I have been amazed at the way God moves! Even more, I am amazed at how God has transformed communities and even our nation throughout history. With this in mind, I look to a brief overview of spiritual awakenings.

Spiritual awakenings, whether in biblical or Church history, manifest patterns that are similar, often strikingly so. While all of the following elements may not be present in each instance, for the most part awakenings progress through a cycle whose phases include these various aspects of God’s working. 1) Awakenings are usually preceded by a time of spiritual depression, apathy and gross sin, in which a majority of nominal Christians are hardly different from the members of secular society, and the churches seem to be asleep. … 2) An individual or small group of God’s people becomes conscious of their sins and backslidden condition, and vows to forsake all that is displeasing to God. … 3) As some Christians begin to yearn for a manifestation of God’s power, a leader or leaders arise with prophetic insights into the causes and remedies of the problems, and a new awareness of the holy and pure character of the Lord is present. … 4) The awakening of Christians occurs: many understand and take part in a higher spiritual life. … 5) An awakening may be God’s means of preparing and strengthening His people for future challenges or trials.”Spiritual Awakenings in North America,” Christian History

What do spiritual awakenings have to do with a parenting ministry? Plenty! In my family, just the introduction of Growing Kids God’s Way set my wife and I on a journey that has lasted for 8 years! We were, in our parenting, in a state of need. Maybe not parenting “depression, apathy or gross sin” as the commentary above suggests. But we were in need of learning and applying the practical implications of God’s Word for our family.

That’s when we entered our first class. And slowly, through a small group of God’s people who led us, we yearned for the peace that would come in our children being a blessing to others and a testimony of God’s grace. The spiritual dimension of parenting involves parents proactively, consistently, and graciously engaging their time with their children, training them in the way they should go.

My prayer is for our nation to go through a spiritual awakening. It can begin anywhere. Why not let it begin with the family? Why not let it begin with our role as parents proactively engaging in our roles of teaching our children the things of God?

One other highlight and then I’m almost finished - Lillian’s husband Ezekiel is a Pastor and also teaches at the local high school - when attending their church on the first Sunday - he was teaching on the Family and one could see and hear he has a passion for the family and making positive changes in that regards for Mbita and Kenya. As a result of all the time Lillian and I had together, it became obvious that we were ‘kindred spirits’ and hearts knit for healthy families. As I explained about my prayer request regarding my time with Lillian and our relationship together it became obvious that God was answering that prayer beyond our wildest imagination - she said “you must speak to Ezekiel, I will arrange for that” and she did. Toward the end of our second week, the three of us met in their home and I was able to explain about how the ’small groups’ work for parenting and would also allow Ezekiel to disciple future leaders for the church. They now have the GK workbook, all the On Becoming books and by next week Lillian will have GKGW CD’s. They are unable to use our DVD’s but do have an MP3 player - so we are going to see what needs to be done to put the info in that format. Their home does not have regular electricity but they do have a generator that is ‘fired up’ when there is something they want to watch on the player. Fortunately, they deem GKGW something of value to watch. Please pray for Lillian & Ezekiel - as they are respected in their community and can see some wonderful things coming out of the little village of Mbita that could impact Kenya positively for the family. Lillian already was grasping the concepts and understands the idea of the ‘principle’ and ‘vehicle’ to deliver the principle. The plan would be for them to study the material and then present it to their small group. Not sure if they would show the information or not - might depend if they want it to become an English lesson as well. Fortunately they understand both U.S. English as well as the ‘Queens’ English, - yes there are some differences.

June 30th our second Saturday - was Field Day for the students - forgot to mention 3 members of our Team did PE and sports with the students. One of our Team, Mari, has been a girls basketball coach for years so it was neat to watch her work with the upper end girls teaching them to ‘catch & release’, ‘follow- through’ ‘dribble’ etc. I actually learned a few things myself. This was the most difficult day as it was when we had to say ‘good bye’ to everyone - many tears where shed both by students, teachers and our Team members. We spent many hours each day with these lovely children and adults and after nearly two weeks and knowing the likelihood is that most of us will not return…the fun memories of the day was a fitting end.

