Giving Thanks

For those of you that don't know, I absolutely love Thanksgiving. I love that it's the perfect excuse to eat amazing food with people you care about. I love that it's a non-commercialized holiday. I love that it's a culmination of fall. I love having an official American holiday where we take time to thank God for all the ways He has blessed us.

Matt and I feel incredibly blessed. We could never begin to give thanks for all the ways God has provided for us this year. But we thought we'd choose 10 areas where we have felt particularly blessed.

1. Rewarding work
2. Being able to serve people
3. Contentment in the midst of challenges and changes
4. Having a car
5. Friends and family to talk to
6. Our adoptive family of Mennonites
7. CCF (our church home) sending us cds of all the services
8. Simple treats like reeses pieces (as Matt eats them right now) and mango smoothies (We've made them at least 3 nights this week)
9. Small triumphs
10. Our ideas coming to fruition slowly by slowly

What are you thankful for?

So normally on Thanksgiving we talk about the delicious Thanksgiving meal and all of God's blessings, but for me, I am quite thankful for Sub Zone. We were looking for a quick bite to eat for lunch and happened upon this place. You walk in, and you're in subway. In case you didn't know, I love subway. I got to eat the best sub I've had since we've been in Kenya on Thanksgiving.

Thank God for Sub Zone.

What is this?: Resolved??

In October we posted a picture of a mystery animal which died next to our house. People gave us some ideas of what it might be, civet, and genet were the most common answers. A few weeks ago, we talked to our Maasai friends and showed them the picture, and they immediately knew what animal it was: "oh --that's esero!".....of course that don't know what "esero" is called in English. Today, while showing some other friends the picture, one person decided to make a mission of figuring out what the animal is. He came up with.....the slender mongoose. See this picture here: http://www.theanimalfiles.com/mammals/carnivores/mongoose_slender.html

This could be our animal, but I'm still not 100% convinced. However, I'm posting this for you to consider...what do you think?

Supply and Demand

Today's macroeconomic lesson was spurred on by mangoes and mango smoothies. We have started making mango smoothies again, as the mangoes are just coming into season. As I was cutting up a beautiful specimen, I temporarily despaired, “its too bad that now that mangoes taste better, their price will go up.” I quickly corrected my logic and realized that in fact, the best mangoes are actually the cheapest you'll find all year, (Ksh 20~ 25 cents per big mango). Why is this, it seems counterintuitive that the best mangoes are the cheapest?

Of course, all the economists are yelling, “its supply and demand!” First let's assume that the demand for mangoes is pretty much stable. You're desire for a mango is about the same year round, if a mango were available. The best mangoes tend to come to market during the heart of the mango season, when they've had the full benefit of the rains and heat to produce a large, juicy mango. During that time, supply is at its peak, since mango trees produce mangoes throughout Kenya at about the same time. This increase in amount supplied drives down prices. During the rest of the year, there are some mangoes available, but usually they are lower quality, not as sweet. However, the off-season supply is so low, and the price jumps.

You probably notice the same phenomenon for peaches in the Northeast US. You have to pay an arm and a leg for peaches in december, and they're not that sweet anyway. But those perfect peaches that make your mouth water are not nearly as expensive in July/August (especially if you pick them yourself!).

Well, that ends our econ 101 lesson for the day. While you're enjoying your pumpkin pie, I'll be enjoying a cool mango smoothie.

Nairobi Orchestra

This weekend I had the opportunity to play in an orchestra for the first time since college. We're a motley mix of musicians, everything from conservatory trained master teachers to fresh out of high school learners. We played some really great music, including my favorite Christmas orchestra piece, Corelli Christmas Concerto, and a Polish Overture called "Bajka" by Moniuszko. We also played a nice Elgar Romance for bassoon and some so-so arrangements of Christmas carols put in symphony form. The quality of performance was varied. Matt said if you only came to the first half, you would think we were pretty good, but it was a joy to get to play in an ensemble again.

My stand partner, Dzenisa, and I really loved playing together and I hope to do so again in the spring (pending family commitments).

Pathway to Positive Living

The past couple months have been a busy time for the GAR program (our partner program that works in HIV/AIDS prevention and care). The staff have been spending a lot of time in the field doing awareness and VCT. Because of this we hadn't had much of a chance to plan together for the rest of the MCC year (which ends in February). Last week, we took a day to get creative and really visualize what we hoped to do.

One of the major issues we've been facing is how to encourage our program clients to be less dependent on the program and more able to help themselves. We sat down together and developed a "Pathway to Positive Living" that outlines steps for the clients to develop independence and capacity to support themselves (steps like: accepting your status, knowing how to get to the hospital, able to take personal responsibility for your care, etc.). As a part of our plan, we set aside time to meet with each client to discuss their personal pathway and the first steps they would like to take to live more positively. We had the first meetings this week and clients responded really well. They are excited to be able to do more for themselves and particularly look forward to starting income-generating activities. Meanwhile, God has really been convicting me of my need to walk in His joy and His hope. Assisting with these activities, and finding ways to create a hopeful and encouraging environment with the staff (like planning with markers & big papers in our house instead of the office), are my own pathway to living positively.

