On the way back they were still there, so we (literally) threw them on top of the truck and brought them down the mountain. Once we were back we asked my favorite Facebook group to help us ID the snakes and learned they were both Puff Adders. These are a highly venomous snake (and also have the ability to poison well after they’ve died, so it’s a good thing sticks were used to carry them!) found throughout most of Africa, and because of their prevalence, they are responsible for more deaths that any other snake on the continent.
I chopped the heads off with a machete(much harder than I expected), and because we were leaving for Katavi, we put the carcasses in the fridge until we got back. Later in the week Joel and I skinned them (now now. Lets not forget that you put them in the bottom drawer in a semi transparent trash bag, and when we were preparing for dinner one night I reached down to open the bag because I’d forgotten about them and thought perhaps THAT is where I put my newly harvested sweet potatoes. After a squeal, a jump, frantic clapping and whimpering my way out of hysteria, I put my hands in my face and demanded that you remove those nasty danger noodles and deal with them!) and now just have to find some rubbing alcohol to cure them. Then we have to decide what to make from them. They are about 4 feet long and 8 inches wide. Open to suggestions.

She only weighed 12 ounces when we got her.

already considering world domination.

She likes this spot!

All the boys are fond of her!

Big fat danger noodle.

Getting ready to yeet that snake on the roof rack

Skinning time. MUCH easier that the monitor lizard...

Life in Africa continues apace. We DO feel like we are getting the hang of some of the routines, while others still baffle us (like, seriously. How many things can go wrong with our routine/house in one day?! We are being sanctified into being more flexible - I mean, we thought we were flexible before….it’s laughable. Sometimes. The times it’s not laughable right away are when our toilet has created it’s very own geyser, or the water main right outside our bathroom starts watering the sky, or the kitchen faucet launches itself off it’s post, and the pipes under our kitchen sink STILL leak, after being “fixed” now 6 times in 8 months. I laugh about those things shortly after they happen, but it’s more of a nervous laughter, with maybe just a bit of an eye twitch. For anyone that has seen “What about Bob” - “I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful…”).
Below is a hodgepodge of pictures of our experiences in the past month.
We have to sift all our flour here, for a variety of reasons, but the pic of the weevils I got from our whole-wheat flour is one of those reasons. (they don’t even gross me out anymore. In fact, I saw one in the pot this evening when I put popcorn in the oil I was heating up. I looked at it for a few seconds, put the lid on and just waited for the popcorn to pop. Not sure how many bugs we’ve eaten at this point. *insert shrug emoji. It’s just bugs.)
We went to our first African wedding, and part of the tradition is for married couples to get outfits specific to the wedding(all using the SAME fabric). (I was told I would have a dress made that was “like that one you like that one Sunday that the pastors wife was wearing”. Except, I remember loving the fabric, not necessarily the dress itself with it’s long sleeves in heat and humidity. I panicked, looked around the church and pointed to the ONLY woman wearing a short sleeve dress that day - one with a cupcake ruffle top. That was the dress I chose to have made for me, so I wouldn’t have to wear long sleeves in the heat. When we all got our dresses, every single one of them had short sleeves, and then there was mine, with poofy poofy ruffles.)
Rebekah, Kari, and Catherine are working on teaching cake-baking classes as a way to develop relationships. See pics of the progress below.
One other bit of excitement to explain the last picture- our wonderful big stove that we love doesn’t have an automatic light for the oven- you have to light the lower and upper burners with a lighter or match. Rebekah thought she lit both, but must have missed the bottom, so the oven filled up with gas until it reached the top burner(which HAD been lit) and ignited. The resultant explosion was quite alarming, especially since most of the family was in the kitchen to experience the percussive shock!

(Josh forgot this - Judah climbed a tree and rode a Tarzan rope straight into a rock. With his front tooth. Which meant Judah and I took a trip to Dar es Salaam to get his broken tooth repaired. That pic you see down there is Judah and I very excited for our fun food we found at a REALY LIVE GROCERY STORE, that we bought to go along with our pb&j’s that we’d brought from home. I got to wear JEANS, and we both felt very civilized for about 48 hours and we PUSHED SHOPPING CARTS, saw big city buildings and ate sushi right on the ocean. Sadly it was too dark to see the water and tide was out, but we could still smell it!)