Africa

Praise the Lord! On December 1, 2006, the Turkana Bible Training Institute (TBTI) was pleased to celebrate its first ever graduation! Let me share some highlights....

We are amazed at the way everything worked out for the graduation to even happen. We are always thankful for rain in Turkana, and give thanks to God for a very abundant rainy season this October and November. However, rain also forces plans to change. For us, it disrupted our graduation plans in about three different ways.

First, our guest speaker, former missionary to Turkana and currently working with the Urban Poor in Nairobi, Keith Ham, and his son Jonathan (Patrick's friend), were flying up on Thursday and were forced to return to Nairobi due to dangerous storm clouds. They were able to reschedule a flight on Friday, and were due to arrive at 10AM, the same time graduation was scheduled to begin; we were grateful they could arrive at all.

Brian and Tabitha Hauser, and their sons Sam and Will, missionaries in the Ivory Coast, are back in the US for their first furlough. The Hausers will be moving around a good bit to visit family, supporting congregations, etc., but hope to be here after the first of the year, 2007. They will serve as Missionaries in Residence at Milligan College.

Upon coming home to our tiny village of Kosikiria the last week of January, Katy and I were not feeling the zeal and romantic fervor for missions and living in Africa we first felt when we arrived in Turkana in 1999. Nope. We were feeling the heat, the dusty wind; the pressures of a community that expects too much from us. No matter what we give or how we help, more is always expected from us. We could feel the lightness of the last couple weeks of vacation time with visiting family quickly evaporating. The burdens of the community and of living in the desert were returning, uncomfortably hot and dirty, on our backs.

A story from the Motherland...
The hour was late by the time I got out of my motorcycle gear and walked into the house.  I had been visiting church leaders in area villages and was ready to put my feet up and call it a day.  Marcia met me at the door and told me that we had a snake in our back shed.  A guy who worked for us had gone into the room for some supplies.  When he brushed up against a stack of cardboard boxes, he heard a sound like a sudden intake of breath...the telltale sound a puff adder makes when disturbed.  Puff adders are fat, fairly short, incredibly venemous, and notoriously ill-tempered vipers.  My stomach sank with the instantaneous rise of my blood pressure.  I checked with my friend, Laipuri.  "You heard a snake in the shed?"