As a part of her work to help the Hospital raise its international profile and begin to tell stories of the incredible Kingdom work happening here, Ann invited her friend Elizabeth Fischer, videographer and storyteller, to come for a few months. Elizabeth is working on her videos now, which will feature in the Hospital’s to-be-released new website.

There’s something powerful about using more than words or a simple narrative description to tell a story. Some scholars believe that over half of the Old Testament was written in ancient Hebrew poetic form…the writers selected poetry as a deeper and more descriptive way to express the love and interaction of God with his people than simply recording what happened and when, as a 21st century western historian might today.

This latest video from Elizabeth is like reading the Old Testament in poetic form…you can feel the love of Jesus in the actions of our Hospital chaplains, sense the powerful presence of God in the eyes of the children.

Elizabeth describes her video-making efforts this way in her blog: “I went along to film and photograph the day and the rainbow of different events that took place within a 11 hour span (drive included). There’s so much story behind this little montage of clips, so much love and care that went in to that day, went into those lives even for a moment, and hopefully went into the buckets of hope tucked deep in the cupboards of each heart who desperately wanted to be seen, loved, heard and known. Nothing can do it like the love of Jesus. I captured Him in motion, which I live for, working thru willing hearts. Loving well like He does.”.

Enjoy.

-A

Mardi was in the middle of her intern year in Pediatrics in Charleston and would stay there while I traipsed up to Groton for three months of submarine emergency escape and tactical training. I picked up a copy of Dallas’ book The Divine Conspiracy on a friend’s recommendation on the drive up.

As I began to read, I realised within the first five pages that I could never be the same Christian again. I had lost my bearings, but in only five pages they were being re-calibrated and a hunger for the Lord was being rekindled in me. I had never read a book like this before, and I have never read one like it since.

The USS Maine (SSBN 741), on which I deployed five times between 2000 and 2003

A professional philosopher and educator, this man was not afraid to think well and deeply about difficult questions. An apprentice of Jesus, he was not content with proclamation alone and wrote about actually doing the works of Jesus. A theologian, he was dismayed by the faith-as-a-noun-instead-of-a-verb salvationist/soterian theological underpinnings of much of the American evangelical church, and had a massive influence through his writings and Renovare (the spiritual formation organisation he helped found, with whom we partner to deliver the Spiritual Formation course at Moffat Bible College in Kijabe) through his call to the church to be serious about spiritual formation.

A few of my favorite phrases of his from this book, which I have used so many times I write them here (mostly) from memory:

“Whatever you do, ask yourself, ‘what kind of [baker/teacher/soldier/doctor/business leader] would Jesus be if he were me? This is the essence of apprenticeship to Jesus.’”

“One of the major differences between an adult and a child is that an adult has learned to control their facial muscles. And one of the common traits noticed in adults of considerable spiritual stature/maturity is their childlikeness…they don’t use their face or body to hide the spiritual reality around them, and in doing so are genuinely present in their body to those around them.”

“Spiritual formation is, in practice, the way of rest for the weary and overloaded, of the easy yoke and the light burden, of cleaning the inside of the cup and the dish.”

“The primary ‘learning’ in spiritual formation is not about how to act, it is who we are in our thoughts, feelings, dispositions, and choices–in the inner life–that counts. Profound transformation there is the only thing that can definitively conquer outward evil.”

The Maine pulling into port

Dallas helped me get my bearings back during Submarine School in 1998, and then redefined and shook them up. I read The Divine Conspiracy on hikes in the Connecticut hills, underway on deployments, and at Mystic Pizza (yes, THAT Mystic Pizza). Dallas introduced me to the “already-not yet” principle of the kingdom of the heavens that Jesus spoke so often about: the kingdom is here and available to us now, but at the same time is not yet fully here until Jesus returns. And I began to develop the framework for my current understanding of what it means to actually apprentice oneself to Jesus, to learn to live my life as Jesus would if he were me.