July 1st - Sunday morning at 6 a.m. our Team gathered to load up in two Vans [fortunately we unloaded all we brought over so many of the suitcases were able to fit inside one another and we consolidated down to only 18!] We now began our trek back to Nairobi via Nukuru where we stayed in the National Park - the site does provide some good info as well as their links - except I disagree with the early part and the ‘millions of years ago’ deal. But once you get to the last 5,000 years………

Our journey took us through many towns - experienced one minor ‘breakdown’ with one of our vehicles - which provided us a chance to get out and stand on solid and still ground. Did I mention the “African Massage” - oh we got a real good one on this trip and also made us extremely grateful that we were able to fly from Nairobi closer to Mbita at the beginning of our two weeks, another answer to prayer! We arrived in Nukuru in time for a late lunch which provided us our first taste after 12 days of, well talking like a spoiled westerner, a nice variety of food including ‘chocolate’! We quickly checked into our rooms and at 4:30 p.m. went on our first safari - Kids’ there are monkey’s everywhere - all types. Since it was evening though we didn’t get to see any of the ‘big animals’ they were either already settling in for the night or hiding waiting for the rest to settle before they went ‘out for dinner’ - think you get my drift. Remember we’re talking wild life!

Had a wonderful dinner and off to bed. Here we did have electricity and brewed Kenyan coffee. The next morning Monday - July 2nd was another early rising as we needed to be packed, breakfasted and ready for our morning safari by 7:30 a.m. and we were not going to miss breakfast! Fresh fruits, breads, omelets and well they called it pancakes but actually they were more like round ‘French toast’ [that is bread dipped in egg and cooked on a grill - not sure if my friends in other parts of the world reading this are familiar with French Toast. Don't ask me how it received its name - kind of like English Muffins - those are not ‘English’- anyway breakfast was scrumptious and we were ready for our Safari by 7:30ish.

This was the day we saw just about everything except the lions - if you've ever watched National Geographic or Nature Channel and the lake where there are more Flamingo's than you could ever count - well this was that! There were so many Flamingo’s they sounded like, well the whirr of a propeller or helicopter and there was the color Pink all along the shore line. Then there were the Waterbucks, the Giraffe family, Daddy, Mummy and baby. Antelope; Rhino; Zebra's, dik-diks, spotted a leopard [no pun intended] Impalas; gazelles; no elephants, guess they are not in this park and of course still lots of baboons and monkeys. If you visit Kenya.com you can see some neat pictures at this site of the park.

Can’t remember if it was before or after we reached Nukuru but passed by miles and miles and hillside after hillside of Tea Plantations!

KERICHO - this is tea country! Kenya is the world’s third largest producer of tea after India and Sri Lanka and Kericho is in the heart of Kenya’s tea plantations. There are rolling hills carpeted in neat, bright green tea bushes as far as you can see. The climate here is perfect for tea with rain falling almost every afternoon. Kericho - named after Ole Kericho, a Maasai chief who was killed in battle by the Gusii in the 18th century -

Okay, I’m almost done - we left Nukuru around noon and started our last leg of the journey to Nairobi and had our last “African Massage” until we were just about to Nairobi before the roads improved. As you can see Nairobi looks like many other large cities - once we arrived there about 2ish - spent the next couple of hours ’shopping’ - well we were tourists you know and still had all those women looking for deals. Although some decided a nice Chicago Pizza sounded like a better idea. Anyway - we split up for a bit - the adventuresome[which did not include me] went to the Duka’s - which is a series of small shops and lots of bargaining - I actually went to the local supermarket - fun place to see what is available and also make a reasonable purchase of Kenya coffee. We regrouped around 5:30 p.m. to go to our final destination prior to the airport and that was a restaurant called ‘Carnivore‘. Actually, to me it was Africa’s version of a Churrascaria [Brazilian Barbeque] - if you care check out the link The best part of the evening was the fact that a couple who was in one of our very first classes in California, Doug & Kathy Ghrist, were able to join us for dinner. Doug’s grew up in Kenya where his parents were missionaries and he, Kathy and their 3 children came to Nairobi via AIM Missions about 9 years ago. When we met them in the mid 1980’s they had one 18 mo. old son - we’ve kept in touch these many years and hoped to be able to connect at some point while in Nairobi. As it turned out, the gentleman who provided us the drivers and vans for our return trip from Mbita to Nairobi [David] knows Doug & Kathy very well. Small world! It was wonderful to reconnect with them in person and for some of our Team who sat close enough to be a part of our conversations. Although our time was short it was sweet.

