April had showers, and May has... showers.

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Hello from the end of the rainy season(rains are late this year!), where our definition of cold has changed to anything requiring more than a sheet at night.

PRUF:
- Please be praying for our language learning- the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know! We’re like a walking/talking example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, hopefully climbing up the Slope of Enlightenment.
-We are praising God for His providential protection as we watched over 12 kids for 12 days. No crises, injuries or illnesses to speak of!
—Please pray with Rebekah and I that the Lord would provide us with National Partners here. This would be another believer who can help us navigate language and culture as we do ministry together.

fsThis has been a busy month- sorry for the late update! This one should be a doozy though, with a lot to report!
We’re ALMOST done with school for the year, which we’re ready for! The boys haven’t had a long break for our a year because of the traveling and the different transitions. We’re all ready for a break!


Before the McDonalds left on their trip, we had a birthday party for Eric. The theme was 80’s, and Rebekah stuck with the theme as she humiliated us all with mullets, neon and jorts.


The boys have also been getting to know some of our neighbor kids better and spend a lot of time playing in the yard together. Below is a picture of two of our neighbors playing duck-duck-goose with the boys, making furniture with Judah, and showing off their coloring in their Easter coloring books(thanks Clevelands for sending them!

We celebrated Easter Sunday with our church here, which was a sweet time together. The highlight was singing hymns acapella while the Lord’s Supper was passed. Later in the day we celebrated with our teammates, which was another sweet time.

In the beginning of April, our team-mates Eric and Heather went to a medical conference in Greece and we watched their 7 kids. With a lot of help, we all survived!

In the middle of being responsible for 12 kids, the biggest news in a while showed up at our gate- our crate of household goods from America arrived!! It’s always a little convicting when we realize how attached we are to things, but MAN are we glad to have this stuff! The unpacking continues, partly because we’re still building storage options for places to put things. But our living room looks like our living room! Much credit to my bride who is in her element figuring out how to get everything organized, functional and beautiful.
We’re especially happy to have our bed, kitchen stuff, and our tools. Just today I was outside working on a bed for Zeke, and didn’t have to go next door or into town to borrow/buy anything!

In ministry, I(Josh) have continued to be active in getting out with the “bucket ministry” that we do for palliative or bed-bound patients. We’re also in the strategy phase of coming up with a plan to use healthcare strategies to assist rural villages with improving care. Rebekah is starting a cake-baking class ministry that a dear friend of ours has used extensively in Dar es Salaam. Finally, we’re working with another organization here to plan a multi-day trip down south along the shores of the lake to survey villages and do medical clinics.

Lots happening! Mungu ni mwema(God is good!). I’ll leave you with a book recommendation. If you’re into missions or missiology, this really is an excellent book. The author doesn’t pull punches in his critique of many modern methods. No Shortcuts to Success

May the Lord bless and keep you all!

Marching on in Tanzania

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Spring has sprung in places with spring, but here in TZ we’re just finishing up the rainy season. Here’s our March update, hot off the press!

Prayer Requests Up Front:
-We’re looking for a homeschool helper to move here for a couple of years under the IMB Journeyman or ISC programs to help lend a hand. If you know of anyone who is thinking about missions and wants a serious adventure, get us in touch! Please be praying that God would provide someone who will be a help and love our kids well.
-Azimio Baptist Church is a partner church here that we love. They are going through some organizational changes, and we’re asking folks to pray for them, their leadership, and their witness in a heavily Muslim town.
-The Kigoma Baptist Hospital is likewise facing some challenges in working with national organizations and the government. We’re trying to get a good plan for moving forward and working there for the glory of God and the good of the people of Kigoma.

We’ve gotten a few packages and letters from the US this month, and they warmed our hearts!! Thanks for the bacon bits and other goodies!

March has been busy and full of lots of thinking and planning for the long term here, all while we are struck by how much of newbies we still are!
We have to remind ourselves that we’ve been in Kigoma for less than 5 months, and that we have YEARS of language and culture learning before we’ll feel a familiarity in this life. Nonetheless, we find ourselves getting frustrated by our ‘slow’ (“slow” as in, we sound like 3 year olds when we are speaking Swahili. Or, at least I do. Josh probably sounds equivalent to a very average 4 year old) progress and antsy to establish fruitful ministry patterns.

This ‘antsy ness’, coupled with our daily language struggle can make for days where you feel like you’ve contributed, accomplished and learned nothing. God has been gracious to remind us of His sovereignty, and reading missionary biographies has helped us to see that in the context of history, we have it pretty easy! Recently we finished a biography on Gladys Alyward (sister was a BOSS!). If you haven’t read or heard her story, you should.

Our storage room is finished! Our friend Onesimus did the general contracting, and will let you know how confident he is in the strength of the building by repeatedly smacking it (kind of like how our friend George in Nairobi would slap cabbages to show you it was a good one for eating). Our crate of goods(including our mixer, bed, and couch!!) from the US is currently parked in a crate off the coast of Dar es Salaam, and scheduled to be unloaded on the 28th of this month (but to clarify, there’s not estimated arrival for here, as it just depends on how much they feel like rifling through our stuff, and if they decide they feel like they want to make a stink about something in the crate and hold it hostage like they did with our team mates crate). Now we’ll have a place to put the woodworking tools we brought. We’re excited to settle in a little further, and ditch the loaner couches we’ve been using!

This month we had a couple scary incidents in the neighborhood, and discovered in discussions with the police and local authorities that our area isn’t terribly safe. We’re balancing trusting in God to provide what we need and being prudent(innocent as doves/shrewd as serpents, if you will). We’ve gone to 24hr guards at the house and got another dog(because nothing says security like a 3 month-old German Shepherd who just wants to be pet)

The boys are on track to finish the homeschool year in April/May. It’s been a challenging year for Elijah as he’s had to teach himself most of his subjects with minimal outside help/input. We’re looking at enrolling him in an online accredited high school next year to help with some of the instruction and accountability with scheduling. The other boys plan on continuing with My Father’s World next year, which is great because they can do it together.

At over 3 years old, Zeke is finally potty trained (that’s sort of a “mostly”, which is better than not at all)! Diapers are not cheap here, so we’re looking forward to saving some money, and WHO DOESN’T LOVE LITTLE BOYS IN UNDERPANTS? Pics of various “ZekeWasHere”, Potty Training Edition below.

The new dog is named Aldi, keeping with the theme of things we miss from America. Aldi was our favorite grocery store! She’s a sweet GSD who is getting along great with Nonny.

Cultural tidbit:
In this family focused culture, women and men(but more often women) are referred to as Mama ______, where the blank is filled in by their kids’(usually the oldest) name. Rebekah has chosen to go by Mama Tano, which is catching on slowly, and Heather introduces herself as Mama B(all SEVEN of their kids’ names start with B).
One piece of advice a seasoned missionary to West Africa gave me was to keep referring to Bek by her first name, to avoid sending a message that her identity is summed up in her role as a mother alone.

We also noticed the first time we attended a local church that the men and women sit on separate sides of the church, or plot of land or wherever they are meeting. Children are most often with the women, and are often passed around from one woman to another, making it difficult to tell who’s baby is who’s. Our first experience at a village church here I noticed 3 different woman all nurse the same baby. I still have no idea who the mother of that baby was. Talk about “it takes a village”!

That’s it for March! If you want to come and visit or partner with us in some way, send me an email at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com.

We put some videos and other content at our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1072012219992846

If you want to give, go to www.IMB.org/give. You can donate directly to our team by putting our names(Storey) and our affinity(SSAP) in the dropdown.

Please keep us in your prayers!


February update: Then anew this song we'll sing

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Prayer Requests Up Front:

-We’re still in malaria season here in TZ. Kids and pregnant women are at the highest risk. Pray for those affected, healthcare workers, and for research efforts in combating one of the deadliest infections in history.
-Please pray for our evangelism work, we have seen a number of decisions to follow Christ over the past couple weeks- praise God for his faithfulness in drawing these souls to Himself! We are trying to faithfully disciples recent converts as they start to follow Jesus.
-We are working to develop relationships with national partners- we need the Lord to help us with our language and cultural competency for this important task!
-Our crate of household goods is slowly making its way across the oceans and seas. We’re praying it gets here without customs issues in a timely manner.

This update is full of good news! (Rebekah’s inserts will be left in italic and parenthesis) First, we want to thank all of you who have supported us on this crazy journey! We have received dozens of letters/messages/packages/videos/etc (Rebekah here with a confession: I have a bag of hot tamales hidden in my room to eat all by myself. They were sent in a care package and the boys never saw that they existed. Do I hide them because the boys don’t like them? No. I hide them because I LOVE them and sometimes when I’m really stressed out and can’t get a functional Swahili work out of my mouth to effectively communicate, I sit back here and eat them one by one, while staring straight forward and talking to no one and thinking of nothing) that are more encouraging than you know! God’s grace is poured out on us through all of you, and we are thankful. Thanks also for your prayers- please continue to intercede for us before the throne of grace! (The prayers of the righteous are heard and that has been more apparent in this season of our lives on a person level than in any other!)

February has seen us learning a bit more of a routine. We still feel as though we’re in “Fundi Phase”, where we are trying to get the house fixed up, but have little expertise and less tools, so we have to have workers in our house/yard nearly every day. This gets exhausting, but we feel like we’re getting close to reducing the intrusions. (With this season has come the absolute necessity to wear a long skirt or dress every day, regardless of wether I am planning to walk out my front door or not. Our large windows and layout of our yard around the house makes it very easy to see in all windows, and because we stand out and are apparently interesting to look at, I have to be very careful about my attire. Make no mistake, on the days where there are no Tanzanians, I do happy dances my shorts!)

School continues to plug along as Rebekah has taken back over the significant majority of the teaching duties. I(Josh) am still teaching some of the math and science, but unlike when we were in Nairobi, Bek has to do almost all the other teaching. (In the States when he was working 24 hour shifts 6 times a month, we said homeschooling with the ages we have and Zeke being….Zeke is a 1 1/2 person job. That was with all the modern conveniences of consistently working electricity, plumbing, quick access to ready to eat food, lack of red sand that sprouts legs and walks into the house and mysteriously deposits itself around the house the instant the floors have been cleaned…..You get the point. Here, homeschooling is very much a two person job, and we are doing it still as 1 1/2 people with Josh’s new schedule. We are praying the job description for a “homeschool helper” for us will be filled soon! Please pray for that with us!)