Sunrise, on the bridge as Officer of the Deck, underway in the Atlantic

And when a few years later, my mom got me a signed copy of Dallas’ latest book, The Great Omission, I looked inside and was deeply moved to see he had written a note to this Naval Officer he’d never met, whose mother had talked to him at dinner of her son struggling to live like Jesus on a nuclear submarine. He wrote:

“Joshua 1:9, Be strong and courageous, Andy”

Sunset through the #2 periscope

He was that kind of man. Prophetic, subversive, and practical. I don’t think I would have survived, during my five subsequent deployments on the USS Maine and the year and a half that I spent underwater, without the framework of spiritual formation that he introduced me to. Dallas taught me to train in the ‘off season’ so that I would be more equipped to live like Jesus when I was ‘in the game’. He taught me the ‘principle of indirection’, where I learned that it is not through direct effort alone that one becomes less sinful and more like Jesus: rather than focussing on cleaning the outside of the dirty cup of my life (the part everyone around me sees), lasting change comes when we focus on cleaning the inside of the cup, and it happens through the power of the Spirit and not by my effort alone.

The D-5 nuclear missile, of which the USS Maine carried 24, launched underwater.

Dallas died yesterday of cancer, and I am so grateful for the life he lived, and the life of the “light yoke and easy burden” that he inspired me and so many others to lead. From submarining to a life of faith and compassionate service in Kijabe.

-A

We’re in the home stretch.  Just under four weeks until we’re scheduled to return.  Home.  To Kijabe.

While we are expats in Kenya, our work and the community we have become a part of has made it feel like home to us.  This word ‘home’ has a bit more of a draw to me than it did 5 months ago, when we started our six month speaking tour in the USA and Australia.  Travelling from the far north to the deep south of the US.   Weekends in country churches in Australia.  Disposing of our furniture, old children’s toys, and other memories on eBay and in garage sales.

We’re champing at the bit to return to Kenya.  It is home, for now, and we feel like we’ve left a part of ourselves there.

We have been astonished and profoundly moved by the generosity of the people we have come across… as we tell stories of the work that is taking place in and through Kijabe Hospital, we have seen many of our current financial partners increase their support sacrificially, and numerous new partners come on board.  We’ve been so encouraged and inspired!

Our plane tickets have us leaving on May 29, but before we are released to return by SIM, we must have 100% of our operational budget either pledged or received.  This means 1) our monthly operational budget must be fully covered by pledges, and 2) all of our upfront costs must have been received.

We’ve only got a little ways to go:  as of today, we need the following prior to May 29:

-$1,500/month in ongoing support (pledged, starting in May)
-$17,000 for up front expenses (plane tickets, car purchase, etc)

We’ve hopefully confident this will all come in during the next four weeks, and that we’ll be able to leave as planned.

If you have intended to partner with us in the significant work which is taking place in Kijabe but haven’t yet ‘pulled the trigger’, will you do it today?   Click here for instructions, and take a moment to email us and let us know that you’ve joined our team!

A friend of mine said to me yesterday that he couldn’t understand how we could be so calm about the outstanding financial partners we still need in in the next month.  We are just that…calm and at peace.  You see, the Lord has repeatedly demonstrated to us that our provision on earth, our life, and our well-being come from Him.  Not from our abilities or by our own hand.  In 1998, freshly married and graduated from Medical School in Australia, Mardi arrived with me to our first Navy submarine duty station in Charleston, South Carolina, and applied for a position as a Pediatric Resident.  Classified by the US medical system as a ‘Foreign Medical Graduate’ (or ‘FMG’ as we were amused to refer to it), her application was promptly (and repeatedly) thrown in the trash in favor of other US graduates.

All medical residency program doors were shut to Mardi, and she began to seriously consider becoming an EMT.  It was possible that she might never get a residency position anywhere near either Charleston or my future submarine bases in the US.  So we prayed, and we waited.  And one month before that year’s Pediatric Residency program commenced, one of their interns-to-be dropped out, and they called Mardi:  because she was in Charleston already.