Well, our flight from Nairobi to Amsterdam was scheduled to leave at 10:15 p.m. and we wanted to be at the airport around 8 p.m. - which would have been no problem except who could have expected a traffic jam that late in the evening? Anyway we made it and all boarded the first leg of our journey home.

Tuesday July 3rd - we arrived in Amsterdam at 5:30 a.m. and had a 6 hr. lay-over - well, we couldn’t be so close to downtown Amsterdam and not take the train in to walk around! Think there were 5 of us that went in - The last time I was there was Sept. 1963 - yes, a long time ago and with Auntie Anne - it was a graduation trip! Some of it still looked as I had remembered it.

Our flight from Amsterdam took off on time and we arrived in Detroit, think it was around 2 p.m. still the 3rd of July - we had an even longer lay-over there - but were so exhausted, so after getting a ‘hamburger’ - several of us actually took a nap [on the floor] At 11:15 p.m. Tuesday July 3rd we touched down at Charleston International Airport where we were greeted by happy family and friends! My dear husband was there waiting, it was so good to see him. Don’t think we’ve ever been apart quite this long. Home safe and in time to celebrate the 4th of July.

So what did I do while the ‘teachers’ were in the classroom? Made ‘house calls’ with Lillian the Orphan Overseer - that role is actually a combination, Social Worker/Public Health Nurse/Counselor all rolled into one. Lillian is a lovely young woman almost 38 and with wisdom beyond her years. After we got to know each other, she shyly shared with me that there was a slight concern about how much ‘walking’ etc. I would be able to do [guess she figured out any woman with two grown children and all those grandchildren, well I wasn't as young as she. And this is where I also believe prayers were answered, as I had no trouble keeping up with her and as a result, we were able to make many days of home visits.

The average Kenyan lives in a rural environment. The picture above is of a family in front of their traditional house. The houses are in most cases coated with a mud wall and the roof thatched with grass where the family cannot afford iron sheet roofing. The houses are basically three roomed with one partition being the main sitting room, a bedroom for the parents and a separate bedroom for all the children. The kitchens and bathrooms are usually separate tiny buildings and the mode of cooking is firewood. Most of the families grow food in farms for their daily survival and strive to produce a surplus which they can sell in local markets to supplement their other basic needs.

"Home" is in the eyes of the beholder as I saw everything from a home that most of you would be okay with to the picture above - mud huts with thatched or tin roofs. No indoor plumbing of any sort and none outside either. So the water had to be hauled up every day from Lake Victoria or other distribution points either by the children or adults. For the most part, I found the homes were neat and what continually amazed me was how the women not only had very clean clothing, but well pressed! Remember they did their washing by hand - no washing machine and the women used what many of our grandmothers or for some of you 'great-grandmothers' used the 'hot iron box' for ironing. They didn't have much but what they did own was neat. Most had some sort of small garden growing 'maze' and chicken's for laying eggs. In several homes these hens were sitting on their eggs, in the house! For some reason the chickens acted more like house 'pets' - the cows, donkeys and goats roam pretty freely - especially the goats. It was a common site to see the women in the morning walking down the road with various items on their heads, and I’m not talking light loads. Definitely a 'skill' taught young. A couple of our teachers tried to be helpful for their hostess on the Sunday visit by going down to the lake to help fetch water - much to their dismay, some of the local children came to their rescue and carried the water back for them on their heads. [the children]

