The Rains, Fellowship, and Fellowship with the Rains...

The rains have come! I love rain. I love it even more here in Mombasa, because it cools the weather down. Today the high was a refreshing 88 degrees Fahrenheit (which felt like 92 because of the 90% humidity, but that's still a break from the norm!).

The rain also makes driving more exciting. Not only does it flood the roads, but often it washes chunks of the road away! As you drive down a familiar street, for example, you can't assume it is perfectly paved and rut-free just because it was yesterday. And if you come to a puddle of water, beware: it could be two inches deep, or the standing water could be hiding a crevasse large enough to swallow your Subaru whole, never to be seen again. Finally, for some reason, wet goats are dumber than dry goats. A dry goat knows that the road is no place for livestock. A wet goat does not. A dry goat will never step into the street when it sees an approaching car. A goat that has been rained on has no qualms about doing this. Inexplicable, but true. Like I said, driving in the rainy season is exciting.

Shallow pothole, or major fissure in the earth's crust?

I've enjoyed great time with friends, old and new, this week. On Saturday I drove down the coast to spend a night with the Rains, a missionary family I've met a few times but never gotten to know well. It was really fun to be with them. They have three energetic and fun boys. The middle boy is Andrew, and at 3 years old he has already developed the middle-child habit of assuming no one will pay any attention to him. For this reason he yells everything he says, and, speaking slowly and clearly, repeats himself over and over until he gets a response. "MOM, I FOUND A DEAD LIZARD MOM, I FOUND A DEAD LIZARD MOM, I FOUND A DEAD LIZARD MOM, I FOUND..." Despite what you might imagine, he is one of the most charming little boys I've known.

Tonight some girls stopped by to hang out at my place. My main responsibility last year was the direction of a college ministry through a local church, and many of the girls I worked with are still around. Every Sunday night I have them over to watch a few episodes of "Ugly Betty", a TV show I got off iTunes. We eat brownies and popcorn. Tonight being Monday, my theoretical "day off," I was just settling down to some filing work when I got a text from one of the girls which read, "hey jil hop ur good am fine but very hungry n brok so do u hav food at ur place i come n feast?" Now, when these girls say "broke", you've got to know, they are truly broke. They are college students - a poor sect to begin with - and some of their parents can't afford their own bills, much less meet the demands of their children. Things are even tighter this year because of the recent unrest here in Kenya. These girls know what it is to be thankful for every meal!

But I've set all this up to say that the evening took an unexpected turn. I had dinner and spent the evening with four of these girls, and we had such a sweet conversation. It was one of those talks that moves effortlessly in and out, weaving together the larger picture of God's work in our lives. Have you ever had a moment of clarity where all subjects seem to connect together into one Subject? We talked of being poor, which lead to talk about the family of God, and the Fatherhood of God, and the patience we will need to wait for Him to provide His best for us, and about our struggle to stay focused when it seems like corruption and immorality is working for everyone around us, but how glorious it is to love and be loved by God. I gave these girls a meal, but they revived my heart.

Why it took three days to cook dinner...

It's late on Friday night, and I've just finished cleaning up after hosting a dinner party of 10 ladies in my home. The girl currently living below me (Rachel, from the UK) had a birthday today, and she wanted to throw a party. There were a few hitches in that plan, though. A) Her apartment only has 4 chairs in it. B) She has no oven. C) She can't cook. So I gladly offered to come to the rescue! Though I wouldn't want to do it every day, I really enjoy hosting a party from time to time. We talked it over early in the week and decided on a menu of lasagna and cake.

In America, if I wanted to make lasagna for 10 people on Friday night, what would I do? I'd go to Kroger or Cub Foods on Friday afternoon and buy a box of Stouffer's frozen lasagna. I might pick up a salad in a bag, some dinner rolls, and either a box of cake mix or a bakery cake to go with it. I'd get home, throw the lasagna in the oven, set the table and SHAZAAM! - ready to party!

Not so in Kenya. No, my preparations began on Wednesday!

Wednesday: Go to the market to pick up produce. Then go to the "western" supermarket (called Nakumatt) to get things you can't get elsewhere - wheat flour, pasta, tomato sauce, cheese (I found cottage cheese there for the first time ever! Hooray!), ice cream, etc. Look for birthday candles. Nakumatt doesn't carry them, but the man you ask knows a place where you can get them. Drive there. No, they don't sell them, but the woman working there is sure of a store that has them. It's right next to Nakumatt. Drive back. Buy candles. A bittersweet victory.

Thursday: Make the pasta sauce (from scratch). Make the cheese filling (from scratch). Grate the mozzarella cheese to go on top (who grates cheese anymore?). Layer the lasagna together, cover and refrigerate. Take a shower because you're too hot to stand in the kitchen for one more minute. Bake the cake (from scratch). Make the frosting (from scratch). Bake another cake because the oven is temperamental and burned one layer to a crisp while under-cooking the other layer. Cool the cake. Take another shower. Frost the cake and refrigerate. Wash the dishes by hand.

Friday: Wash the rest of the dishes from the night before which you left because you were too hot to finish. Make a batch of bread dough (from scratch). Knead it. Take a shower (kneading is hard work!). Form the dough into dinner rolls and let it rise. Make a cream sauce for creamed peas (from scratch). Put the rolls in Allison's oven upstairs (I learned my lesson from the cake fiasco yesterday!). Run back down to put the peas in the oven downstairs. Run back up to take the rolls out. Put the other half of the rolls in the oven (because ovens are too small for all the rolls at once...). Run back down to treat and filter enough drinking water for 10 people. Run up to take out the second pan of rolls. Put the lasagna in the oven upstairs. Take the peas out downstairs. Make juice. Run down to the corner kiosk and buy sodas (in Kenya, it's not a party without soda!). Take out the lasagna. Set the table. And the guests arrive...