6 years and a few more miraculous ‘there’s-no-way-that-could-happen-in-America’ stories later, Mardi finished not one but two training programs, fully qualified as a Pediatric Emergency Physician–one of the first of her medical school classmates to finish training, despite having changed countries.

‘Faith’, what is often referred to in the Bible not in its noun form but in its verb form (‘faithing’), requires regular exercise if you are to have it.  In the Biblical sense, it’s something you have only if it’s something you are doing.

Faithing gave us peace in Charleston in the early days despite what looked to be dire circumstances.  I recently heard one of my favorite preacher/theologians (Greg Boyd) say that just like you can’t have a dream unless you’re dreaming, you can’t have faith in God unless you’re faithing…and with four weeks left before we return to Kijabe, we couldn’t agree more.

-A

Due partly to deforestation, waterlogged ground from a rainy season + lots of rain, and the tricky geotechnical conditions resulting from a)  a poorly constructed main road into Kijabe and b) the Lunatic Express railway line (the main rail line from Mombasa on the coast to the interior of Africa) being cut into the mountainside, mudslides roared through the area.

mudslide near the upper gate portion of Rift Valley Academy, uphill of Kijabe Hospital (photo credit Ann S.)

Thankfully there was no loss of life in Kijabe itself; however just up the mountain in Magina, a family lost three daughters.  You can read the news article here.

The Lunatic Express railway line, crossing the main road into Kijabe (photo credit Jullie T.)

Damage to Kijabe and its institutions has been pretty bad:  3 of the 4 roads accessing Kijabe were blocked and seriously damaged, most of the water supply pipelines leading into Kijabe were severely damaged with sections destroyed, and the damage to our sanitation infrastructure can’t be estimated until the mud is cleared.

The blocked railway tunnel for the main road into Kijabe: our only reliable access for 2 wheel drive vehicles (photo credit Jullie T.)

It’s a disaster.

And yet…some tempering truth:  it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.  There was limited loss of life.  Early pictures show the Kijabe community, expatriate and local, wading into the mud as a community to help clear the roads of obstacles and help neighbors recover.  The mudslides provide a useful opportunity to raise awareness of practical impact of deforestation and poor construction techniques on roads and railway lines.  Our brand new 40,000 litre tanks (4×10 kilolitre tanks) which supply water to the community appear to be undamaged (although the water pipeline supplying them is no longer there).

Unblocking the railway tunnel (photo credit Ann S.)

The pictures sent of people in the aftermath of the mudslides walking into the worst of it to help clear debris remind me of pictures taken right after the Boston bombings:  moving images of policemen running toward the explosion with guns drawn.  Onsite bystanders who became first responders because they chose to put pressure on a wound, or stem the bleeding of a casualty, rather than run away.

Running into danger to help.

I am deeply moved that this is what it looks like to be fully human, a person as God created us:  laying down our lives for each other and running towards someone in need.  When we observe pictures like those from Boston and Kijabe, something resonates deeply within us as we see a person putting their own safety aside for the sake of another–this is what we were created for, and is profoundly representative of the Father’s heart.

And now we wait for the light that will surely come from this darkness, the good which will burst forth from this evil.  It always does, and on this side of the resurrection, the God-who-works-for-good-in-all-things won’t be repressed.

-A

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Support update:  we have four weeks in which to reach our support target so that we can return as planned on May 29, and we are delighted to note that we have only $1,500/month in ongoing support to raise, and $17,000 in upfront costs.  Have you been considering joining our financial partnership team and just haven’t pulled the trigger yet?  Do it now by visiting our “support” tab…we are unable to return to Kijabe until we reach 100% of our budget.

South Australia, apparently the door to the Outback.

In March, after months of collaboration, consultation and cash, the South Australian government unveiled its breathlessly anticipated new logo – a stylised picture of South Australia as a doorway to the rest of Australia. While derided by many as a kindergarten-level piece of artwork, I kind of like it. Because Andy’s always been able to hold up his hand, point to it and say “if this is Michigan, I come from here” and point to a knuckle. So now I can tell you where we spent the last week on the Eyre Peninsula.