June 26 & 27, the Tuesday and Wednesday of our second week I had the opportunity to share with the parents/caregivers of the children at the school - Tuesday’s group included ages 3 yrs and up - majority were women, but about a dozen men attended as well. Considering it was planned for 9 to noon, it was good that any men attended. Amazingly enough, parents in the small fishing village of Mbita deal with many of the same issues as parents around the world - the context is different but the issues the same. Children are children and do childish things and of course, they do grow and still do some childish things - so it was helpful to explain to them as many of you have learned, providing the ‘moral reason why’ is critical. Of course, it was necessary to deal with the example being set etc. Wednesday’s group were 3 and under. Although a count wasn’t taken [to my knowledge] there looked to be about 75-100 people both days. Lillian was very pleased. I could go on and on but won’t bore you with the details. A fun comment made by the U.S. teachers who got to sit in on some of the teaching time was that they felt it was the first PTA meeting being held in Mbita! After the meetings which extended way beyond the noon hour the parents were told that they would receive a ‘mattress, blanket and mosquito net’ for each of the students they had attending the school! That was met by cheers - they were not aware this was happening. Talk about a site - as those ladies left, some with 4 mattresses tied up in a roll and carried on their head, walking down the hill from the school to the main road! [Remember what I said about the roads]

One cute story to share - just as an example about some of the ‘tricks’ older siblings like to play on younger, again only the context is different. There was an adorable 3 year old who came with her Mama on Wednesday and arrived a bit early, so we had a chance to ‘chat’ although neither of really understood the other except for the smiles and hugs she eventually allowed me to give her. She held back any hugs until she was sure that I was not in the habit of ‘eating little children’ - yes you read that right! Her Momma who spoke enough English said her little one wanted to know if I ate little children. Evidently the older children in the family or neighborhood like to scare the little ones by telling them the ‘white people’ eat little children as the older like to see the little ones cry etc. when they see a white person [not many] walking down the street or waving at them. Once she was sure I was okay, we became friends. Thank you for indulging me on that one.

Kenya Report - Part V

Thursday June 21 and each day there after began around 6 a.m. [we had an alarm but the local Roosters would have worked too as they did crow before daylight.] Breakfast was at 6:45 - consisted of scrambled eggs and toast - and yes, I brought my French Press and Starbucks - don’t laugh - there were many on the Team that were very happy about that.

Around 7:15 we began our trek up the hill [dirt and rocks] out of Safari Village to the main road [yes dirt] and then up another hill [more dirt and rocks might as well know now there is no pavement] to arrive for morning Staff devotions at 7:30 a.m. - often we were accompanied on our walk by students arriving at school as well. At 8 a.m. the students had assembly and then they were off to their classes. Since the majority of our Team are teachers, they were each assigned a teacher from grade 1 - 4 and then a couple of the teachers who work with upper end students floated between grades 5-8. One Team member is a librarian and she helped to organize the school library. My main role was to be Orphan Overseer Lillian’s shadow as well as offer some help regarding classroom discipline and that is where all my prayers were answered! Will get into that in a moment, but first allow me to explain our weekends.

On Saturday June 23rd we had ‘in service’ for the teachers - I was up first and as those of you who have been through our classes or read any of our books, the first place to start is who we are in relation to who God is - sharing about how precious we are as demonstrated through the Cross - we are not the product of evolutionary chance etc. Even though the school is Christian and the teachers have all made professions of faith - the history of the Loa tribe and still practiced by some, allows for more than ‘one wife’ and she can be ‘purchased’ for cows etc. so women are not necessarily held in high regard as a person and because of the high infant/child mortality rate it - well let’s say it is different than what most of us know. In addition when you understand that the majority of the children at CGA are orphans or at least one of their parents has died - children do not start school at the same developmental place as most of our children start. Anyway, I had about 90 min. to cover a lot of ground and because of your prayers, believe that goal was accomplished. Aside from our “Chai” break [yes I brought my press] and lunch, it was pretty much non-stop workshops until mid day. On Sunday we were each assigned a teacher to attend church with - I went with Lillian. Her husband Ezekiel is a pastor - the service was in both English & Loa and went for 3+ hrs. with children in attendance as well - will be the last time you complain when your Pastor goes over an hour or hour and a half. After the service we went to ‘our’ teacher’s home for lunch. Where there some stories to share that night when we regrouped!

Kenya Report - Part IV

Wednesday June 20th we were up and out by 6 a.m. to be taken to a local small airport where we were greeted by 3 African Inland Mission Pilots [AIM] who were going to fly us from Nairobi to Kisumu - I remember they called one of the planes ‘the mosquito’ which held 4 or 5 of our Team plus one pilot - the other propeller plane held the remainder of the Team and 2 pilots [our luggage was to arrive later in the day after the plane returned to Nairobi and then flew back - that gives you an idea of how big or small the 2nd plane was] It was a great day for flying, clear skies no turbulence and I was fortunate enough to have a ‘window’ seat. We flew over the Great Rift Valley, saw a huge canyon that was the result of a Volcano many years ago.