We’ve begun to focus some of our ministry efforts on a nearby town called Ujiji. Ujiji is majority Muslim right now, and needs the light of the gospel! We start by doing lots of prayer walking, having a lot of conversations, and mapping the area. We are also partnering with what may be the only solid church in the town, Azimio Baptist Church, to do evangelism and discipleship training.

A few weeks after we got COVID we got the Moderna booster, so that Rebekah can be considered fully vaccinated and avoid travel restrictions. I had a sore arm for a day. Rebekah basically (there was nothing basic about it) felt like she had COVID all over again. I’m telling you, I don’t know WHY God chose to give me a vastly superior immune system, but I’m glad He did! (blah blahblah blah blah….I felt like I was going to die, and the biggest down side is that he wasn’t on quarantine with me this time, so I went it alone all week while he pulled his normal hours out of the house. But it’s ok, because I get to have another in two weeks!)

Pictures below with descriptions:

Adventures in food

If you know Rebekah, you know that she loves to create beautiful and delicious things. As we’ve begun to settle in more, she’s starting to enjoy baking and cooking a little more, and when she has this creative outlet, we all have full bellies! The past month has been full of delicious treats. My favorite moment was on Valentine’s Day, when she made donuts, but mistakenly quadrupled (HOW? You may ask? Because JOSH distracted me with his chattering in the kitchen when I was mixing up the dough) the shortening, so had to quadruple the recipe, so had a dough explosion, and kept our entire team updated live with pictures and texts! Her mistake was definitely our gain as we shared the bounty with all our friends and neighbors.

Building project

We’ve continued to work on an outbuilding for storage and shop-type things. Our friend and local pastor Onesimus has been helping to coordinate the work, which is a blessing, because we know NOTHING about building in Africa. It’s coming along nicely! Should be completed in the next couple of weeks. The boys have enjoyed watching it come together, and helping the guys working. (And we can’t forget Zeke’s contribution of playing in piles of wet cement.)

Malaria season continues, and we had a cholera outbreak last month in a local village that is dying down.
I started working in the OB ward more this month, and found myself feeling like a fish out of water. This was partly due to the fact that they have plenty of Tanzania docs on that ward, so no one was looking to me to solve all the problems, but also partly because peripartum management (before, during and after labor for those of us who have NO idea what “peripartum” means) here is markedly different from a resource-rich place like the US. There are no fetal monitoring systems, no IV pumps(calculating Pitocin by drops per minute?), no high-risk referrals, no neonatal warmers/incubators, limited neonatal resuscitation supplies, no anesthesia(except ketamine for c-section), etc. As a response, the medical approach is either creative use of limited resources or in some cases, doing nothing.

Maternal mortality in TZ is 578/100,000 births(compared to 20 in the US). This is due to a variety of factors, and has not changed significantly over the past 20 years.
Infant mortality is sobering: 36/1000 live births(compared to 5.6 US). that’s 3.6% of live births. This means that infant death is simply accepted as part of the birth process. The frequency of this occurrence leads the significantly different attitudes about care and expectations, even expectations of staff members/physicians.

All that to say, the culture shock continues whether I’m in my yard talking to a neighbor or at the hospital trying to learn the system. Appreciate your prayers!

On a separate not, sometimes I like to walk into the hospital and imagine if I were to transport some of my more “fastidiously retentive” nurse colleagues over here to take a gander at our facilities. I know a few of you(you know who you are!) who would lose your MINDS to see some of the practices. Two examples below:
I went in to watch a c-section the other day, and the OR staff was insistent that I change my shoes to the “clean” surgery shoes(a collection of mismatched plastic clogs that sit outside the sterile area. I happily change, having been an Infection Control Guy in a former life. But I began to question the utility of our footwear practices when I entered the OR and stepped into standing water on the floor mixed with dirt and discarded supplies. And the air conditioner doesn’t look like the kind of thing you want blowing air over your surgical site…
The second picture is of a bag of blood with tubing already attached thawing in the sink. In malaria season(especially in a sickle-cell heavy population), our blood needs are significant. But this bag of blood will sit in this sink for 20 minutes, then get plugged into the patient’s IV, hopefully after being wiped down with some methylated alcohol.

Practice here will be a constant struggle to try to make important changes without burning bridges or fighting to take insignificant hills.

That’s it for the update this month. It was a long one! (When I wrote one of the first ones, almost a year ago, he asked me if he could do them so he could be straight forward and concise with a few prayer related items…) Here are some other ways to stay in touch and support us:
-Send a letter! They aren’t expensive and don’t have to clear customs! our address is:
Storey Family
Box 1155
Kigoma, Tanzania

-Join our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1072012219992846/

-Give financially at www.imb.org/give

January, 2022: New Year Update

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Hela Mwaka Mpya!! Rebekah and I pray that this update finds you well and leaning into a new year filled with the new mercies of the Lord!

PRUF:

-Recovery from COVID- both Bek and I were struck with the blight this week. In typical fashion I felt tired for a couple days (Rebekah here. I’m on here editing this before posting and saw this and just want to say hold on JUST A MINUTE - Josh was acting REALLY weird! Stranger than I’ve ever seen him act, ever! He was miserable. It may not have lasted more than a short whiff of time, but he was definitely more than “tired for a couple days”. Just wanted to set that record straight!) , then recovered, while Rebekah continues to feel like she got hit by a truck. She is recovering, but slowly. We pray that the virus doesn’t spread outside the house, especially to our more vulnerable friends and team-mates.
-Friends A and O: these are two guys of Muslim background that I(Josh) have been talking to a lot and sharing the gospel with regularly. Please pray they would find answers to their questions and come to see Christ as the Way!
-Home-life: Rebekah continues to struggle to find a rhythm here in Africa. There are a variety of reasons for this, but please pray for: enriching relationships with women here; increasing comfort in running a household in a new place, and confidence in the calling to be here.
-Ministry goals: this month has been one of setting goals for the year. As we continue to learn language and culture, we also are planning and casting vision for what long-term work we can be starting now. We need wisdom and knowledge as we try to figure this “missionary thing” out!

What a month! My last update was on Dec 20, and since then:
- Rebekah turned 39, and we had a little family party to celebrate. The boys and I made her a Psych-themed towel hanger, which was a hit.

-We celebrated Christmas, which was a rough day for us. There were some COVID exposures, so our team Christmas dinner was cancelled, and we were definitely feeling the homesickness that day! We made the best of it, had dinner with the McDonalds, and got to open some sweet gifts sent to us from abroad. Thanks SO much to those of you that sent cards, pics and gifts. They mean more than we can say! We are trying to learn how to do traditions here- melding together what we hold dear from the past without making ourselves crazy trying to recreate US culture. Certainly haven’t found that balance yet. The lack of language is part of the challenge, as we would love to celebrate with our brothers and sisters here in Africa, but still can’t follow along with the services.

-We took a trip to Dar Es Salaam for restocking, medical visits and vacation. What a sweet trip! Pics and more description below.

-Luke turned 8! What a joy this guy is! He’s mischievous and fun, and always down to play. He’s a relational chameleon and loves to play practical jokes and tell riddles. We celebrated with our dear friends the Lees, who went out of their way to give him a really special party and cake. We’re so grateful for them!

-We returned from our trip and got back to work. The next week, a missionary friend of ours tragically died due to a sudden illness. She went downhill very quickly, and due to the limited resources here, she didn’t survive to get on the medievac plane. Her death was a stark reminder of the risks of living in a place like this. I’ll write more about the medical aspect below, but she might well have survived in a different context. Julie knew that Kigoma is a risky place to live, but chose to come here anyway out of obedience. She counted the cost of obedience, and knew that Jesus is worth it.

-We’re trying to figure out what ministry here looks like. One outreach we do is a ministry to invalid or palliative patients. We will visit them at home, share the gospel, and give them a 5 gallon bucket with palliative care supplies(bedding, cleaning supplies, hygiene items, etc). This is a great way to meet physical needs and develop relationships with a community.

-We got COVID- apparently all the cool kids are doing it. Honestly don’t know where- possibly during traveling to Dar Es Salaam. We’re doing well, and suspect it was the Omicron variant.

-We started work on a back patio and an outbuilding. Our house doesn’t have much in the way of storage, so we’ve found it difficult to fit things thus far, and know that when our crate gets here it’ll be worse. We also will need a place to put tools, etc. So our pastor friend Onesimus is helping us to build a garage/storage room in the back corner and laying down a back patio. We hope to have many a shin-dig on the back patio in this idyllic weather and Rebekah has dreams of outdoor living space decorating dancing through her head. It’ll also provide a really peaceful area for morning quiet time.

-In the coming months we’ll be trying to progress in language, develop a rhythm for ministry and life, and I(Josh) will be completing an orientation to the hospital. Thanks for your prayers!

We took a week long trip to Dar es Salaam to visit our friends the Lees, stock up on some supplies that we can’t get in Kigoma, and do a medical visit. The first afternoon there we went to the beach and randomly ran into a missionary couple from here in Kigoma, Harold and Coni. It was a truly providential encounter, and the next day we spent the day with them at an island off the coast. We had a blast, and they really were a blessing to us. They’ve been in TZ for nearly 20 years and are so encouraging to talk to! They also really loved the boys well, which was sweet. We look forward to continuing our relationship with them as partners for the gospel in Kigoma!
We stayed at a guesthouse in Dar that is right next-door to the Lees. Richard and Karen were our trainers(Missionaries In Residence) at our big training in Virginia before we came to the field. They have an incredible amount of experience on the field and are pros at navigating Tanzanian culture. Our visit with them was so refreshing and sweet! We did some big city things like visiting the waterpark, going to the movies, and out to dinner(sushi!). We are so thankful to have people like Richard and Karen to mentor us along as we struggle to figure this life/job/thing out!