As I stood back and looked at the table, with the lasagna, dinner rolls, creamed peas and birthday cake on it, I thought to myself, "Is this it? All that work for this?"

I'm happy to say that everything turned out delicious, evidenced by the fact that none of it remains. The girls ate it all, and that's a good feeling. What's even better, we had a great time. We ate and talked and played games and laughed... It's nice to know that you've made someone's day - especially their birthday - really memorable for them. We enjoy good food in the US anytime we want it, but a special meal like lasagna is a rare treat here. (And it's no wonder, considering the time it took me to prepare it!) But when I saw the girls laughing and eating, and when I saw Rachel smiling and enjoying herself, I thought to myself, "Ah, so that's it! All that work for this."

When was the last time a plate of lasagna made your day? That's one of the beautiful things about living in Kenya. Every day is a gift, and an evening with friends over a special meal followed by a hilarious game of "Taboo"... well, it seems like a glimpse of heaven.

Are you sisters?

Yesterday was my first Sunday back in Mombasa, and I was excited to go to church and greet everyone there. I got dressed and ready as usual. When it was time to go, Allison (my teammates Dennis and Allison live in the flat above me) came to my door to tell me they were ready to go. I opened the door, and thought I was looking in a mirror. We had dressed EXACTLY the same! We had a good laugh, took a quick photo, and then I ran back to my room to change before church. It was just too weird!

At church, Allison and I get asked a lot if we are sisters, especially by little kids. A girl asked if we were sisters just yesterday. To Africans with little exposure to white people, I guess we all look alike! I'm glad I changed clothes!

Great minds think alike? We couldn't have planned this any better!

Eating ice cream when it rains and spending nights on German trains...

I had a really special birthday last week. When I left France, I took a train to Florence, where I spent a day and a half wearing holes in my soles trying to see all I could of the city. One of the highlights was the Giardino Boboli at the Palazzo Pitti, called "the most beautiful backyard in the world."

Just a small corner of the immense Boboli Garden

The palazzo was once the home of the Medici Family, whose wealth and love of art was largely responsible for the Renessaince. Many of art history's greatest masterworks were commissioned by this family: Brunelleschi's dome, the Sistene Chapel, numerous works by Michelangelo, Donatello, Da Vinci, Fra Angelico, Masaccio... Galileo himself tutored generations of Medici children, and named the moons of Jupiter after four of them! The family produced queens, rulers, popes, and it even had a black sheep, Savonarola, who was the driving force behind the "Bonfire of the Vanities," an event that destroyed many of the great masterpieces his own relatives had commissioned. He was hanged the following year.

But I digress. (I love art history!) I also had dinner with some old friends in a tavern that was once the workshop of Bronzino, an artist that I've always admired. And the food was great!

From Florence I moved on to Venice and met my friend Lori and her roommate Susan. I had a wonderful time with them, roaming the streets of Venice and cruising the Grand Canal. We also visited Murano, a small island famous for making blown glass.

Lori and I by the canal

It rained every day while we were in Venice, and it was chilly, but that didn't stop us from eating lots of Gelato - Italian Ice Cream! My brother and I had a theory when we were kids - ice cream actually warms you up when it's cold out, because it makes your insides match your outsides, so you don't feel so cold! (When you grow up in Minnesota, you have to come up with stuff like that, or you'd never get any ice cream at all!)

When Lori and Susan left I took a night train to Germany to catch my flight back to Mombasa. I love European trains, but I do not love German night trains. I was placed in a compartment with five other people and bunks stacked three-high on either side of a narrow aisle. Across from me was a German lady who was apparently terrified she'd miss her stop, because every hour or so all night long she sat up and cried out, "DUSSELDORF?!?!" Directly above me was a 300-lb. Slovakian man who made the bed creak in a most frightening manner, and across from him was his wife, who refused to sleep with the light off in case she woke up and had to use the toilet. Above those two was a German couple. The man snored continuously, and the woman yelled at him continuously to stop. So, I spent most of the night with my head under a scratchy blanket trying to block out the light and noise, praying that my life would be spared and calculating if it would be better to lay on my back, front, or side in case the bed above me should come crashing down. I'm still not sure about that...

Back in Germany, where I celebrated with my aunt Deb and uncle Steve

Back at Last!

I am finally back! Back in Kenya, and back to my blog! I'm going to try to post to this page at least every week, and hopefully even more often than that, but we'll see how things go... I'd love to add lots more photos, but the internet connection here in Africa won't always allow it, so please be patient as I work with what's been given to me!

The last few weeks I've been feeling like a circus - coming to town, pitching a tent, staying a while and then moving on! It all started in France...

Jen n' me!

I went to Albertville, France to hang out with James and Jen Arnold and their kids. The Arnolds are missionaries of Denton Bible Church too. James was traveling, and with five kids in three schools and Jen in language school herself, I thought I'd try to help them out while I was waiting to get back to Kenya. I'm not sure how helpful I was - I mostly cut dolls out of paper (you know the kind that are joined together at the arms and feet? Yeah, those.) and washed dishes, and I got a pretty nasty head cold while I was there, but I had a lot of fun getting to know Jen better. Albertville is a beautiful town, though surprisingly hard to get to considering it hosted the Winter Olympics just 15 years ago.

After that, I took off for Italy... more on that to come!

Rebekah with some paper dolls!