Fortunately, Gary & I have flown in various types of aircraft over the years and landed on many types of ’airfields’ - not so for most of the Team, so as we were approaching Kisumu many were wondering ‘where is the runway?’ only to discover that the runway was a cleared grassy strip - but our landing was beautiful. We were welcomed by some of the staff from Christ’s Gift Academy, which is our final destination and still requiring a drive. After a delightful morning tea - we boarded the SUV type autos and started our trek to Mbita. We also had our first introduction to what would affectionately be called an “African Massage”, as most of our time in a moving vehicle would be over, bumpy, dirt roads with a fair amount of potholes. Given that Kenya was greatly influenced by Britain, the driver sits on the right hand side of the vehicle and of course drives on the opposite side of the road than those of us living in the U.S. - but there we discovered you drove on whichever side of the road was less bumpy. To our relief we found the closer we got to Mbita the less company we had on the road in the form of autos. Now we had other company on the road, cows, donkeys, chickens, goats and of course people, but we being the bigger - they did yield - eventually.

We arrived in Mbita late morning and were first taken to the Nursery/Pre-Primary portion of CGA [would be the equivalent to pre-school and kindergarten] Wish I had some photo’s to include but if you visit the site you will have some idea of the scenery, but for now - you will need to use your imaginations. When I say ‘taken’ actually, we dropped off on the main road [dirt] and then we walked in to where the school building is [on dirt] we were greeted by the Nursery/PP staff and think it was at least 40 students [could have been more] ages 4 to 8 years, all in their uniforms. They had a program and welcoming prepared for us which was very well done, considering that for most of the children their intro to school just started in January, which means that is when English became the main language they were hearing for at least 8 hrs. a day. The “Mother tongue” is Luo - that is the main tribe in Mbita.

After the program we made our way up the road [dirt] and hillside [dirt and rocks] to Christ’s Gift Academy [CGA] where we met the rest of the staff, taken for a tour of the buildings and had lunch. Rice, beans, Chai (African tea - tea with milk and sugar) Ugali (a staple African food - ground maize fixed like mashed potatoes) Sukuma wiki (a fried or boiled vegetable like spinach, usually mixed with onions) were more or less the staple food for our lunch meals. The children have nourishing porridge each morning and then their lunch early afternoon. More on that later - back to now just Wednesday afternoon! After our meal and a short meeting with “Auntie” Judi [you can read her info on the CGA website - that gives a great description and photo's of the campus etc.] the children grades 1-8 had a program prepared for us. Think it was around 4 or 5 p.m. by the time we made our way back down the hill and down the road a bit to Safari Village which was going to be our ‘home’ for the next 11 days. The photos from the Safari Village site are good. I must admit though we only got to see the Hippo’s once - much to our dismay - they were swimming and come up for air in a similar manner as dolphins [but of course no where as gracefully :-)]

We were all checked in to our ‘rooms’ and then had dinner - the food - was local fare and good. Although after two nights of serving us tilapia with the heads and tails, I think the kitchen staff discovered that we American’s were not too keen about that and began to filet them for us - very yummy. In actuality, I found the food agreeable, lots of carbs but there was also lots of walking. Each hut/cabin did contain a twin bed for each occupant with its own mosquito net; shower, sink and toilet - albeit don’t think many ‘hot’ showers were available - mostly tepid to cold - but since we were at the Equator the coolness was ‘refreshing’, besides complaining wouldn’t have made the water any warmer. Oh and electricity - we did have that, lights were not to bright, not sure if that was so they didn’t attract mosquito’s or just not great power as the electricity was either ‘solar power’ or a generator, which was probably powered by the solar panels which did require ‘sun’ but again at least ‘bright lights’ didn’t attract flying insects. . And for my younger friends, at night the monkeys would play on the roof of our cabin! Think we all made it to bed early Wednesday night after a very full day.

Kenya Report - Part III