Lastly, a medical note, for those that care:

The month I saw some MORE crazy stuff at the hospital, including bacterial meningitis in.a 14 year-old(did great), a cholera outbreak(ongoing), and endocarditis with a 1.7cm(and growing) mitral valve vegetation. The challenges in practicing here are numerous. For example, we weren’t able to do blood cultures on the patient with endocarditis(though we tried!), so you’re left guessing on an antibiotic regimen that the patient will have to continue for 4 weeks. We went with Penicillin in the hospital, and since the patient didn’t fever again, we assumed that we were dealing with a susceptible strep species, and did ceftriaxone for her outpatient injections. In another context she would have operative options, but the only place in the country that could do the surgery is Dar, a 3 day trip, and the cost is completely prohibitive.
The limitations were especially obvious with our friend who passed- she presented with classic signs of sepsis, but the antibiotic availability here is very limited. We suspect she had Gram- sepsis, and the coverage with amoxicillin/clavulanate and gentamicin didn’t do the trick. The bigger hospital in town does have ventilators, but the personnel don’t know how to use them.
In the medical system here, you have to pay for everything before you receive care. The doctor may see you in the ER and order some lab tests, but you need to go to the cashier and pay for the labs and then take that receipt to the lab in order to get them completed. This is a huge adjustment coming from a US system where you give care first, worry about payment later. It also can be frustrating to order a lab, imaging or even treatment for a patient, only to come in the next day and find that it wasn’t done because the patient can’t afford it.

I’m learning the system bit by bit, and look forward to taking a more educational role in the future, and to shore up some of the hospital processes to provide a higher-standard of care.

That’s it for the update this month! Thanks for taking the time to read, and may God bless your new year!

If you want to support us financially, go to www.imb.org/give or email us m28storeyfam@gmail.com
If you want to get this newsletter in your email, let me know at m28storeyfam@gmail.com
If you want to send us a letter(which we LOVE!), our address is:
Storey Family
Box 1155
Kigoma, Tanzania

December: O Come, Emmanuel!

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, from the rainy season in TZ!

PRUF:
-Praise God that we are feeling more settled in, and starting to figure out life here. As Bek has put it: “I don’t hate it here EVERY day…” This truly is a praise, and a prayer request the so called “ticket days”(so named because if you had a ticket on that day you would get on a plane!) grow fewer and farther between.
-Praise God for our growth in language, but we’re definitely realizing how much we have yet to learn here. Please keep praying for our language acquisition, humility in learning, and perseverance!
-The holiday season certainly reminds us of what we’re missing back in the States. Please pray for comfort and a reminder that the true significance of Christmas is the reason we’re here in Africa in the first place!
-As we begin to settle in, we are thinking more and more about what ministry in Kigoma looks like long-term. We need wisdom to plan our steps here!

December brought the start of the rainy season, and folks have said it will last for a few more months. It’s wonderful! It rains almost daily, but usually for only an hour or two at a time, and it cools the temperature by at least 15 degrees every time it moves in. The crops are shooting up and everything is turning green!

I(Josh) started at the hospital in November, shadowing Dr. Pepper(on the adult ward) and Dr. Meggie(on the pediatric ward) for a couple of weeks each, then Meggie went back to the states unexpectedly, and I covered the pediatric ward solo for a couple weeks. The pathology and severity of disease here is incredible. In the first week I saw cases that I had only ever read about in textbooks, like:
-Organophospate poisoning
-PJP pneumonia and diffuse Kaposi’s sarcomas in an AIDS patient
-Severe malnutrition with kwashiorkor, and severe malnutrition with marasmus
-Encephalopathic malaria
-Cholera
The time on the wards was simultaneously interesting and terrifying- really highlighting just how much I have to learn about everything!!

We celebrated Thanksgiving twice- once with the expat community here, and once with the team. We roasted a turkey that we brought frozen from Nairobi, which was an indescribable treat(as far as we know, there is no word for turkey in Swahili). This month Rebekah has been striving valiantly to make the season feel Christmasy. Some our holiday activities can be found in the gallery below, including Salt-dough ornaments, Jesse Tree ShrinkDinks, a home-made stick Christmas Tree, gingerbread house contests. We’ve also been working through the cinematic classics like The Polar Express(3/5 stars), Miracle on 34th Street(4/5), White Christmas(5/5), Elf(5/5) and the Muppet’s Christmas Carol(5/5). What are your Christmas movie favorites?

Part of our settling in included planting a garden. We got help from our dayworkers(we have a rotating schedule with the men who also function as our night-guards). Here’s a crazy stat- 80% of Tanzanians are subsistence farmers. Nearly open green space here is planted by someone, with something. As a results, just about everyone knows how to farm and grow a lot of food, because most of the Tanzanians you meet have to farm to survive, and have since they were young. The most common crops to see is maize, the primary staple. We brought a variety of seeds from Nairobi, so we’ll see what we can get to grow here.
On the flip side, sometimes you assume that locals know things and regret taking their word for it: we have a large Traveller’s Palm in the front yard, and it had a number of dead fronds hanging. We planned to go at them with a machete, but one of our guys recommended setting the lower branches on fire, reassuring us that they burn out before they can do any damage to the living parts of the tree. One large fire and a week of steady rain later, and it looks like the palm may not make it, but the fire was impressive. After a minute or two of burning, the sap/water from inside the truck built up pressure to come out like a hose! We’ll see if it’ll make it…

One of the ministry outlets we have joined in here is “Buckets”. This is a ministry of making house calls to housebound or bed bound people to distribute Send Relief buckets, a kit with a variety of supplies useful in caring for an ailing person(such as gloves, bed pads, vaseline and lip balm, etc). We’re able to shard the good news of Jesus with people in their homes and minister to their physical needs at the same time. It’s been a blessing to go and meet with people, some of whom have been abandoned by society. One picture below is of a lady who is bed bound after a severe stroke(unfortunatley, “wait and see” is really the only treatment for stroke here). Picture is shared with permission.

That’s it for this update. We are praying for you all, that you would experience the grace, peace, hope and love of our Savior this season! We are celebrating with you that His life, death and resurrection for our salvation started in that manger 2000 years ago!

One last thing- this is the season of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, the annual gift that supports missionaries like us all over the world. The remarkable thing about the LMCO is that 100% of giving goes directly to support work like ours- all administrative costs are covered through other income streams. So if you want to support us and those like us, consider making a year end donation here: Lottie Moon

November: Tumefika! We have arrived!

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November update:

PRUF:
- This transition has been even harder than we anticipated. Please continue to pray that we will adjust to life here in Kigoma, and thrive where God has planted us.
-The language is coming- please pray that we would have ears to hear and understand, and the ability to remember all the new words we’re learning!
-The boys always need prayer as they are going through a lot of change, and vacillate between elation at being here and living next to good friends, and deep sorrow for all we’ve left behind.
-Please lift up the Kigoma(Ha peoples) Team as we seek to impact this region for Christ. So much good work is happening here, but we know that there continues to be vast “lostness” in this area. Please pray that we would be wise in our strategy, and faithful to carry out the task!

It brings be great joy to report that we are here in Kigoma! We left Nairobi as anticipated on Sunday morning, Oct24. Our team leaders Larry and Sally Pepper drove up to Nairobi from Kigoma(a rough 3-day trip), picking up our assigned TZ vehicle in Arusha along the way. They arrived late afternoon on Saturday. We spent Saturday evening packing and installing a trailer-light kit on one of the Land Cruisers so we could pull the trailers the next day. Shout out to my dear brother George, who came over to help us get the kit installed!

We began to pull out of the driveway on Sunday morning before 7, then realized our assigned Land Cruiser didn’t have rear seatbelts. After another hour we were able to locate some extra belts, and get them installed. Then we were off! We drove to Babati, TZ on the first day, crossing the border with relative ease(thanks for the prayers!). We drove to Tabora, TZ the second day, then into Kigoma on Tuesday the 26th. Our team met us at the house to help us unload and share a meal together.

The second night here I(Josh) experienced a spiritual attack through the night, leaving me uncharacteristically anxious, fearful, and down. Definitely a first for me! I’m so thankful for our friends and family here and back in the states who encouraged me and our family during those rough couple of days. Thankfully, I know that we needn’t fight those spiritual battles, but rather have a Savior who has already won the victory. He has been faithful over the past couple weeks to gently restore me and encourage me through His Word, prayer, and fellowship with brothers and sisters. Thanks again to those who prayed/continue to pray for us. We cannot express our thanks adequately.

The past couple weeks have been spent learning a LOT. We’re discovering how very different it is to live in Kigoma. Most mundane tasks here take much longer than even in Nairobi. From shopping in the convoluted and seemingly random markets(3h) to sorting/debugging beans(2h) to completing immigration paperwork(7 separate visits to 5 different offices) to getting a SIM card(3 shops, 20 fingerprints), it is an adjustment! We’ll try to include a little cultural moment in each newsletter to share a little bit of what we’re learning with you all.

Leaving Nairobi was hard- we’ll miss the friends we made there and the church we were blessed to be a part of, if only for a short time. We will NOT miss the traffic or the sprawl, though! The traffic in Kigoma is mostly bajaji(tuktuks), the three wheeled taxis common here. Hardly a matatu(medium/large public transportation bus) to be seen terrorizing the streets!

The coming month will continue to be one of transition and change as we try to establish a routine here in Kigoma that is conducive to ministry. Our job description is that of church planters. We are here to see the glory of God proclaimed in Western Tanzania, specifically to those who are unreached. We will use “healthcare strategies” to work towards that end. In a developing nation like TZ, healthcare continues to be a very resource-poor sector, so providing healthcare for low or no-cost is a wonderful way to meet physical needs while making spiritual connections.
On Monday I(Josh) will start shadowing my colleagues at the Kigoma Baptist Hospital, beginning the daunting task of learning conversational Swahili, medical Swahili and tropical medicine simultaneously. I could use your prayers for that task! I anticipate it will be the most challenging intellectual task I’ve tackled since med school.

Rebekah and Heather(team-mate and neighbor) are talking about what ministry looks like for them as the home-makers and primary educators for our families. They’ve been able to share to gospel with ladies they are meeting in the local markets, and we’re praying about a ministry to the kids/families in our neighborhood.