If you look at Australia as a house, with South Australia as the door, the Eyre Peninsula is the bottom right hand corner of the innermost door as you’d cross the threshold. Oh forget it, I guess that’s still not too clear, so I’ll show you a real map instead.

We drove for nearly 8 hours – first north, past the wine growing regions, then across the top of the St Vincent & Spencer Gulfs, around the industrial Iron Triangle, then south again to the reddening soil and early autumnal brown landscape of the agricultural heartland of Eyre.

We had been put in contact with three churches, so we travelled to connect and to share, to listen and to encourage. Our first port of call was Port Lincoln, kingfish and tuna capital of South Australia. We were welcomed by Jean and Graham, a couple whose gift of hospitality is evidenced by their guest book revealing a list of nearly 14,000 people (fourteen thousand!) who have been privileged to be hosted by them in their granny flat over the last 25 years since they had it built in their back yard. They retired from farming, passing the legacy onto their son several years ago, and Jean celebrated her 80th birthday in June – and after 4 days with them we decided to adopt them as surrogate rural Australian grandparents.

the wonderful Jean & Graham

Unity Hill, Port Lincoln

Sunday morning saw us preaching at both services at the Uniting Church, Unity Hill, on Sunday morning. Rural congregations often struggle to find regular leadership, with small communities lacking attraction for many in pastoral leadership, so Unity Hill Uniting Church is blessed to have Benji Callen as their senior pastor. After realising that his PhD in science wasn’t leading him in a fulfilling direction, he completed theological studies and ordination and relocated with his family to Port Lincoln. (Side note: as you find with most people in South Australia, we are all separated by one degree – his wife Nicole and I attended the same youth camp when we were 16 years old.) Us preaching on Sunday morning meant that Benji could preach at Poonindie, another Eyre community who relies on Benji sharing the load with their local lay preachers. It was an opportunity for us to share about our understanding of the gospel – of our heart to have a “Billy Theresa” mission, in which actions are just as important as words, whether at home in South Australia or in Kijabe. A chance to encourage people – what you do, today, wherever you are, has the potential to be important in ways you may never fully appreciate.

Lincoln National Park

Midweek was a time to explore and rest, as well as to meet and connect. We spent some time hiking at Lincoln National Park and Coffin Bay, hundreds of kilometres of protected coastline, sand dunes and scrub first discovered by outsiders when Matthew Flinders was circumnavigating Australia in 1802. To walk along deserted beaches together while the children were back in Adelaide with their grandparents was a restorative blessing – peace and solitude in the midst of ministry. A chance to reflect on our journey over the last 4 months, in the context of the last 2 years, and to look forward with uncertainty mixed with faith. On Tuesday we were invited to share about our work in Kenya at a luncheon at another local family’s house. A group of around 15 took time out of their weeks to come and listen and ask questions about our ministry, welcoming us with interest and thoughtful questions about the details of life and work in East Africa. We had time to sit and chat with Benji, learning that Del Giorno’s is THE place to get coffee in Port Lincoln as well as get a glimpse of the life of a rural pastor. We were able to learn from Jean and Graham the meaning of hospitality, as well as a snapshot of the tuna fishing industry and the families who make this their life. We saw a tuna farm as Pete drew us into the world of aquaculture, explaining the months long process of procuring and fattening Southern Bluefin tuna for the export to the premium Japanese markets, who buy 97% of the tuna in order to supply 3% of their demand.

World class bluefin tuna sashimi while floating near a tuna farm? Yes please!

At the end of the week we headed to Tumby Bay, population 1351 until summer tourists swell the numbers to up to 12,000. Initially a grain storage and loading port, it supports the agricultural community with education and healthcare as well as being a centre of gravity for families and visitors alike. We met the delightful Fatchens, retired farmers who invited us to share at a prayer meeting at their home with a group of prayer warriors who faithfully keep in touch with missionaries around the world, praying for and supporting them.