Planning

This week included a lot of planning.  Two of our partner programs are finishing their second quarter, meaning time for reports and plans for the third (and last....don't ask) quarter of the program year.  Additionally, we spent two days with MIDI to help them learn to plan for next year with another MCC couple, the Sterns.

As seems to be the case in many programs, there is a tendency to only plan to do what you've already done.  Often the purpose or reason behind activities gets lost.  Even when working at the grass-roots level, local NGOs can be tempted to do only what their donors want, or more precisely, what they think their donors want them to do.  This is why projects can continue on for years aimlessly, doing the same failed activities that didn't help the community the last time they were done.

During the training, we started by looking at our mission.  What is it that we do?  Who do we serve?  Why do we do our work?  How is our work going to be completed?  After they address those questions as an organization, are partners able to look at the needs and resources of the community and see where they can fit in.  From there we talked about our goals for the year, what do we want to see in 12 months' time?  This led to planning activities, which would then all be turned into a one-year plan. 

This may all sound very artificial, and can certainly be done just for the sake of doing it.  I think our work is to really help our partners understand its value and benefit from the planning.  For years, people have been submitting one-year plans, but never have they served any practical purpose.  Hopefully after this weekend, our staff are seeing more of how donor requirements can be used for their own benefit. 

Home Group Fellowship

When we lived in Nairobi, we joined a Thursday night Bible study or home group fellowship.  We always enjoyed the group, with many lively discussions, times for laughter and fervent prayer. We developed meaningful friendships with the group members and even though we cannot be there often, we do our best to stay in touch. Whenever we get the chance, we try to come back for a study.

Tonight we were able to do just that. Per usual, the discussion was animated and engaging. The church as a whole has been working through studies on each of the 10 commandments. For the month of November the studies are on coveting. We studied 1 Kings 21, and specifically looked at the stages and consequences of coveting, as well as men's and women's roles, societal influences, inaction vs. action being sin, repentance, passing on punishment to future generations... Take your pick, we probably talked about it.

Basically, it's an incredible joy for us to be a part of this group. We love the intellectual and spiritual challenge, the friendship, the fellowship. One of the group members graciously opened his home again to us for the night. God blesses us so richly through this group. We are so thankful for brothers and sisters whom we can also friends.

Fall Fun!

Living here in Kenya, it's easy to forget that everyone at home is experiencing cooler weather, autumn reds, oranges, yellows and browns, and doing all the normal harvest activities like playing in the leaves, halloween costumes, maize mazes, Thankgiving gatherings, etc.

This year we decided to have our own fall festivities. Matt bought a 4kg pumpkin so that we could make all the yummy fall foods we've been missing. After chopping, boiling and pureeing the pumpkin, we attempted to bake the seeds with various seasonings but failed miserably  Our oven cooks everything at least twice as fast, there is no temperature control. (a pan full of blackened seeds was the only result).

Then last night the cooking extravaganza began. We had already baked 2 large banana cakes for a GAR event happening on Friday, but then we made a pumpkin pie, 3 different size pumpkin breads and chocolate chip pumpkin muffins. We still have about a 1/3 of our original puree left. We're thinking a pumpkin roll and pumpkin pancakes to top it off.

For Carolyn: I'd like you to notice our use of the autumn leaves table runner and the "Happy Harvest" hand towel you gave us : )

Tank

You may remember that a few weeks ago I had gutters installed at our house. Well, I'm proud to announce that I've now also installed a 2300L water tank to collect rainwater. It has been a long process, and involved acquiring, sawing, and cementing into place 7, 5'' diameter posts to hold the tank up. While, I do plan on lowering the posts a bit, the tank is currently ready to catch water for the short rains which are about to begin. Hopefully, by next spring the tank will be full and I will use the water to grow a garden as an example of the usefulness of collecting rainwater.

Did you look....?

One of Dad's famous sayings when something was lost was, "well...did you look?"...as if it hadn't occurred to us to actually look for the lost item. Despite this, he always had an amazing knack of finding things in places where we thought we had looked before, giving all the more credence to his famous motto. Well....a few weeks ago we thought we lost our camera, which was only a year old. We thought it was stolen when we went to town and basically were despairing. Then, today Steph found it in the same backpack she had searched through 4 times previously.

In honor of Dad's saying, (and his birthday!), we both said, "well... did you look?"

Here is a celebratory picture of the cheesecake Steph made me for my birthday (a picture we thought was lost with the camera).