The boys are adjusting well. The McDonald family are our next door neighbors, and beat us here by a few months. The kids have loved having great friends just a (easy-to-climb) wall away.

We had two birthdays this month- Zeke turned 3 on the 2nd and Judah turned 12 on the 5th. We celebrated with birthday breakfasts, and our team leader Sally Pepper cooked a big birthday dinner and cake for the boys. It was a sweet time with our new friends here, and the boys felt really loved!

Cultural Moment:

Tanzanians are wonderful people. Relationships are of highest priority, and one way that this manifests is the greeting culture. If we go to run errands, we find that it can take literally twice as long as we might expect because of the expectation/practice of greeting. You are expected to greet nearly everyone that you come in contact with- whether you know them or not. People that we have met before tend to take even longer to visit, because you will discuss any shared experience/previous conversation. While it extends your trips, you truly begin to establish strong connections with the people in your community.
Example from the other day: Rebekah and I were looking for a mirror for the house, and she had seen one in a little plumbing duka(shop) in town. I had been in this duka once before to buy some materials for the house.
When we enter, we greet Norbet, the owner and his wife Rehema who is in the shop with him. We ask how they are individually, how their day is going, how their work is, and how their children are.
They reciprocate with similar questions. They ask how we are doing with moving to town.
We respond well, and ask about business, which they say is good.
They then compliment us on our Swahili, and we spend another couple of minutes saying that we feel like it is coming slowly, but they reassure us that we are better now than we were last week.
Eventually, we get around to asking about the mirror, which they have in stock.
We talk about the new house for a couple of minutes, and how we are liking it. We compliment them on their shop and the many nice things they have for sale there.
We pay for the mirror and then wish them a good day in a couple of different ways.
They invite us to come back again, which we promise to do, and then leave, waving goodbye as we walk away.

This whole exchange takes at least 10 minutes, versus a 2 minute trip to buy a mirror and leave. Just yesterday I was lamenting the task-driven culture of the West with another duke-owner, telling him of the idiom: “Americans have the watches, but Africans have the time”.

This is one aspect of our new culture that we’re enjoying getting used to!

That’s the update for this month! I have some info on mailing items and supporting us below:

Mailing Items:
Many of you have asked about sending us letters or packages, so here’s what we’re learning here:

Our address:
(name)
PO Box 1155
Kigoma, Tanzania
(Seriously, that’s it. No other numbers or anything!)
1. Letters or padded envelopes get here in a few weeks and are welcome! Small/medium padded envelopes fit in our PO Box, which means we don’t have to pay a fee for storing them like we do for packages.
2. Boxes are very expensive to mail($80-140), but if you’d like to send us a care package, we’ve learned a few things:
-Minimize the value on the customs form. Anything valued over $50 gets a bigger fee. Put the value of the items as what you might pay for the items at a garage sale…
-American candies are a treat, as are pepperoni/sausage, drink mixes and cheese powder. A more robust list of “things we miss” can be provided on request. ;)
-Address the package to one of the boys. If we get two packages under the same name they charge a higher fee.
-Don’t write “toys” or “gift” on the customs form- don’t lie, but be creative in your description. Those items specifically are charged at a higher rate. Notably, the fees are completely arbitrary and based on the mood/greed of the customs agent that day.

How you can support us:

-Pray!!
-Send us emails/texts/voice memos
-Give at www.imb.org/give **100% of Lottie Moon gifts go directly to missionaries overseas
-Come visit! Email me for more info @ M28StoreyFam@gmail.com

October Update: times, they are a changin'

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We are another month into our African adventure, and have some new developments to report!

Praises and Prayer Requests Up Front:
-Our house in Kigoma is move-in ready! Praise God for the tireless work of our team there, and for no major snags in the process!
-We have work visas!! My(Josh) medical work permit was approved! Please continue to pray for the rest of our paperwork to come through in a timely manner!
-We have a move date! Mungu akipenda(Lord willing), we will drive down to Kigoma with our team leads on Oct24(picture below of our sweet TZ ride). Please pray for travel safety and mercy during our three day trip through the bush.
-Transition-palooza. This year has been long and rough. God has so patiently walked alongside us in this season and given us all we need. We pray we will keep our affections focused on His glory, and remember the Supremacy of Christ as we move yet again.

This month we didn’t go to the beach, or on safari. We’ve been home-bodies, which suits us fine! Some highlights(gallery below):
-We went to see George be ordained, which was a cultural exeperience, to be sure! A number of governments in East Africa are beginning to require increasing oversight over churches, in an effort to crack-down on the many “churches” that exist simply to fill the pockets of the “pastor”. Being ordained will allow George the regulatory cover he needs to appoint elders to care for the church while he’s gone(visiting the US for a few months).
- As a memento of our time in Nairobi, we used some of our tax-return money to have a wool rug handmade at a local shop. Rebekah picked out the pattern, and Judah got to try out the loom when they visited the shop
-A pre-TZ trip to the optometrist revealed that the three older boys all need reading glasses. They look pretty good, we think!
-When Rift Valley Academy had a mid-term break we went up to visit Grayse. Grayse is the youngest child of the Sager family, our team-mates in Kigoma. We got to bring her some off-campus contraband food, chat a good spell, and see the beautiful campus! RVA is a MK boarding school that has been serving the missionaries of East/SubSaharan Africa for over 100 years!

We’ve spent a lot of time at home and around the compound. The kids have been soaking up time with their friends the Rivers, who live here on the compound long term.
Wresting is a favorite past-time, and outside the activity at the moment is fort-building. Judah labored for a couple weeks on a backyard house, complete with drawbridge, sandbox, and table/chairs.
We’ve enjoyed walking up the street to the Choma Zone, an outdoor canteen where you can buy lunch for less than $2 a plate. The maduka(shops) grill goat, beef and chicken, and serve with chapati, Ugali or rice. We are a bit of a spectacle, but always have a great time. These canteens are very common throughout East Africa, and there is a cultural significance.*
As our time with George(language conversant) and Phoebe(house-sister) comes to a close, we are so grateful that God provided these friendships for us here in Nairobi. They have been invaluable in helping us to learn more Swahili and Kenyan culture- truly a blessing from the Lord.

I think that wraps it up for us this month. Thanks everyone for your prayers. Next update will be from Kigoma where Lord willing, we will have begun to see what it looks like to begin putting out hand to the plow amongst our people!

May the Lord bless and keep you all,

Josh

Questions about Going, Sending or Giving?
www.imb.org/give
m28StoreyFam@gmail.com

*David Maranz writes:

The spirit of sharing resources extends to eating patterns. Working men and women do not carry lunches from home to the workplace in order to economize on food costs. Neither do single men make breakfast or other meals at their places of lodging. They typically have coffee with milk and bread spread with mayonnaise, but at one of the convenient canteens found throughout a city. It is of course more expensive to purchase breakfast in this way than it would be to fix it at home. Again, the reasons for this behavior are complex:
(1) people don’t want to eat alone, preferring to eat with friends;
(2) the profit margins at these coffee and meal canteens are moderate, and the daily savings in doing it yourself would not be great;
(3) there is the sentiment that those men and women who operate coffee and meal stands also need to make a living, which becomes an unspoken, “I am showing solidarity with them and helping them, while it is much more convenient and less hassle for me while I do so”;
(4) the idea of a bag lunch, that is, a cold meal, is unknown and would not be attractive if suggested; and
(5) a goal of economizing in order to save (put away) money is unrealistic. So there is little incentive to follow future preference. If one manages to accumulate a surplus, others will be sure to have immediate needs that require those resources.

September Update

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PRUF:
-Language learning: we need motivation and discipline to study even when it’s hard or tiresome! We need an ear to hear the language, and memory to keep the new vocabulary in our melons.
-Homeschool is going well. We need patience to teach, even when the students(or teachers) wake up on the wrong side of the bed. We also pray that the boys would be developing a love for learning and understanding the world our Creator has given us stewardship over.
-Moving to TZ is taking an little longer than we hoped, but God is sovereign over all the details. We do have a contract approved, now we are praying that the renovations would be on schedule(projected to take 3 weeks).
-Homesickness is real and hard! Missing birthdays, holidays and get-togethers really highlight the cost of what we’re doing in Africa, and we need the grace and peace that only God can provide. We also need to remember that our motivation is ultimately the glory of God proclaimed among the nations!
-Teaming is going to be something we need a ton of prayer for. The Kigoma team is growing by leaps and bounds, and adding personnel is bound to raise some challenges. We love our team-mates and want to be proactively praying and working towards God-glorifying relationships on our team!

Rebekah and I pray this update finds you well! God has continued to sustain us through the last month, and we are ever-thankful for the blessing of new life in Christ!

The last month has been one of routine. Here’s our typical daily schedule:
-0600-0630, Rebekah and I wake up, read and pray, get ready for the day
-0630, I wake Elijah up to study(by his request)
-0730, other boys are up, breakfast, clean up
-0830, Phoebe arrives to help with childcare, George arrives to start Swahili conversation with Bek.
-0900, School day starts with the middle 3
-1000, Bek and I swap places- I start conversation with George while she takes over with the boys
-1130-1300, we finish conversation, make, eat and clean up lunch. Zeke goes down for a nap, other boys read for quiet time.
-1300-1600, formal language class online with instructor based in Dar es Salaam, TZ.
-1600-1700, make supper
-1700-1830, eat and clean up
-1900, Zeke goes to bed
-2030, lights out for the older 4
We’re enjoying the routine, but do look forward to the weekends when we have the house to ourselves and can spend time as a family. We love having George and Phoebe to help us, but having someone in your house 5 days a week gets draining!

We got the opportunity to meet up with the McDonald family at the Masai Mara at the beginning of September. It was a last minute plan because their kids didn’t get residency papers before their visas ran out(visa-type issues are just part of the life in missions!), so they drove up to Kenya to renew their tourist visas. We spent three nights at Sekenani camp at the Mara and did 5 game drives. We saw a ton of animals(right now is the Great Migration), and spent some really fun times with the McDonalds. It was a bucket-list kind of trip, and we’re so blessed to be able to drive 4 hours to do it!

