Come and Listen...

 Wow!  Can't believe we're already one week into our second term.  We had a wonderful break - there's so much to recount from it, so many lessons learned, so many examples of God's provision - but here are some thoughts I (Jim) had on a little camping trip I took with a handful of colleagues here at RVA in the Aberdare Mountains about an hour and a half from here.  It wasn't what I had in mind when I came to Kenya.  If you squint, our camp could be sitting in an open meadow on a rainy day in some sage-brush flat in Colorado.

 Walk over the next ridge, and you're suddenly fishing in some rain-soaked bamboo forest - not much like Colorado, but there I was wading around in Chacos pulling Rainbow Trout out of a stream on a gold-ribbed hare's ear.

And these, I think mom and dad would agree, look more than a little bit like those little 'straw-flowers' we would see in the Colorado high country.

And if you squint, just a little, this bushbuck is a reasonable facsimile of a skinny little Mule Deer in summer coat.

And when the skies cleared briefly one afternoon, the sky was almost Colorado blue.

But it was encounters like these that provided clear evidence that I wasn't back at home wandering old haunts chasing fish up and down the stream. 

The place was THICK with brush and the only trails were slick, muddy ditches deeply pocked with the tracks of Cape Buffalo and Elephants.  Obviously, the specter of rounding some bend in the trail and meeting face to face with one or the other gave this fishing trip a distinctly un-Coloradan feel.  But something kept coming up in my mind I'd read sometime back by either Richard Foster or Dallas Willard about imagining what it would have been like to sit at the water's edge and listen to Christ speak.  

Somehow I forget that Jesus caught fish, cooked them over an open fire, and had real conversations with real people - real people like me.  So between worrying about buffalo and trying to determine whether that track was left by a hyena or a leopard and if that made any difference, I tried to imagine what it might have been like to be Peter and Andrew sitting with their nets, or James and John with theirs. (Mark 1:16)  What was it like?  What was HE like?  What compelled these men to leave their nets and follow Him?

"Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men."

What were they thinking?  What am I thinking?

How did we get here, from Colorado?  Am I fishing for men?

"Follow Me."

It's amazing how He brought us here.  Am I still listening?  When the Spirit leads, am I quick to listen?  When a student is hurting, am I following Christ?  When students irritate me to the core, do I follow The Man by the shore?  When fellow missionaries are jealous, or rude, or angry, do I respond as one who follows Him should?

When we got home, I was doing the dishes and listening to the iPod.  I've really been enjoying David Crowder Band's 'A Collision' and the first real song on the album is "Come and Listen."

Come and listen,

Come to the water's edge all you

Who know and fear the Lord.

Come and listen,

Come to the water's edge, all you

Who are thirsty, come.

Let me tell you what He

has done for me,

He has done for you,

He has done for us.

Life here at RVA is hard.  It's stressful.  The days are long, the demands on our time come from all corners and at all hours, but this term I'm praying that whether it's junior high basketball practice, the dry valley floor, or the kitchen sink I take moments to come to the water's edge, sit at His feet, and listen.

1 Peter 5:7

As most of you know, I (Jim) was robbed in Nakuru a couple of weeks ago.  Back in November, we had scheduled a safari at a travel fair; we were to depart only four days after the robbery.  Dealing with the emotional end of my being robbed while on safari in a National Park was much more difficult for Heather, and Faith had actually picked up on quite a lot of the details.  Because of that, we were pretty apprehensive about our trip to Maasai Mara, but God knows best.  We were able to borrow a camera from some friends of ours, hired a driver with the Gonzalez family, and took off.

 We stayed in a 'tented camp.' It was nothing like camping, except for the feel of being outdoors and listening to night sounds through cloth walls.

All our meals were buffet-style in a beautiful restaurant, with foods from all over the world.  We had tasty deserts, the kids enjoyed rabbit and duck (Joel was especially excited) and, generally, felt like we weren't in Africa - salve for our homesick hearts.

It was expensive; it probably cost $100 per day (thanks, Mom and Dad!) but we needed the distraction, and the security.

The kids thrived on the independence, the pool, time with friends... They even posed with the creepy-looking maasai statue.

Game drives were a fun diversion.

 

There was plenty of time for reading, Heather had a massage and a pedicure.

It all felt very un-missionary-like to be pampered, comfortable, and relaxed.  For a few days we were sitting in the lap of luxury, away from the stresses of life at RVA, and from the constant wariness: hiding possessions, watching for pick-pockets, wondering about bribes and government corruption, looking at window-bars, tightly grasping our kids' hands.

In college I heard a quote: "You are a missionary or a mission field."  I'm not sure who said it, some evangelist at an Urbana conference, I think.  At first it excited me, then bothered me.  In a later conversation, a friend said it shouldn't bother me at all because EVERY Christian SHOULD be BOTH a missionary and a mission field - it's when we spend most of our time as only a missionary or only a mission field that we run into problems.

'Cast your anxiety on Him for he cares for you'
1 Peter 5:7

God is incredibly good.  We felt so blessed by our week away.  The timing and the activities of our safari trip were the perfect antidote for our anxiety and worry and through it, God really gave our family comfort and boldness.  Faith was first very scared about the idea of going on safari because that was where I was robbed, but now she wants to go to Nakuru and stay in the SAME PLACE with her Grandmom who arrives next month.  I even bought a rungu stick our last day in the Mara - just like the ones that glowered over me in Nakuru - as a memento and souvenir of the moment.

Maasai Mara Safari

Just before Christmas, we went on a family safari to the Maasai Mara National Game Reserve about four hours from here on the border of Tanzania and Serengeti National Park.  We had a wonderful time!  Everything about the trip was a real God-send (more about that next post).  Here are some of the views we saw on our game drives.  A big thank-you to the Mathisons who loaned us their camera for the trip.

 Faith looked like this most of the time - and her daddy felt like it.

 Bare-Faced Go-Away-Bird

  We saw some incredible scenery.

 Black-Chested Snake-Eagle

 Dik-Dik

You see these everywhere, but they're impossible to get a good picture of.  They're always running away through the brush.

Baby Hippo whose mother made an appearance in our Christmas Card HERE which happens also to contain an exciting announcement that you might have missed.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, I suggest you take a close look!

Leopard in low light in the early morning.  Kind of a grainy photo, but here's the proof:  we saw one!  It was Heather's first, despite a semester of wildlife biology here in Kenya seven years ago.

 We got some really great shots of lions.

Joel had a blast like his sister, but the pictures don't show it so well.  Here, he just didn't want to look away from the elephants.

So... Which is your favorite?