Kip and Katy Lines

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.

To our dear Hopwood family-
Just wanted to let you know that our family was thinking about you  today and missing you... We have some recorded Hopwood services from  last year that we like to listen to for our family worship times--  Katy insists that the boys listen to and enjoy some hymns, and it  somehow gives us an odd sense of being there with you at times when  we would rather be elsewhere!  We listened to one of those services this morning.

There is truly nothing like Hopwood service here in Kenya!  We love the creaking floor, the crying children, the shuffle of bulletins; and those are just the small things!  It's the voices that really bring us home.  Who is that reading scripture?  That's Tim D  leading the singing.  No doubt that was Eric P praying after the offering.  Traci S led that song.  Someone new shared the communion meditation-- we can't wait to meet you.  Did you hear that- Dan and Kim were there that Sunday.  And can you imagine, everyone is  eating together downstairs to eat after the second service...

We are busy here-- teaching church leaders, sharing in the lives of  those in the body of Christ here.  We are short-handed on the side of missionaries these days, but we are finding some of our best  teammates to be our Turkana brothers and sisters-- I just wish they  came with some more of their own funding!

Thank you all for continuing to support us and the work that God is doing here in Turkana.  We missionary types have a hard time knowing  where home is most of the time-- which often confirms for us the  reality that our citizenship is in the Kingdom of God.  While that sounds nice, we still long for a place to call home.  Please know that you are the faces and the voices we see and hear when people ask  us where home is.  We've really been missing you lately.

Love,
Kip, Katy, Patrick and Brian

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.