We have a contract on the house in Kigoma! They should be starting renovation work this week, which means we should be a matter of weeks away from heading down to join the team. We’ll send out an update as soon as we get a firm travel date. In the mean time we’re trying to finish up our Swahili grammar and test out of language so that we have more flexibility in our time. Language learning will continue(language and culture are two primary objective during our first 3-4 years), but once we’re immersed in TZ we hope to pick it up faster!

Many of you heard about the generator project at Kigoma Baptist Hospital and gave generously! We’ve seen an outpouring of support for this vital project and we’re very close to being able to purchase the new machine(our team leaders are securing a couple other funding sources). Thanks for all who prayed for and/or gave towards the project!

Finally, a cultural moment: I’ve been reading the book African Friends and Money Matters, a sociological study that is considered a classic must-read for new missionaries on the field. It’s full of helpful nuggets about typical or common African culture, often contrasted with Western practices. If you are interested at all in African culture, or simply in how deeply our own cultural practices are ingrained, this is a must-read.
One helpful consideration I read this month was about clothing. Coming from a Western culture, my understanding of clothing is largely personal. That is, I consider clothing to communicate information about myself/my family to the people around me or the environments that I’m in. For example, I might not bother to put on anything special when I go buy groceries, because I consider that a mundane trip, and if I dress up it might communicate that I consider myself important or communicate pride. Conversely, if I’m going out to dinner with Rebekah I might dress up to demonstrate that I consider our date a special occasion or that I’m honored to be in her presence.
Typically in African culture, the way one dresses communicates attitudes about the people or environments being visited. To dress too causally is taken as a lack of respect for the person or place being visited. In a context like Kigoma, immodesty is considered similarly.
That’s why tomorrow, Fred the tailor is coming over to deliver my preaching suit. When we visit African churches(even those that are more Westernized), we never see a pastor/elder/deacon up in front of the church without a suit on. I didn’t pack one, but our experience here has led me to believe that I should have a suit to wear when the occasion calls for it, in order to communicate respect and honor.
We’ll never be Tanzanian, but one of the goals in contextualization is to break down as many culture barriers as our conscience allows to “build bridges of trust that can bear the weight of the gospel”. This is what Jesus did when He walked the earth with us, and we hope to faithfully follow Him in obedience!

That’s the update! Thanks for your support and prayers! Hopefully my October update will have a Tanzanian postmark!

How to support us:

Prayer
We are grateful that so many of you have expressed a desire to support our family in this adventure! The most important way you can support us is through your prayers. James 5 tells us that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective- we need you to regularly pray for our family, our team, our people groups, and the accomplishment of the Great Commission!
Some helpful resources we’ve found:
-The Joshua Project gives prayer prompts for the Unreached People Group of the day.
-The IMB Pray app gives you a variety of prompts for regular prayer for missions
-The PrayerMate app is designed to help you keep and schedule customized prayer cards
-Operation World is an oldy but a goody, a global encyclopedia of countries and people groups with prayer prompts.

 Giving
We are 100% supported by the International Mission Board, the missions agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. Thank you to the millions of believers worldwide who give generously to support the Great Commission work of the IMB!

If you would like to give to support our work, and the work of the 3000+ IMB cross cultural missionaries around the world, you can do so here: www.imb.org/give. 100% of gifts to the Lottie Moon Fund go to missionaries and the people they serve.

If you would like to directly support our work in Tanzania, you can:
-help us create an endowment to enable a self-sustaining hospital in Kigoma
-give directly to the effort to reach 55 UPGs(Unreached People Group) in SubSaharan Africa in the next 5 years: 55 in 5
-contribute to our family’s Ministry Gifts special fund- email for more info

Partner
If your church doesn’t have a connection to missions and would like to partner with our team(through regular prayer, communication, and more), send us an email at m28StoreyFam@gmail.com discuss further

 Visit
Short term missions trips, when properly planned and executed, can do much to enhance the work of a team on the field. If you are interested in coming to Kigoma to work alongside us, send us an email at m28StoreyFam@gmail.com to discuss further.

August Update: Sun, sand and Swahili

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August is here! How is it AUGUST of 2021?

PrayerRequestsUpFront:
-Getting to TZ: We are still waiting on housing to get finalized in Kigoma. Please pray for our team-mates as they work to finalize all the logistics, and for the contractors who will be doing the renovations needed to make it livable. Pray for our hearts as we prepare to leave the city/neighborhood that has been home for the past 5-6 months.
-Studying Swahili: Our progress in learning the grammar of Swahili continues, but without immersion in a Swahili-only environment we are not progressing in our ability to hear and understand. Please pray for diligence and a drive to continue to learn despite the plateau we’ve reached in this area of our learning. We also need patience to be content with our slow progress. I greatly dislike being bad at stuff.
-Homeschooling: Over the past couple of weeks we’ve become acutely aware of why our sending organization(the IMB) doesn’t typically allow parents to homeschool during language training! This is HARD! Please pray for Rebekah and I as we teach grades 2, 4, 6 and 8/9. Please also be praying for the boys, especially Elijah as he makes the big adjustment to high-school curriculum.

Thanks for praying for our family! We continue to be blessed by your support. We’ve had an eventful month, and here’s a few updates:

School: I mentioned last month, we started the 21-22 school year in July, because we anticipate we will have to take a number of breaks to move to TZ and settle in. We took a long break during our pack-out and training time last winter/spring, but the boys have been going pretty hard since April, and didn’t get a break between terms. We are using My Father’s World for grades 2, 4, and 6, and Sonlight high-school curriculum for Elijah. This has been an adjustment for him! He’s supplementing the Bible, History, Literature and Writing of Sunlight with 9th Grade Biology and Saxon math. His schedule is FULL! He is learning to self-direct his learning, and being challenged by the weekly tests and quizzes.
The younger grades are doing a year of Countries and Cultures. This is our favorite MFW year of curriculum, as we all get to learn world geography(how many countries could you label on a blank world map?), language, culture and history. Along with this we pray for many different countries and a different unreached people group every day.

Housing: We continue to wait in Nairobi for housing in TZ. Our team has found us a great little house next door to the McDonald Family in Kigoma. One of the benefits of going overseas with a big organization like the IMB is the vast experience they have on the field, and the support network of logistics personnel to help get situated. We’re so thankful that there are a half-dozen people working to help us get into a house! After a house is found you need bids from contractors to determine the cost of bringing the house up to code, then the bid you choose is combined with a housing contract that you agree on with the landlord. Once that contract is approved, work can start on the house. When repairs are complete you can move in! We’re at step one in the process. We’ve found the house, and the landlord has tentatively agreed to a contract, but we need to secure bids to make necessary repairs. Our house doesn’t need much- some tilework completed, paint, cabinets in the kitchen and some work in the bathrooms. We hope this will only take 2-3 weeks once they start.
So for now, we wait. God has definitely been refining our patience throughout this process! We trust His timing to make things happen when they need to happen.

Language: Swahili is going well. We’ve learned nearly all the grammar that the school we’re in has to teach us. As I’ve mentioned before, Swahili grammar is very formulaic, with very few “rule-breaker” words or exceptions. There are a LOT of rules to learn, but once you learn them, you can operate pretty easily. The sentence/word structure can be challenging to hear/understand, because of the many prefixes/infixes/suffixes. If you’ve learned a language, you know that initially you start by translating everything into English in your head. This is VERY difficult to do in Swahili because SO MUCH can be said in just a few syllables. If you miss the first word/thought, you’ll never catch back up! Here in Nairobi where very little Swahili is spoken, we aren’t developing an ear for hearing and understanding. For now we’re content to increase our understanding with the mechanics of the language, trusting that when we’re immersed in Kigoma we’ll long for the days when we could operate entirely in English!

Vacation: In the beginning of August we got a chance to take a family trip to the Kenyan coast. Kenya’s eastern border is the Indian Ocean, and is known for the beautiful beaches. We needed a break from the routine and a rest from language/school, so we drove down on a Monday morning and stayed 6 nights in a rental cottage in Diani Beach, Kenya. It was a blessed trip! Some of the highlights:
1. Road tripping in the US can be fun and even relaxing. In Kenya, road tripping is basically a loooooong game of chicken as the 2 lane highways are filled with vehicles of various speeds. We averaged less that 40mph over 9 hours, and I was driving pretty aggressively!
2. One of the keys to contentment is managing your expectations- the standards for a rental cottage in Kenya are…. different from those in the US. We loved the place where we stayed, but it is a conscious choice to be happy with a place with some challenges.
3. YA’LL(that’s me trying to be more Southern), if you haven’t even had a chef on a family vacation, you don’t even know- it is a GAME CHANGER! This is apparently the thing to do in Africa, and we are SOLD. We actually went with a cheaper cottage to rent because it allowed us to hire Wafula, a Kenyan chef who cooked dinner for us every night. We just asked him to cook coastal Swahili food, and he was amazing! He came around 3 each day, prepared the food, set the table, then stayed around to wash the dishes after. His food was amazing, and it allowed us to go down and swim during the afternoon high tide each day. We could come back up around 5:30pm, rinse off, and sit down to a hot meal. It made our evening such a treat, and the food was excellent.
4. White skin on an African beach during a COVID-suppressed tourist season is like a beacon to every salesman and opportunist in the area. We got used to kindly but firmly refusing, and just accepted that this would be a part of our beach time.
5. We were gifted the chance to take a trip to a waterpark in Mombasa, which was a blast! The place was nearly deserted due to the low season, so we had the run of the place with no lines! It was classically Kenyan- no waivers, no lifeguards, and only a few arbitrary rules…
6. We took a Dhow boat on a dolphin watching and snorkeling tour to Msite Wildlife Refuge and Wasini island. We were so far south that we could see the TZ mountains from the boat- our FIRST TZ sighting EVER!! So excited to get there for real!

Siaya Trip: At the end of July I took a trip with our friend George Okello to his home in Siaya County. George and I took the trip to deliver a load of sewing machines and tables for a job-training center that he is trying to get up and running. We also delivered mosquito nets for pregnant and nursing moms. This was an excellent cultural experience for me, as I got to see a good bit of Kenya, drive 9 hours each way in our manual diesel Land Cruiser, and eat/sleep in the village. I was the recipient of the proverbial African hospitality and wish I could have accepted their invitation to stay another night.