Wanna go for a paddle?

On Sunday morning as we walked on the beach before church, an eager lady with a dragon boat and some extra paddles informed us that we really should come out and paddle with them – and so we found ourselves conscripted into a dragon boat training session with a bunch of friendly strangers, coasting through tranquil waters to the beat of an enthusiastic voice behind us timing our strokes (easy oar! paddles in! aaaand…. go!). An unexpected surprise to start a full day. We preached at Tumby Bay Church of Christ, complete with generator-powered projector due to a peninsula-wide power outage – thank you ETSA for making these Kenyans feel so at home! The lunch afterwards was again a spiderweb of connections, with members having attended my childhood church, or having children married to schoolday acquaintances.

Preaching, Tumby Bay Church of Christ

The afternoon found us wending our way out to Ungarra, population 241. In the agricultural heartland of the Eyre, we visited the Telfer family, 2 generations with 5 families sharing the load of farming at their massive property – wheat and barley, canola and vetch. As we chatted with Josh & Esther, 2 of the junior Telfers, we were reliably advised that if we were to be driving before sunrise the next morning, we would need to watch out for kangaroos, and shouldn’t swerve if we saw them. “Camels and wombats – they’re the only 2 animals you should swerve for. Wombats are like huge bricks – they’ll flip your car. If you eat wombat, I’ve heard they taste like sweet, sweet pork”. Excellent.

Ungarra Church of Christ

After living in rural Kenya for the last 2 years I feel a strange, new affinity for rural Australia, with its challenges and joys, hardships and rewards. It has been a joy to make these connections and a privilege to have a window into these families and communities. We pray that we’ve been able to encourage them as much as they’ve encouraged us.

- M.

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Finance update: thanks to all of you, near and far, who have contributed to our upfront costs thus far and who have committed to supporting us regularly. As of this week, we need to raise another $1800 per month in ongoing support, and $32,000 in upfront costs before we can return to Kijabe. Please continue to pray with us that all will come together in order for us to leave on May 29.

If you were a farmer, this could be your view.

Today I read an interesting BBC article about Madonna and her charity to help kids in Malawi get an education. She had planned to build an academy for girls, but in the end changed her plans and built classrooms for existing schools where the lack of sufficient classrooms meant children were forced to learn outside under trees–no matter the weather.

This part of the article, quoting the Malawi education minister, struck me:

“We’d like them to work with us so that they can be absorbed into the strategy of Malawi’s education and that goes not just for Madonna – any group that comes to Malawi to assist us in education.”
An individual should not “go to some remote part of Malawi and start doing whatever because at the end of the day we must plan for teachers”, Ms Kazembe said.

One of the reasons that I love volunteering at Kijabe Hospital is because the Hospital is an integral part of Kenyan health, endorsed by the ministry of health. The Kenyan government posts 10 medical school graduates to us as interns each year, knowing they will be taught well and experience learning to be a doctor in circumstances similar to other places around the country, but with excellent supervision. We also receive 10 clinical officer interns per year, the equivalent of US physician assistants, who train with us for 12 months, and then go on to settle into a health centre, ours or somewhere else, becoming experts over the years in a specialty – our pediatric ward and nursery would lack critical continuity and excellence without our clinical officers Lillian and Bob. Our surgical training programs are accredited across Africa, with the goal of building up surgical capability over the long term as we train future teachers. Our nurse anesthetist program, the first in East Africa, was initially accredited by the Kenyan medical board, and is now extending to our neighbouring countries who are embracing this widening of opportunity in the provision of surgical care.

