Go Gators!

After careful evaluation and contemplation, I have decided that I am a Florida Gator. Some might say that I am just jumping on the bandwagon since the Gators are currently the reigning national champs in football and twice in basketball. However, I have many reasons to be a Gator. I lived the last 10 years of my life in Florida before moving to Africa. My drivers license and voter registration are both in Florida. Three of our four sons were born in Florida. Our home church is in Florida as well as the vast majority of our friends. Pamela and I spent over 2/3 of our married life in Florida. Florida is really my home, and if Florida is my home then it only makes sense that the University of Florida should be my school…so, Go Gators!

I wish it were only that simple. If you aren’t a gator, then you are just gator bait, and I am still on the receiving end of the gator chomp. I could be a very happy fan right now if I could switch allegiances, instead of a downtrodden Vol. 59-20! How is that possible? That would be classified as a good, old-fashioned butt whippin’. I can only look forward to basketball season where the Vols should actually be quite good and competitive.


First Family Visit
Pamela’s dad, Ron, came and spent two weeks with us from September 9-23. We had a very good visit with him and some good quality time. He got to see first hand where we live, the driving conditions, and lots of ministry. We spent time in a children’s home, giving gifts in our neighborhood, bible studies with the students and in worship services. We also took a 2-day safari to Queen Elizabeth Park, where we saw many lions and also found a large python. No car troubles on this trip and a very nice safari.

We got a scare four days into his visit when we received a call that his mother was near death and that he might need to leave immediately. God answered our prayers and extended her life and he was able to stay for the whole two weeks. However, only three days after he left she did pass away. Pamela has gone to America to be with her family at the funeral and also to get some medical examinations since she has had some strange symptoms for about 3 months now. She will be gone a whole month, so I will have my hands full between teaching, ministry and caring for four boys. We will make it. I have done this before and I just need to stay organized and on top of things. She was attending a funeral in Alabama, then going to Florida to visit our church and friends, and then going to Tennessee to visit family. If you are one of the people who spends time with her, make sure that she relaxes but also gets pampered. I think that she is feeling slightly guilty about being gone and may not allow herself to really enjoy everything. While in Florida, she needs to eat lots of good food, go to a Niceville High School football game, visit the Destin beaches, and have lots and lots of encouraging time with her many friends. In Tennessee, she needs to spend lots of time with family, see as many friends as possible and also rest some. If she goes to Georgia, then she needs to go to a Hillgrove High game and see my brother’s family.

I am praying that God will use this time that we are apart to give us clear direction about our path forward. We have been here just over a year and are trying to discern what the future should look like. We have many decisions to make and lots of planning both here and in America. Our work visas and the lease on our house expire in November of 2008, which could make that a logical time to come home. We have also contemplated staying until May 2009, though have had some doubts about that recently. We need to know God’s plan and will and have the faith and obedience to walk it out.

Internet Woes Continue
This trial continues to go on and on and on. My last blog about 2 weeks ago stated that we had just gotten a new internet service that was much better than anything else we had tried. It was reliable, a bit faster, and Mac-compatible. Two days later it shut off and has not been back. I found out last week that the company has gone bankrupt. This is quite frustrating. We have hopes that they might get started back soon and restore our internet. However, I have fallen terribly behind in responding to emails since I cannot receive or send from our home. This will have been posted from an internet café somewhere, but I usually don’t sit and respond to numerous emails while there. Sorry, if you have written and have not heard from me. I keep hoping to get reconnected at home.

p.s. Well, I just read that the mighty gators were upset by Auburn yesterday.
See what happens when I pick a team to root for. This week I will pretend to be a USC fan.

Hello There.

For the first time in our time in Africa, I am actually publishing a blog from my own home. We just got a new internet provider this week and it is Macintosh compatible. It is a bit faster and much more reliable than our previous provider, though also more expensive.

If you looked at the pictures in the previous two blogs, then you may be curious as to what you were looking at. The little boy in the red sweater is Moses. The boy in the striped rugby shirt is Sanjay. We are still very interested in adopting one or both of these boys. I will try to post some more pictures today if it works.

The house in the trees is in Naivasha at the Hovinghs and is property purchased by Heart of the Bride.

All of the other pictures are at Turtle Bay. I will try to post some more of those, too. One is of a lionfish in a tidepool but it is a bit difficult to see if you don't look closely.

We got home from our trip and jumped full swing back into ministry. I am preaching on a weekly basis and teaching two bible studies and participating in a third one. Pamela is also involved in women's ministry and helping teach their weekly bible study as they go through Galatians. It has been great to get reacquainted with the students after a long break. We had a retreat last weekend and an outing to Lake Victoria on Sunday after church, so it was a busy first week.