That’s it for this update! I’m disappointed in the low number of Nacho Libre fans in our audience(see prev newsletter), but hakuna shied. We will check back in in September, hopefully with a “move to Tanzania” date!

Join our Facebook group for more frequent updates.
Send us an email at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com to receive these updates in email form.

Grace and peace,
Josh

How to support us:

Prayer
We are grateful that so many of you have expressed a desire to support our family in this adventure! The most important way you can support us is through your prayers. James 5 tells us that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective- we need you to regularly pray for our family, our team, our people groups, and the accomplishment of the Great Commission!
Some helpful resources we’ve found:
-The Joshua Project gives prayer prompts for the Unreached People Group of the day.
-The IMB Pray app gives you a variety of prompts for regular prayer for missions
-The PrayerMate app is designed to help you keep and schedule customized prayer cards
-Operation World is an oldy but a goody, a global encyclopedia of countries and people groups with prayer prompts.

 Giving
We are 100% supported by the International Mission Board, the missions agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. Thank you to the millions of believers worldwide who give generously to support the Great Commission work of the IMB!

If you would like to give to support our work, and the work of the 3000+ IMB cross cultural missionaries around the world, you can do so here: www.imb.org/give. 100% of gifts to the Lottie Moon Fund go to missionaries and the people they serve.

If you would like to directly support our work in Tanzania, you can:
-help us create an endowment to enable a self-sustaining hospital in Kigoma
-give directly to the effort to reach 55 UPGs(Unreached People Group) in SubSaharan Africa in the next 5 years: 55 in 5

Partner
If your church doesn’t have a connection to missions and would like to partner with our team(through regular prayer, communication, and more), send us an email at m28StoreyFam@gmail.com discuss further

 Visit
Short term missions trips, when properly planned and executed, can do much to enhance the work of a team on the field. If you are interested in coming to Kigoma to work alongside us, send us an email at m28StoreyFam@gmail.com to discuss further.

July Update: Birthdays and Elephants and Houses, oh my!

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Another month, another update! We’re still here in Nairobi Kenya for language study, patiently waiting to head down to TZ. Read below for more detail, but first…
PRUF
-Konongo: The Konongo are an unreached people group in TZ near Kigoma(our eventual landing spot). There are approx 138,000 Konongo in TZ. They practice traditional tribal religion(lots of animism, spirit worship, witch doctors, etc), but very little else is known about them. Please pray with us that missions researchers would be able to learn more about this isolated group so they can be reached with the gospel!
-Language study: it continues! We need motivation to learn well and be good stewards of the time here in Nairobi. This is difficult at times because proper Swahili is not commonly spoken here. Please pray that God would help us develop ears to hear and understand Swahili!
-Homeschooling: As I explain further below, we started the 21/22 academic year, for a variety of reasons. Managing this time with language learning and other responsibilities is a challenge. Please pray for patience and wisdom for Bek and I, and for grace and willingness from the boys. Please also pray for Elijah as he has to be much more independent in his studies this year.
-Housing: Looks like we might have a house! Pics below, but we are praying that this place will work out, that the repairs are cheap and we can get into the house sometime soon!


Ok, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty*.

July has been busy. We living in Nairobi, enjoying our little community here and learning Swahili pole pole(slowly). One of the challenges is the lack of proper Swahili in the city, and the fact that all the Kenyans want to practice their English when we interact, so our trips to the store are often us speaking only Swahili, and the Kenyans we interact with speaking only English!

We celebrated 3 birthdays in the last month, Me(Josh), Elijah, and Joel. My birthday was a reminder that my life is good! Real good! Elijah and Joel turned 14 and 10, and we had a MarioKart tournament with all the kids on the compound. They got a bit loud, so I had to tell them to take it easy a time or two, but it was a blast! Bek made an epic Among Us themed cake.

We got the chance to visit the Seldrick Elephant Orphanageon the outskirts of Nairobi, where they rehabilitate and reintroduce orphaned elephants and rhinos. What a treat! We were able to spend some quality time with the babies, and learn about the project.

I also got a chance to help with a couple of medical clinics this month. They were organized by local pastors, and a team from the states came in with medications and glasses to give out. It was a blessing to be a part of, and a reminder of how much I love medicine, and how it can be such a bridge to the sharing the gospel! After the clinic we had a baptism service with a local church, so no one in the church can say they never got around to it. Video of the service is on the Facebook Group.

Another great ministry opportunity has been to meet with “O”, a young Somali that I met who has a lot of questions about Christ. He is an atheist/philosophical materialist(basically, he only believes in science), but is open to conversations about God and is intrigued by my testimony, and how someone who has a scientific/medical background could believe in spiritual things. Please pray for O as he and I try to get together to study the Bible together.

We are really close to having a house in TZ! Below are some picture of the outside. It is right next door to our partner family, the McDonalds, and has a great yard! These houses are a providential provision, as there is really NOTHING else in the town that would fit families our size. Praise God with us for this blessing! Our team leaders have been working incredibly hard to get these houses ready for us, in addition to their regular ministry duties! We’re grateful to work from an organization(IMB) that helps us to get houses up to code in a remote place like this. We hope to have more pictures to share soon!

We started the 21-22 school year last week, anticipating a lot of breaks this fall while we move and get settled in. When Rebekah first suggested it, I thought “I’m not listening to her, she’s crazy!" Elijah is starting high-school curriculum(HOW DID WE GET OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE A HIGH-SCHOOLER?!?!?), and the younger boys are doing the same MFW curriculum we’ve used in the past. Our curriculum is literature-heavy, so if we’re getting tired of teaching, we can just tell the boys to go away and read some books.

Bek has been using watercolor painting as an outlet- where she would usually sew, leatherwork, woodwork, etc, it’s been fun to see her develop this skill set as she unwinds from the stress of homeschooling, learning Swahili, and being married to me. I’m going to brag on her a bit and share some of her awesome work below. Ain’t she great?

How to support us:

Prayer

We are grateful that so many of you have expressed a desire to support our family in this adventure! The most important way you can support us is through your prayers. James 5 tells us that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective- we need you to regularly pray for our family, our team, our people groups, and the accomplishment of the Great Commission!

Some helpful resources we’ve found:

-The Joshua Project gives prayer prompts for the Unreached People Group of the day.

-The IMB Pray app gives you a variety of prompts for regular prayer for missions

-The PrayerMate app is designed to help you keep and schedule customized prayer cards

 

Giving

We are 100% supported by the International Mission Board, the missions agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. Thank you to the millions of Baptists worldwide who give generously to support the Great Commission!

If you would like to give to support our work, and the work of the 3000+ IMB cross cultural missionaries around the world, you can do so here: www.imb.org/give. 100% of gifts to the Lottie Moon Fund go to missionaries and the people they serve.

If you would like to directly support our work in Tanzania, you can:

-help us create an endowment to enable a self-sustaining hospital in Kigoma

-give directly to the effort to reach 55 UPGs(Unreached People Group) in SubSaharan Africa in the next 5 years: 55 in 5

Partner

If your church doesn’t have a connection to missions and would like to partner with our team(through regular prayer, communication, and more), send us an email at m28StoreyFam@gmail.com discuss further

 

Visit

Short term missions trips, when properly planned and executed, can do much to enhance the work of a team on the field. If you are interested in coming to Kigoma to work alongside us, send us an email at m28StoreyFam@gmail.com to discuss further.


That’s the monthly update! Thanks for reading with us this far! Didn’t make it this far? I forgive you…

*find all the Nacho Libre quotes in this newsletter for a fabulous prize of 200 pesos!

One step closer to TZ- Update 10Jun21

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The past month has brought a number of changes and developments that we can’t wait to share with you! But first, as is my tradition, the PRUF:

-Please pray for our continued growth in language- as we continue to build our foundation of grammar and vocabulary, being able to quickly construct sentences and ESPECIALLY to have an ear to hearing conversational Swahili is a crucial next step.
-Please pray God would provide housing in TZ- our team-mates are looking for housing for us in TZ, which is the next major step in moving to Kigoma. We are praying for a house with a good yard close to the hospital and our team-mates!
-Please pray for “A” and “O”, two Muslim men I’ve had the chance to develop a relationship with who seem open to the Gospel.

It’s been a busy month! God continues to bless our time here in Nairobi beyond measure!

Ministry updates:

Thanks for praying- our teammates were granted work permits for TZ! On Friday, June 4, we helped the McDonalds pack up their vehicles and on Saturday they made the 3 day drive to Kigoma. Now most of our team is in place, and they have started to look for housing for both of these large families! This is one step closer to putting our hands to the plow in the place God has called us!

I(Josh) got the chance to preach at a local church a couple week ago. The experience was honoring and humbling! I preached in English, and while most of the members speak English, sometimes getting used to an American accent is difficult for Kenyans. Before I began, the pastor(a dear friend) told his congregation(in Swahili), “Even if you don’t understand what he is saying, say Amen! and Praise God!”

On the way home we were reminded that safety standards are a little different here: this guy picture below was hitching a ride on a matutu(local bus) on the biggest highway in the city! He was going 80-90kph(50-55mph). But don’t panic- he WAS wearing his facemask(these are required in all public places in Kenya, including while rollerblading on the highway).

Family updates:

On May 28 Rebekah and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary! God has been so faithful and good to us throughout our marriage! Our team leaders here graciously watched the boys for us overnight and we were able to get away for some sweet time together.

That same weekend we were also able to watch the McDonald boys so Eric and Heather could get some alone time. For 24 hours or so we had 10 boys in our 3 bedroom apt, and the expected craziness ensued! Our kids get along great- yet another picture of God’s goodness during our transition here in Africa!

In the middle of May Ezekiel fell off a bunkbed ladder and fractured his right humerus(upper arm bone) just below the shoulder. He’s handled the splint/sling like a champ, and as you can see, it hasn’t slowed him down much!

The other boys continue to love living here for as long as it lasts! They are enjoying friendships with the other kids here and we continue to press forward with homeschool.