I sometimes hear of churches and organisations sending short term medical missions trips overseas to needy places. Sometimes this is done well – teams of doctors and nurses going to a place that has infrastructure and long term care already in place, the team invited by those on the ground to come and accomplish a specific goal – training in advanced life support, heart surgery for which the local medics have been screening patients and preparing for for months, if not years. But every so often I hear of a team which cobbled together some doctors and nurses and bandaids and drugs, and set up tents in what appear at first glance to be remote and poor areas – but without the invitation of the local health teams, without local understanding of the underlying medical, cultural and economic problems of the people.  There may be good treatment of a case of pneumonia, but lack of understanding that the underlying HIV or TB has not been considered, and a short term respite is all that has been really offered.

As we meet and talk with people about our work in Kenya, many have said something like – I’ve always wanted to go and help. Or, I’d like to take my kids to see work like that, to realise how fortunate they are. Or, what could I do do help for a couple of weeks?

My answer is always the same:  There is so much we can, and should, do to help people in the resource-poor world. But the first thing I think people with compassion need to do is ask the right people – what can we do to help? If you come offering health, ask the people who are already trying to provide healthcare – what can we do to assist in what you’re already trying to do with few resources? If it’s building a school, ask – what is the national system here, and if I am building a primary school, is the curriculum going to help these kids achieve what the country would like them to achieve, rather than what I think they need, and what is the plan for teachers to be consistently available?

If it is church planting, ask the church leadership – what do you need, and how can we help disciple, encourage and pastor people over the long term? If it is sending a team of people to build a community centre, ask: would it be better for us to help the local population whose unemployment rate is 40% by hiring them to build it instead?

We all have great intentions when we seek to go somewhere and help people. But too often our good intentions are wrapped up in plans and dreams and goals of our own, or those of an NGO, instead of what is needed and how we should get there. And without the ownership, direction, vision and desire of the people who are asking for help, we are likely to provide short term help at best, or conflict, opposition, dependence and harm at worst.

The BBC article concludes: “contrary to reports, Madonna’s relationship with Malawi government is good”.  I hope that when we, and you, go to help, the report of our relationship with the people, community and leadership is the same.

- M.

We plan to return to Kijabe on May 29, and we’re on track to do so.  Before we can return, we are required by SIM to have our monthly and up-front operational expenses fully funded by committed supporters…and we’re getting there.  We are delighted to report that as of March 30, we have only $2,400 per month and $37,500 to raise up-front before we are able to return.

To put this in perspective, we have already raised more than half of the additional monthly budget we needed in order to return, and half of our up-front expenses!  We have been deeply blessed and inspired to see new supporters come alongside, and the continued and increased support from our current financial partnership team.

But we’re not there yet.  For our up-front costs in particular, we need to raise another $37,500 in the next 6 or so weeks in order to:

-purchase return plane tickets
-buy a 4WD vehicle that will help us navigate the often-impassable-by-a-2WD-in-muddy-weather roads around Kijabe
-set up a small contingency fund of one month’s worth of operational expenses
-pay for medical costs and vaccinations before we return, and
-cover excess baggage costs for books and clothes we want to take back with us

If you haven’t joined our team already, will you help us?

There’s an interesting article in The Australian this weekend on the limited effectiveness of foreign aid.  It notes a recent study which offers a scathing critique of one of the world’s largest aid programs, saying this well-known aid program has a ”limited ability to demonstrate whether its poverty reduction activities have contributed to any significant change in the lives of the people it is trying to help”.

A massive statement.  And yet, living as we do in a country which receives a massive amount of this aid and working inside a Kenyan-run and Kenyan-owned (not foreign NGO) institution, we can testify to first hand experience of the far-away feel of foreign aid money, and of frustration with where it is being spent.

Do you want to participate in compassionate work in a developing country?  Kijabe Hospital has a nearly 100 year track record of caring for the poor and refugees, training African doctors and nurses, and providing economic development for the local area.  And it can’t keep its doors open without people like you supporting volunteer/missionary staff like Mardi and I, who receive no salary from the Hospital but whose expenses are met by friends and family back home.

Will you consider supporting us with a once-off gift or becoming a monthly supporter today?  Click here to become a part of something with unquestionable long-term value, and contribute to significant change in the lives of the people we help on a daily basis.

-A