We had our first non-missionary visitor from the states this week...Pamela's father is here and we are very thankful for his visit. We are having a good visit and just hope that he gets to stay for his full two weeks. We just found out a few hours ago that his mother is very ill and may be near death.

I gained an additional responsibility this week that I had not planned for, but so far it is going well. I am teaching 6th grade science and math at a local Christian school. It is not the Word of LIfe School where our boys go, but another one nearby. They lost two teachers unexpectedly and really needed help so I agreed to teach until Christmas, and possibly longer. I only have four students, three girls and a boy. The girls are from South Korea, South Africa, and Rwanda. The boy is from Uganda. I teach the first two classes in the morning so that the time commitment is not too great.

It is raining hard again as I compose this and quite cool. Apparently global warming does not apply to Uganda. We have had unusually cool weather for about 4 months now.

If you sent me an email and have not heard back, then I apologize. Email piled up while we were on vacation and we have been without internet until yesterday since our return. We will try to catch back up, but we are pretty busy these days.

If Tennessee beats Florida this weekend, then I will post another blog very soon.

Also, another note about the African shirts. I like the shirts and wear mine. I just was opposed to our entire family wearing them at the same time as we went to church and lunch afterwards.

Blessings,
Kevin

some pics from our trip as described in the blog. Internet is very slow today and I am having trouble publishing.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

First off, I would like to apologize for the long delay in updating the blog site. It has been a combination of things, hence the title of the blog. This will be a very long blog because I have so much to update you on.

One of the main reasons for the long blog lay-off was a three-week respiratory illness that I suffered from. It was really strange and the doctors still don’t know what I had, but thankfully I am totally well now. I had some asthma-like illness with very labored breathing along with other cold symptoms. Twice I was in the hospital because I was having so much trouble breathing and my blood-oxygen level was dropping very low. It is supposed to be around 96, but I got down to 89, so I was on breathing treatments for the whole day. All they could do was treat the symptoms since they could not determine what was causing my illness. I was on nebulizer treatments, oral steroids, two different antihistamines, and a decongestant. I would start to get better and then have a major relapse. It got scary a couple of times when I was struggling so hard to breathe. Praise God that I am not having any of the symptoms now and it appears to be over.

The other reason for the lay-off is that we have been in Kenya for 17 days and just returned on September 3rd. We had one of the best vacations of our lives. I think that it was the best. Maybe I should get votes from the others. We traveled all the way to the Kenyan coast and stayed on the Indian Ocean. We were at an all-inclusive resort where all the food and drinks were included in the price, which made it even more enjoyable and relaxing. We left right on the heels of my 3-week illness, so Pamela really needed the break after caring for me and the boys all alone. No cooking or cleaning for two weeks was a good break. If you are interested in seeing where we stayed you can go to their website (www.turtlebay.co.ke). We swam, relaxed, lounged in the sun, snorkeled, collected shells and had a great time. The resort had many activities for the kids and the service was excellent. It was similar to being on a cruise but much better. I drank way too many sodas and juices and have an extra six pounds as a result. We stayed at the resort for 9 days, which was just the right amount of time. It was reasonably priced and I hope that we get to go back some day. The only thing that might prevent it is that the drive is very difficult, which is what I am going to tell you about now.

We left on Friday, August 17th at 5:30 am. We got packed the night before, had everyone ready to go and actually departed when we planned. Our goal was to get to Naivasha, which is the halfway point to the Kenyan coast. It is supposed to be about 10.5 hrs from where we live and we just wanted to get there before dark, which is at about 7:00 pm. Even if we made the trip in 11 hours, we could make it about 2.5 hours before dark. Therefore, we had a good cushion and should have made it easily. However, easy was the last word that you would use to describe our journey. The first obstacle was the Kenyan border crossing. It should take about 45 minutes or 1 hour maximum, but it took us about 2 hours. Then an hour later we began to have brake problems on the van and had to stop to have them repaired. We decided to have lunch during our stop and it took over an hour to get our food. Then it took another 30 minutes to repair the breaks. So, at this point we had already lost 2.5 hours, but still could make it to our destination before dark if we made good time. We started moving again and were doing fine, when we got to a very rough stretch of road and got a flat tire. We didn’t have a good place to pull off the road and where we stopped the jack could not get the van high enough to change the tire. The tire change ended up taking an hour, and it rained most of that hour. At this point, we realized that we could not reach our destination and would have to stop and find a place to stay about 1.5 hours short of Naivasha, in Nakuru. Fortunately, we did reach Nakuru and found a good place to stay. Since, we were in Nakuru we decided to visit a children’s home that we knew about that is run by World Gospel Mission, the mission that holds our work visa. On the way to the home, I stopped to get fuel for the van and check all the fluids on the car, the air pressure in the tires, and get the flat repaired so that we would have a spare. While at the fuel station, I ran over a manhole cover and it made it pop up and strike the under carriage of the van. When it hit the van, it bent my gearbox and all of the oil in the gearbox leaked out. I was able to talk to the owner of the station, who was a Christian, and he agreed to repair the van at his cost. However, I was stuck at the station for 3 hours while Pamela and the boys went to the children’s home. Finally, we left for Naivasha and arrived at around 4:30 on Saturday, which was about the time that we should have been there on Friday. In Naivasha, we were staying with Jason and Lisa Hovingh, who are Heart of the Bride missionaries. We had never met them, but had heard much about them and were looking forward to meeting them. We had planned to spend two nights with them, but since we had lost a day, we only spent one night with them. Our families clicked instantly, but it was soon time for bed and another day of traveling.