The last thing I wanted to update you on is our desire for the glory of God to be proclaimed among the nations. It is our conviction that God has always been about His glory among the nations, and Jesus solidified that this mission is a responsibility of all believers in the Great Commission in Matthew 28. Obedience to the Great Commission is NOT optional. If you are a Christ-follower, you will be a fisher of people. This is our identity as believers. We encourage all our brothers and sisters to be asking God what obedience to the Great Commission looks like for you. Perhaps, like He did for us, God is calling you to go to another culture to proclaim the Gospel. Perhaps He is calling you to send and support those who go. Perhaps he is calling you to be a part of a local church plant. One thing is certain, He is calling you to obedience to His word. Our prayer for each of you is that the Holy Spirit will be working in your life to show you God’s calling with greater clarity.

If you feel called to cross-cultural missions, consider applying with the International Mission Board. The IMB has a goal to place an additional 500 missionaries on the field by 2025. Will you be one of them? Only God knows, but we encourage you to seek His will for you through prayer, study of the Word, and fellowship/discipleship in your local church. To God be the glory!!!

How to support us:

Prayer

We are grateful that so many of you have expressed a desire to support our family in this adventure! The most important way you can support us is through your prayers. James 5 tells us that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective- we need you to regularly pray for our family, our team, our people groups, and the accomplishment of the Great Commission!

Some helpful resources we’ve found:

-The Joshua Project gives prayer prompts for the Unreached People Group of the day.

-The IMB Pray app gives you a variety of prompts for regular prayer for missions

-The PrayerMate app is designed to help you keep and schedule customized prayer cards

 

Giving

We are 100% supported by the International Mission Board, the missions agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. Thank you to the millions of Baptists worldwide who give generously to support the Great Commission!

If you would like to give to support our work, and the work of the 3000+ IMB cross cultural missionaries around the world, you can do so here: www.imb.org/give. 100% of gifts to the Lottie Moon Fund go to missionaries and the people they serve.

If you would like to directly support our work in Tanzania, you can:

-help us create an endowment to enable a self-sustaining hospital in Kigoma

-give directly to the effort to reach 55 UPGs(Unreached People Group) in SubSaharan Africa in the next 5 years: 55 in 5

Partner

If your church doesn’t have a connection to missions and would like to partner with our team(through regular prayer, communication, and more), send us an email at m28StoreyFam@gmail.com discuss further

 

Visit

Short term missions trips, when properly planned and executed, can do much to enhance the work of a team on the field. If you are interested in coming to Kigoma to work alongside us, send us an email at m28StoreyFam@gmail.com to discuss further.

Apologies

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For those of you who’ve plugged in your email hoping for an email notification when we update, we are sorry for the technical difficulties. We thought our website automatically sent out emails with the links to our updates, but turns out we have to do it manually through a 2 step process. The emails will start coming when we update from now on.

Grace and peace,

Rebekah

Storey Update 14May21- Settling into a rhythm

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As we settle into a rhythm here in Nairobi, we’re trusting God to:

-provide us an open door to Tanzania
-enable us to learn Swahili well
-open our eyes to ministry opportunities
-and give us wisdom in parenting.

PRUF(Prayer Requests Up Front(yes, I know spelling out an acronym defeats the purpose of the acronym, but this is the LAST time!)):

-Most of our TZ team is still waiting on work permits/visas for Tanzania. Please continue to pray with us that our whole team will be approved, and will be able to get to Kigoma ASAP!

-We are done with week 5 of language. The pace has been brisk, and both Rebekah(typically under confident) and I(universally overconfident) are feeling good about the material we’ve learned this far. Pray for continued renewal of our minds in this challenging process!

-We don’t want to squander the time here by becoming completely focused on our lives and language. While our primary task right now IS language learning, please pray that we will continue to find ways to be a part of what God is doing in Nairobi while we wait in limbo!

-The boys are doing well, but parenting right now is a challenge- between the transition, the culture shock, and the significant changes in our routine. We continue to beg your intercession on our behalf. Kids can be the greatest/hardest little things!!

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UPDATE
This weekend will be 6 weeks in Africa! Our being here is still a bit surreal. We’re finding a rhythm in our weekly routine. Here are a few highlights:

We’ve been attending a weekly house church/discipleship training with our team-mates the McDonalds. It’s been a joy to see the Nairobi City team doing ministry and training local churches in discipleship! Thanks to improving COVID19 numbers here in Nairobi, the restrictions eased last week. Because of this, we were able to attend a local church here in Nairobi. What a joy to fellowship in corporate worship with a local congregation for the first time in months! We attended Emmanual Baptist Church, and found their liturgy to be nearly identical to our home church in Omaha(Emmaus Bible Church). Same initials and everything! It was uncanny, and refreshing all at once.

Homeschooling is going well. We’re doing a truncated curriculum, studying the book of James, Botany(what better place?), American History(a few songs from Hamilton have been played), math and language arts. We work with the boys in the mornings, then they have reading time in the afternoon before going outside to play with their friends(usually from about 2-6 every day, rain or shine).

Rebekah and I continue in our language training. We converse 1.5-2 hours daily, and learn formally for 3 hours daily. We’ve so far learned 150 verbs and 500+ vocabulary words. We’ve covered common greetings, numbers, dates, time, question words, personal and object pronouns, tenses(past, present, future, negative, subjunctive, negative subjunctive, imperative, negative imperative, habitual, present perfect and negative present perfect), and some irregular rules/verbs. Swahili seems to be simultaneously simple and difficult. Much of the sentence construction is made up of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. As a result, many complete thoughts can be communicated with a single word. For example, in English I might say, “how did I not remember you?” This 6 word sentence can be expressed in the following Swahili word: sikukukumbukaje? Try saying that 10 times fast! or once! For the curious/linguophiles, I’ll break it down below.
Another challenging part of Swahili is that the sound patterns are simple. All vowels make only one sound. All consonants make only one sound. There are only a handful of letter cluster sounds. While this makes reading/speaking a breeze, it can get confusing. Sounds like Tu, na, ku, and others have multiple meaning as verb stems, pronouns and prefixes. We’re learning to appreciate the differences rather than grumble about them…most of the time…

The visa situation for Tanzania continues to be in the Lord’s hands. His providence extends everywhere, and that certainly includes the Tanzanian Immigration offices! We have 7 adult teammates waiting for work permits right now. We are hopeful that the recent changes in the government will result in a more favorable view on foreign medical/aid workers in country!

We’re grateful for each of you! Thanks for keeping up with our updates and continuing to support us!

*Ok, sikukukumbukaje. Si is the 1st person subject prefix for negative tense. The first ku tells you it is negative past tense. The second ku tells you that the object of the verb is second person(you). The verb stem is kumbuka, which means remember. The je on the end is a question modifier that asks how a verb is accomplished. That’s how you get sikukukumbukaje! You can imagine when we’re first learning the language how difficult some of these words/phrases are to translate on the fly! Again, please pray for us!! :)

How to support us:

Prayer

We are grateful that so many of you have expressed a desire to support our family in this adventure! The most important way you can support us is through your prayers. James 5 tells us that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective- we need you to regularly pray for our family, our team, our people groups, and the accomplishment of the Great Commission!
Some helpful resources we’ve found:
-The Joshua Project gives prayer prompts for the Unreached People Group of the day.
-The IMB Pray app gives you a variety of prompts for regular prayer for missions
-The PrayerMate app is designed to help you keep and schedule customized prayer cards

 Giving
We are 100% supported by the International Mission Board, the missions agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. Thank you to the millions of Baptists worldwide who give generously to support the Great Commission!
If you would like to give to support our work, and the work of the 3000+ IMB cross cultural missionaries around the world, you can do so here: www.imb.org/give
If you would like to directly support our work in Tanzania, you can:
-help us create an endowment to enable a self-sustaining hospital in Kigoma
-designate special giving to our team/family by: going to the link, choose “missionary or team” in the GIFT DESIGNATION drop down, then enter our names(Josh and Rebekah Storey) in the MISSIONARY NAME OR TEAM field, and enter Tanzania in the AFFINITY OR COUNTRY field.

 Partner
If your church doesn’t have a connection to missions and would like to partner with our team(through regular prayer, communication, and more), send us an email at m28StoreyFam@gmail.com discuss further

 Visit
Short term missions trips, when properly planned and executed, can do much to enhance the work of a team on the field. If you are interested in coming to Kigoma to work alongside us, send us an email at m28StoreyFam@gmail.com to discuss further.

Storey Update, 25Apr21

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PRUF(prayer requests up front)
-Clear minds and diligence in language learning
-Wisdom in parenting/homeschooling
-Opportunities to share the gospel/encourage the local church(COVID lockdown rules in Kenya make this very difficult!)

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What a busy 3 weeks it has been! For a recap:
-we arrived in Nairobi 3 weeks ago today after 30+ hours of travel, 19 of which were spent in the air!
-we are staying at an IMB(International Mission Board) compound in Nairobi proper, which has been a blessing for a number of reasons!
-we started formal Swahili training 2 weeks ago. While learning a new language is ALWAYS challenging, both Rebekah and I are encouraged with our progress thus far.
-because we’re homeschooling while in full time language, we have hired a householder. Phoebe is the wife of a local pastor who comes in 5 days a week to help us. She is WONDERFUL, and just the help that we needed to navigate living in Africa!
-we’ve resumed homeschooling the boys, albeit with a truncated curriculum. For a zoology/botany field trip we took a drive in the nearest safari park. It was simply surreal to drive out onto the savannah and see all these animals roaming free! Pics are below, and as always, Rebekah keeps more extensive records over at the “Home In Africa” blog on this site.

—For notifications when we update this blog, put your email in the box to the left.
—To receive a newsletter-style version of these posts in your inbox, email me at M28StoreyFam@gmail.com
—To support the work the IMB is doing here in SubSaharn Africa and around the world, visit imb.org/give

2 1/2 weeks in

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Hello, all! Time to play catch up! Our radio silence is a good indicator of how busy we’ve been. We started language school and homeschool with the boys last week, and it was a REALLY rough week for many many reason. You can find longer journal type entries here. The most recent one will be at the top and “jet lag” is from our first week here. They were both just published, as it took me some time to work through all the details.

