Welcome Home Lizzie and Sophie!

Big News: Our girls our home. After 18 days in the hospital, they are now at home in our apartment in Nairobi. They both basically weigh 2kgs and the pediatrician saw how great a job Steph was doing in taking care of them that he released them Saturday. After only 6 hours of "checking out" we bundled our babies into car seats and drove them to their new home.
Once home,we've been so blessed by our friends who've come to support us. Steph's mom is here helping us clean, and take care of the babies and our friends have all volunteered to cook meals for us. Last night our friends Debbie, Aram, and their kids Priska and Shadrach brought food and joined us for dinner. Priska was so excited to see babies and did a wonderful job holding Sophie. In honor of their home-coming, here are some baby pictures! Welcome home girls!

Lifter of Our Heads

The past two weeks, our church in Nairobi has introduced a new song called, "All the Way" by Israel Houghton. One of the key lyrics is, "You're the lifter of our heads, you're with us all the way." Steph really was struck by these lyrics being a new mother. Having to lift the heads of our children almost constantly has given a more real imagery to these lyrics. In God's hands, we are like infants, unable to even hold up our heads. But God is our perfect father who lifts our heads, who supports us, guides us daily. Praise God, for He is truly the lifter of our heads.

Traffic

There's good news and bad news, neither relating to our daughters.
The good news: Rain has come! For the past week, it has rained regularly in Nairobi, and even our friends in the Rift Valley have seen heavy rains. March marks the beginning of the rainy season and everybody is excited about the prospect of a second straight year of good long-rains. Hopefully our daughters will come to a beautiful, green Najile that is full of life.

The bad news: Drivers in Kenya are about as good at driving in the rain as drivers in Virginia are at driving in the snow. That is, they're very very bad. Kenyan drivers are not great to begin with, the regularly create traffic jams without any traffic (which Steph and I have dubbed "doofus Jams"). There is an intersection next to the hospital, where its very common to see 4 cars completely block the entire intersection while simultaneously blocking themselves. Until others back up nothing happens-everybody just looks at each other and honks their horn.
As soon as it rains there are huge puddles in the road and people start doing the stupidest things. People start driving in the wrong lanes, they swerve and stall, they crawl along and block more lanes than exist on the road. Our normal commute from the apartment to the hospital is about 20 minutes, but in the past days I've regularly spent over an hour doing the 3 mile drive. We can only hope that people will remember how to drive in rain soon, or else there will be a lot of sitting in traffic the next few weeks....

My Father's World

I've never particularly enjoyed babies. There, I've said it. In the past, I found newborns a bit annoying, too needy, too non-functional. I used to joke with my one friend how many things his baby could do now....poop, pee, eat, barf, cry.

Part of me wondered how and if this attitude would change on becoming a father myself. I remember an episode of the West West TV show where a main character, Toby, confronts his cynicism and asks if he'll love his newborn well, and was scared he just didn't have it in him. As in the show, those fears dissipated like the morning dew.

Seeing my daughters, small and beautiful filled me with love. There's no reason, or conscious effort required, love for my children simply is. In that realization, I learned of God's love. Its no accident that God so often speaks of us love in terms of parenting. God loves us absolutely, not in a theoretical, abstract, or logical way. His love for us is the love of a father. In that way, He reveals himself nearly universally, in a love that transcends understanding.

The Two Mothers

In Honor of Steph being a new mother, a parable I've been sharing with Maasai community-groups about how we can help each other:

There once were two mothers, and each had a son. The first son came to his mother and said, "Mother, I want to be a runner. I am a Kenyan and now it is my dream to become a great Kenyan runner. Can you help me?"

The mother replied, "Yes my son. I will help you. I will wake up very early in the morning, I will go out with the dawn and run and run. I will practice until the day of the race, so that you may be a great runner."

The second son came to his mother and asked the same thing, "Mother, I want to be a runner. I am a Kenyan and now it is my dream to become the greatest Kenyan runner. Can you help me?"

The second mother says, "Yes my son, I will help you. I will wake you up early each morning, I will make sure you practice and eat the right foods, I will even run alongside you to make sure you work hard so you may be a great runner."

On the day of the race, which son do you think will win?

The second one will win. In the same way, development NGOs can not do all the work for a community. A community must run itself so an NGO may run alongside a community. Whenever a NGO enters a community and "dumps" an aid project, it is doing all the running for itself. In the day of drought, will that community be ready? No. You as a community must come up with your own solutions to the problems you see so that you may be ready for the drought.
A community group in Olmaroroi

Special Delivery

The wait is over. Yesterday at 11:21 and 11:23 our two daughters were born via c-section after just a few hours of contractions. The babies came healthy, able to breath on their own, weighing around 4 lbs each. Now for the news you've all been waiting for....the names....
The first baby (the smaller of the two):
Elizabeth Grace Kistler

The second baby:
Sophia Joy Kistler

Thanks to everybody who has been praying for us during this time. We were truly blessed and protected throughout Steph's pregnancy. Now we are praying that Steph recovers well and the babies grow into beautiful daughters of Christ.