We arose and left at 6:30 am on Sunday morning for our 12-hour drive to our final destination. We were cutting it close since sundown is at 6:30 pm on the coast, but thought that we should make it. However, as with the previous day, it was not to be. We made it as far as Nairobi when the temperature of the van’s engine began to fluctuate, and then it really began to overheat. We stopped and could not determine exactly what was happening and called a mechanic. It turns out that we had a faulty radiator cap, which was causing the radiator to function improperly. Well, that turn of events cost us two hours and it didn’t seem likely that we could make it to the coast so we had to stop about 4 hours from our final destination and spend another night in a hotel. We found a really nice place to stay, though, and had a relaxing evening. We got up the next day and drove to Watamu and other than some bad traffic in Mombasa, we didn’t have any more car problems. So, our 650-mile journey took 3 days.

We stayed in Watamu for 9 days and had no car problems. It seemed that everything was ok and we prepared for our journey back to Uganda, again with a planned stop in Naivasha. We found out about a short cut that should save about an hour, so we could make to Naivasha in 10 or 11 hours if all went well. We took the short cut, were making good time, when we got on a detour of about 10 miles of very rough road and no shoulders. About 1 mile into the detour, the van began to overheat again, but I had nowhere to stop and had to keep going. By the time, we got to the end of the detour, the temperature was very high and we had to stop at a fuel station. When we got to the station, they didn’t have any coolant so we just used water to try to cool the engine. We ended up being stuck there for about 3 hours. The van still wasn’t cooling properly, but we were in a town that isn’t safe at night and felt that we should keep going toward Naivasha. The manager of the fuel station even came to me and said that we should try to leave before it got dark because we would not be safe there. We had planned our journey so that we would pass through Nairobi before the evening traffic jams. However, with our 3-hour delay, we were hitting Nairobi at peak traffic time and it took 3 hours to go about 15 miles. At one point, it took an hour to go less than 1 mile. By the time we passed through Nairobi, it was dark and fog was developing. We hoped to make it to Naivasha to stay with the Hovinghs, but were not sure about traveling in the dark, which is very dangerous in Kenya. We decided to push on and made it to their house at 10 pm. We should have been there at about 5 pm. I was exhausted, but we made it safely.

We had planned to stay at their house for 2 days, but had so much fun that we stayed for 4 days and left on Sunday, September 1st for Kampala. Again, we arose very early and left right at daybreak at 6 am. We only made it about 1 hour down the road when I heard a strange noise and thought that we had another flat tire. We were on another detour on very rough road and the jarring had broken a support structure under the van that holds the gearbox and it was now dragging on the ground. We jacked it up and tied it with strong rope and hoped that it was strong enough to make it for the 30-minute drive to Nakuru, where we would have it repaired properly. We did make it to Nakuru and found a place open on Sunday morning to repair it. However, the parts stores were all closed and we had trouble finding the right part to fix it. After all was done, it was 12:30 pm, 6.5 hours since our morning departure, but we were only 1.5 hours into our 10-11 hour journey. So, we stopped again. This time near the border. Once again, we found a safe and clean place to stay. We finally left out on Monday morning for home, and made it safely with no obstacles. Whew! What an exhausting drive to and from the coast! It is only 650 miles one way (about a 10-hr drive in the States), but took us three days to get there and three to get back. The roads are horrible in places and there were times that we only covered about 20 miles in an hour. The best that we ever did was about 60 miles in an hour. During all of these problems, we really did pretty well as a family. Christian kept saying that one day we would laugh about it. Actually, now that it is only two days behind us, I can laugh about it and also see God’s protection.

