Greetings from Nairobi

Greetings to all our friends and family!  We just wanted to send out a quick note to let everyone know that we have arrived safely and have again survived the travel experience.  Every year that we have made this trek, there seems to be a new challenge and some new source of anxiety (at least for me).  Over the years there has been the Westgate mall attack on Christians, Ebola (though thankfully never reaching Kenya), HIV, TB, malaria and numerous other infectious diseases, as well as intermittent cross-border attacks by Al-Shabaab of Somalia.  This year, we have been concerned about the national presidential election in August, and whether or not possible post-election violence might spill over into September.  10 years ago, following the election of president Kenyatta, there was post-election violence that resulted in about 1300 deaths.  Additionally,  300,000 people fled the cities for the countryside to escape the violence.  In August of this year, president Kenyatta was re-elected, but thankfully, the violence was fairly minimal (20+ deaths in Nairobi)…we thought we had dodged yet another bullet.  However, a short time before this year’s election, the head of Kenya’s national elections organization was found dead, having been tortured and murdered.  After the election, the loser of this year’s contest alleged that whoever murdered the election official, had possibly done so to extract his computer system password, and may have tampered with the electronic tabulation of results.  Consequently, he took his challenge of the election to Kenya’s supreme court.  About a week before our departure, it was announced that the supreme court had found evidence to support significant election tampering, and the election results were declared null and void…a repeat election was ordered to be held within 60 days.  The new election is scheduled to take place on October 17^th, so when we arrived back in Nairobi last night, we found ourselves in the middle of an ongoing heated presidential contest.  To add insult to injury, shortly before our departure, Kenya passed a law making it illegal to use, or to bring into the country, plastic bags (such as those used for bagging groceries)….punishable by a $5000.00 fine or imprisonment!  Now if any of you have ever travelled with my wife, you will immediately understand what kind of angst this provoked.  My wife is truly the queen of Ziploc bag packing.  Everything gets subdivided by use and assigned to it’s own Ziploc bag (snack size, sandwich size, quart size, gallon size, and occasionally even jumbo sized bags!)…in addition, many other items, such as gifts, books, clothing, etc., might be placed in a plastic grocery bag for ease of distribution. To make matters worse, one of the suggested gifts for long-term missionaries was Ziploc bags, so we had also purchased several boxes of various sizes and scattered them throughout our luggage to be distributed as gifts.   Now imagine being told the night before travel that the new law was somewhat vague, and no one was really certain if Ziploc bags were included in the ban or not!! Needless to say, we spent a fair amount of Friday evening going through our 400 pounds of luggage (8 suitcases) extracting as much plastic as we could…the good news is that this process significantly reduced our risk of any one bag being over the 50 pound weight limit!  As a result of all this turmoil leading up to our departure, my state of mind with regard to this trip, has been less than ideal…I have really been struggling to get my heart and mind right, but mostly failing.  After making it to the airport, and checking our multitude of bags, I found myself once again questioning why we continue to put ourselves through this whole process year after year.  At 35,000 ft. , while over the Atlantic Ocean on our way to Frankfurt, and listening to the following song by David Crowder, I was once again reminded of the blessings that have ALWAYS followed obedience to God’s call to go and serve.  Once again, our hearts are committed, the turmoil is receding, the peace is beginning to return, and the certainty of the RIGHTNESS of being in this place has begun.  Listen with me and enjoy!

Randy