Here are some ways you can be praying with and for us:
1. continued energy for language training and retention of the info we are being given.
2. opportunities to get off the compound and share the gospel
3. for work visas (student visas for us since we will still be doing language virtually) for the members of our team that are located here in Kenya right now - we cannot move forward to relocating to TZ until our visas are approved, and there’s already been several denials.
4. safe travels for team members from the States to TZ. They are hoping to be returning soon, after an unexpected year long stay in the States.

Extol the name of the Lord with us for these:
1. George, a fellow “M” to Africa, has been battling Covid and Covid related infections since early January. He was intubated right before we left Omaha for FPO in late January and despite the Dr.’s best efforts for months, lifting the sedation to see if he could breath on his own was continuously unsuccessful. His brain activity showed no improvement and his prognosis was grim. Our SSA affinity was called to fast and pray for him a few times over the past couple of months and last week a group of newly converted believers in a high risk security area were called to fast and pray for him. After this day, George began to show rapid signs of improvement and within days has gone from completely unresponsive to sitting upright in a chair, breathing on his own, moving his mouth to form words and interacting with his wife and other people he knows by smiling and following them with his eyes. We are all truly astounded at the progress and know it is nothing short of a miracle! We had the honor of meeting his wife a few days ago, as she is staying on the same compound as us, as were teary eyed as we listened to her recount his progress. What a merciful and powerful God we serve! May His glory be known in that hospital for the miracle he’s performed in George’s life.
2. Last week I was experiencing a vast array of very unpleasant physical symptoms, including being mostly deaf for two solid days. This was an overwhelming experience for me as I’ve battled Meniere’s disease of the left ear for 11 years and thought perhaps I was developing symptoms in my right ear as well. We are so thankful for the Lord’s mercy in clearing my ears. Thank you for praying with us for this!
3. Josh and I feel encouraged about our progress in learning Kiswahili. While it is more intellectually taxing than either of us thought it would be, we are finding that we are retaining vocabulary and are encouraged with the recall we have when working with each other, on homework assignments or in conversation with our instructor.

Thank you, as always, for partnering with us in prayer.

To God be the glory!

A week in Africa!

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Dear friends,

This update is late in coming- it’s been a busy week, and we’re having some difficulty with uploading images.

If you just want a quick prayer update, here are the biggies:
-started language on 4/13. Please pray for clear minds and diligent focus!
-we are trying to be in language full time and homeschool the boys. Please pray that God would give us the tools to do this well. Please also pray that we can find someone to come in and help around the house.
-Rebekah has been having some hearing/ear issues. We are working to figure out what is going on, but the added difficulty of hearing(plus everyone wearing masks!) is distracting. Please pray for peace and hope in the midst of this trial.
-The boys are adjusting well, making friends in the “neighborhood” and loving the African weather and wildlife. Please pray that they will love one another as themselves and continue to transition well.
-COVID regulations make going out to meet people very difficult. This limits our ability to share to gospel, which is frustrating. Please pray that we would have opportunities to share with unbelievers, recognize those opportunities, and act through the Holy Spirit’s power.

Longer update(but still not as long as what Bek will write over on the blog).

Suffice to say that we’re glad to be here, challenges and all!

We arrived in Nairobi last Sunday night, and it was 2AM local time on Monday before we were heading to bed. We’re staying at a Baptist Mission property in Nairobi proper. The compound is home to a big guest house, 4 mid-term housing apartments, and 4 permanent houses for career missionary families. It’s a bit of a little boy paradise, and we’re glad to have so many people close by to help us navigate some of the culture shock!

We’ve started driving around the city a fair bit, which is an experience!! There is a green-grocer just a few minutes away, and we’re amazed at how affordable and fresh all the produce is!! Learning to grocery shop here in Kenya is a learning-curve all to itself!

We started language training on 13April. We’re taking online language lessons, and will start some in-person conversation in a couple of weeks. We are praying that we can pick up a fair bit of Swahili before we get to Kigoma in June/July.

We’ve been able to connect with our team-mates the McDonalds on a number of occasions, and are praising God for their friendship and partnership in the gospel! It looks like our whole team will be in Kigoma by the end of July. Please continue to pray for our work permits.

Rebekah writes longer blog-type posts over at our “home in Africa” page, if long streams of consciousness are your thing.

We are thankful for each and every one of you!

The Storeys

Negative Covid tests - Flying out tomorrow!

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Friends and family, we have 7 negative covid tests and flights scheduled for tomorrow! We have a long layover in the Atlanta airport tomorrow afternoon, so I will try to take the time sit and give a more in-depth update of our lives over this past week and a half. It was SUCH a gift from the Lord to have this delay, that was so totally out of our control. Until that update, please be praying with us that we will finish well here, on our last night and tomorrow on our last morning. Josh’s parents left this morning for a trip they’ve had planned for some time, so we are spending our last evening and morning with our closest friends here. The biggest thing we ask for you to pray for is the Lord to settle our youngest, and to help him sleep on our first 8 hour flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam. He, historically, has been determined to never sleep in his carseat when we travel long distances, and is a bit of a scary little fellow when he’s exhausted. It will be over our normal bedtime hours, but we’ll be arriving there at 4am our body clock time and after that have another 10+ hours of travel to get through. If Zeke doesn’t sleep on that first flight it could make for a pretty miserable day on Sunday. Also please pray for our hearts as we walk away from our dear friends here tomorrow at the airport. They have become like family to us, and leaving them behind is going to be heartbreaking.

Thank you, again, for praying with us!

Grace and Peace,

Rebekah

Holding pattern, again

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We have been halted again, like going from 150mph to hitting a brick wall. Here’s a little backstory below. Please pray with us against discouragement, complacency, and all the other ugly things that can arise in times of uncertainty, unknown and disrupted plans.

Our silence on here is a good indicator of how crazy the past couple of weeks have been. Between leaving FPO, juggling luggage and packing acrobatics on a daily basis here and trying to get all the errands run, last minute doctors appointments in and goodbyes said, we feel we’ve had very little down time. We are staying with Josh’s parents and while this extra time with them and all the people we so dearly love here, we agree it would have been much less hard on our hearts to have been able to leave for Kenya straight from Virginia when our training was complete. That’s how it used to work, pre Covid. But now with visa issues largely related to Covid, and the requirement of negative Covid tests prior to international travel, everyone goes home before heading to the field.

After 12 days of mad scrambling, Josh finished loading the van with 22 of our 25 checked bags yesterday afternoon (with just a few more to zip shut and load, including our 14 carryons) around 4:00. We had said some goodbyes, run our last errands and I personally felt, right about the time I saw all the bags in the van, that my heart was ready. That’s a HARD place to get! I felt huge relief that we were finished with the packing part of the process. Things felt complete. I ran upstairs to mess with some stuff and came back down. It was around 5:00. Josh and the boys were sitting in the living room and he told me one of the boys had tested positive for Covid. I thought it was a joke, and asked them multiple times to knock it off. Lyn was standing behind me, so I turned around and asked her to tell me it was a joke. She shook her head to assure me it was not. She hustled over to wrap her arms around me and prayed while I cried. We all sat in shock for about an hour and Josh began the process of trying to reach our travel coordinators in Kenya to get flights cancelled. We worked around every possible scenario to try to get us there anyway, but there’s just no way around it. We can’t go right now. Flights have been cancelled, our kiddo gets retested today at 11:30 (our flight departure time…) and we are praying HARD that this first test was false positive.

Please pray with us. We are discouraged, but have not lost heart. We FULLY trust in the Lord’s sovereignty in this. He’s guided us through every single part of this process, in his providential way, and this is no exception. We may never know the purpose for this delay in timing, but we don’t need to know. There’s simply nothing to be done but to lean into Christ and trust. He’s certainly given us ample opportunity for that throughout the entirety of this now 2 1/2 year process. It’s been one delay, one closed “not yet” door after another, but we will press on, eagerly awaiting the day we can join our Tanzania team, and that will be in His timing, not ours.

Last week at FPO training

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Greetings from Virginia!

We are starting our last week here at FPO, and most of the days this week will be spent with those of us here that are headed to sub-saharan Africa all in a room together doing conference calls with our "affinity" leaders who are located in Nairobi, Kenya. We'll learn about our leadership's  vision for the SSA affinity. The more leadership and partners we get to know, the more excited we are to be a part of this affinity. The ultimate goal, send African missionaries from African churches as missionaries into all the world. What an exciting vision!

Our time at FPO has been tiring and stressful in many ways, but also very encouraging and we are eager to move through the next step of this season of our lives. We are scheduled to fly home at the end of this week, and will begin the suitcase tetris in preparation for our flight to Kenya.

Thank you for partnering with us in prayer during our time here. You continue to be an encouragement to us. Here are a few requests we have for the upcoming weeks:

1. To finish FPO well and preparation for our flight to Kenya (no dates for that yet)

2. For the transition to Kenya- language school for us, international school for the 4 older boys, and full time nanny/daycare for Zeke (and for my heart, to be content with this season of being separated from the the boys all day)

3. Tanzania visas!! Other team members have been having difficulty getting visas or work permits for Tanzania. We pray our teams would be allowed to enter the country quickly and without government interference. Please pray specifically NOW for our teammates in Kenya, who are waiting on their appeal to be approved.

Josh and Rebekah

Photos:

-The IMB President, Paul Chitwood, visited the campus and brought donuts, which the boys appreciated!

-We've had enough time outside to build a stick fort in the woods on the campus, and we've enjoyed upgrading it!

-Game night with some of our fellow laborers going to SubSaharan Africa(including Richard and Karen Lee who have been on the field in TZ for 19 years).

No covid!

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Thank you for praying with us! We found out late last night that both teacher’s tests came back negative. We were back into our normal routine today with school for boys and sessions for us. We are so thankful to not have to spend the remainder of our time here tucked away in our quad! We also were able to enjoy the “African worship night” tonight. It was scheduled for last night but during their prep time and practice they made the decision to postpone until tonight in hopes that covid tests would come back negative so all the families could join. It was a wonderful experience, complete with worship songs and a sermon in swahili. It stoked the fire under us, an excitement to get to Tanzania!

Thank you, again, for joining us in prayer.