Here are all the ways that God protected us and provided for us:
• We did not suffer any physical harm during any of our breakdowns.
• We had a Kenyan man, Frank, traveling with us, and he was able to repair most of our problems. He saved our hides when the gearbox fell out and got us to a town.
• We found safe and clean accommodations every time that we had an unexpected stop.
• We were not threatened or robbed while stuck on the side of the road.
• When we overheated on our return trip, the car traveled for 5 hours without overheating again, even though we were stuck in terrible traffic jams.
• We found mechanics and parts on a Sunday morning to repair a significant problem.

The Good Part

Now that you have endured the bad and ugly parts of the past few weeks, I will tell you about the good (and great) parts of our vacation. Our time in Watamu on the coast was fabulous. It was definitely the prettiest ocean that I have been in. The snorkeling was incredible and I could not believe the amazing variety of marine life. We saw lion fishes, clown fishes and anemones, Moorish idols, emperor angel fish (prettiest fish that I have even seen!) wrasses, parrot fish, butterfly fish, triggerfish, tangs, etc, etc. I kept saltwater aquariums in America and I saw almost every kind of fish that I have ever owned. I had no idea that we see such a great variety. The corals were equally amazing and varied.

The last three days that we were there, the low tide was very low and there were tide pools. We found eels, octopuses, and other cool marine life in the pools. I could have stayed and explored there for weeks and not grown tired of it. We found some really cool seashells, too.

I did not go diving because the waves were too big to go beyond the second reef. The dive season is November to March, so we missed it. They see lots of sea turtles and even whale sharks outside the second reef in the deeper water. If we ever go back, then I will go during the dive season so that I can have that experience.

The beaches were beautiful, too. They have white sand and clear water, similar to Destin. There are lots of trees on the beach, too, so you can always find shade, which is necessary since we were so close to the equator. We all tanned very quickly and had to be careful because the sun was so strong. They had sea kayaks that were free to use and the boys had fun playing on them, when they weren’t in the swimming pool or drinking the free milk shakes.

It was an awesome place for a family vacation if it just wasn’t so hard to get there. Maybe in another year of more, the roads will be completed and the drive won’t be so bad. It is the detours that cause all of the problems and slow downs. They are fairly close to being completed. If the roads were properly repaired, then the entire drive would only take about 15 hours, and maybe less. We could also take the bus, but a plane is just too expensive for six of us.

The Other Good
Our time with Jason and Lisa Hovingh and family in Naivasha was so much fun and also refreshing. They are an awesome family and I am so glad that they are part of the Heart of the Bride mission team. They have a 10-year old daughter (Laura) and two sons ages 6 and 8 (Aaron and Andrew), and our boys had a great time playing with them. They live in a very remote and gorgeous area outside of Naivasha. Our boys played in the acacia forest, saw colobus monkeys, built dams in the creek and explored their land. They live in one of the prettiest places that I have seen in Africa. It is like Old Africa and well preserved. We saw zebras, antelopes, gazelles, and buffalo very close to their house. Just about 10 miles away, we saw wildebeest, giraffes and hippos. The boys even got to chase some zebras.

Lisa and Pamela are so much alike that they instantly hit it off. Lisa loves to run, decorate, organize, and help people. They talked and talked the whole time that we were there and went on some morning runs, where they saw lot of wildlife and got within just a few feet of a herd of zebras. Jason was a biology major in college and loves nature. We hunted for rocks, watched wildlife, hiked the property, and went fishing together. They are a fun couple and like the same things that we like. Our kids had so much fun together that our boys did not want to leave and their kids did not want us to leave. We have invited them to come to Uganda so that we can spend Christmas together but have not confirmed yet. They were fun and gracious hosts and fed us some very good food.

More Good
While in Kenya, we visited three children’s homes and began to seriously look into adoption. While in Naivasha, we visited the Heart of the Bride home, and saw their first four boys and the future home that will open very soon and take in about 40 more children. Of the four boys that they currently have, we really enjoyed two of them and would consider adopting either of them. One is a boy of about 18 months named Moses, who was a bit shy and really cute. The other is a boy that is 5 years old, named Sanjay, who just jumped right in with our boys and would fit right in. Pamela said that she could easily see adopting either of both of them. It is not clear now as to whether the national directors want to have these children adopted out, so it might not even be an option. It was still exciting to begin to really think about moving forward.

All in all, it was a wonderful vacation and one that we will probably talk about for the rest of our lives. I am sure that we made some incredible memories for our boys. We saw amazing things from God’s creation, made some new friends, and made it through some tough trials. We are safe and sound and back “home”. It was interesting to hear all of us talk about getting home as we finally made it across the Kenyan border and headed for Kampala. It feels good to be back in our house and in our place of ministry. Kenya was wonderful to visit and even more beautiful than Uganda, but this is where God has called us and placed us. We are confident that this is where we are supposed to be and thankful to have safely returned home after a great vacation to celebrate our first year in Africa.