Painted Love

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To my friends and family,

I miss all of you! i know, its kinda strange to greet you like that but for a second lets forget the formalities and put aside how we think letters sent home are suppose to sound and lets you and I sit for a while in the fact that we’re missing each other. This past Tuesday I passed the 1 month mark, with 3 more months to go, and that’s what’s been on my heart. I miss ya! I miss being a part of your lives and sharing days and meals together. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m absolutely loving my experience in Kenya, learning and seeing more each day that continuously confirms that this is where I’m suppose to be, that this is where I’m learning to love, that this will be a rather substantial and quickly sprouting limb on the growing tree that is my life. However, with that, I truly miss you and pray that your days have known both the renewal of rain and the warmth of the sun and that you’re all anticipating the changing of the leafs as much as I am for you! I know that I’m in Africa but there’s something about the changing leafs of fall, a cup of coffee, and my sweetheart norah jones that makes me who I am and tells me that my home is in the northwest. PLEASE keep me updated about when EXACTLY you see the first leaf of fall pirouette down from its branch and I’ll join in the experience with you thousands of miles and one really big ocean away. Thanks!

So, here’s the latest update about what I’ve been up to. My good friend and fellow volunteer, Morag (she’s Scottish!) and I, just finished this past Wednesday painting the children’s ward at the hospital we work at, Kitengela Medical Services. Before I tell you what exactly we mean by painting and why the ward needed painting at all I’d love to share with you the blessed story behind this newly finished venture and let you into my thoughts and prayers a bit. I think there’s some serious value in stories and hope that you’ll be encouraged as much as I’ve been by the Jesus in all of this.

Before I left for Kenya, a good friend and discipleship mentor of mine walked along side me with his arm around my shoulder and discretely handed me a fold of cash. He told me, “Kyle, I have a feeling you’ll know what to do with this. Go bless someone.” I, honored, replied, “I will”. With that, I got on the plane and started praying. Oh man did I pray. I spoke with the Lord, “Lord, show me how to bless someone. Show how to use that money. My biggest fear is that I’ll look right past a need that you intended me to meet, so Lord, open the eyes of my heart. Be thou my vision. May I be a good steward of that which you’ve placed in my hands and may you lead it in relationship.” I prayed this prayer on the plane and every day after. However, I began praying this prayer to the point where it was no longer joy leading my heart but rather the fear that I might mess the opportunity up. This was the turning point for me. I remembered how much the servant had messed up when he hid the talents his master had given him and conversely how pleased that same master had been with the servant who had multiplied his five talent into ten (matthew 25), and with that I resolved to be that other servant. I was going to multiply that money. This is what drove me. I started brainstorming ideas of how I could sponsor a small family run business here in Kitengela, how with that money I could build a community center for women where they could learn trade skills, how I could invest that money in some relationship-minded micro loan that started with a single man or woman and would grow to encompass an entire community. Oh how I brainstormed! I prayed for creativity and for perseverance that that money might be BEST used here in Kenya, thereby ensuring that I was the servant who multiplied rather than the servant who disappointed. It became all about ME and I, not THEM and THOU. Forgive me Lord for this. However, he had a plan to get me back on track.

I was working in the hospital one day and an idea ran through my head. That idea was to transform the paint chipped and depressing children’s ward into a brightly colored, safe center for healing where rainbows and cartoon animals out numbered drip IVs and yucky tasting medicine. However, focused on the destination rather than the journey, I said, “Ya, that’s a pretty good idea, but its too small. Show me something bigger!” A second time the thought came up, this time through Morag, but even then I said, “Ya God, good thinking, but there’s got to be something else. I know you’ve got something in store better than paint, bed sheets, and bouncy therapy balls”. Only after to my surprise I unconsciously agreed that we should do it and only when our thoughts started turning into action did my heart realize what the Lord had been trying the tell me the whole while. He’d been saying, “Hey stupid!” but I’d been turned deaf by my lack of faith and made blind by my selfish ambition. However, through the blessed journey of wrestling over paint prices with a slightly off hardware store owner, through getting the OK from the director of the hospital, through the hours spend visiting stores and checking on bed sheet prices and finally through the three full days of painting, the Lord began removing the layer of paint from my own eyes with the sky blue one that we were rolling onto the concrete walls. He started to show me that it was HIS plan, not mine, to flip the children’s ward and that he wanted it done to show those kids how much He loves them. He wanted me to realize the beauty he sees in these kids who spend their childhood in the gutter of society and the wayside of comfort, kids that who are underfed and underclothed and undervalued yet fed and clothed and valued by their Jesus. He wanted them, the scarred and infected and dirty, to look out the side of their bed and see smiling across at them a three-foot tall elephant and an animated yellow lion letting them know that everything will be alright. He wanted healing to happen under a rainbow and a 9 x 12 foot alphabet chart and for me to realize that its in the little things that LOVE moves and that Jesus is really about the least of these.

This is the education that I’m getting here; an education in love. I never imagined that in Kenya I’d be shown how poorly I love and how little I value the love given me, but its love that’s been my guide here and love that’s been by teacher. Love here is real. It is not an emotion and its not an idea. It is real. It moves and breathes and if you’re not careful you’ll miss it. You’ll be looking for love in all the wrong places (cheesy, I know) and not see it standing right there in front of you. That's what I'd been doing. In the states I've filled my life with so much white noise that the only acts of love I see are the most obvious ones and the ones that make the loudest noise. What about the patient love a father has for his son or the quiet love shown when you pray for a close friend? What about the painted love that turns depressing children's wards into colorful centers for healing? What about the kind of love that leaves no ripples in the pond of our emotions but rather slowly and consistently, like the creek, makes sure that that pond is always full. I think that we should all start trying to be creeks instead of skipping stones, that we should focus more of filling each other up than on being the one to make the most splashes.

Joel Parker once told me, "It's all about the love bro." I think that now I'm starting to know what he meant. Why didn't I before? What wall had I been staring at for the past 10 years that kept me from seeing that it's really all about the love, bro? I've come to know in Kenya that that wall had something to do with the lack of silence in my own life. In the states there is always something making noise, from our iPods to our tvs to our cars, and, getting a bit deeper, our church services to our friends to even us. What about solitude? What happens when all the noise stops? What happens when we're stripped of the things that are meant to keep us busy and distracted and we're left in silence, face to face with the "immensity of the void" between us and what some call God? What happens then friends? I'll tell you what happens. You'll forget about what you thought mattered, what you thought was love, and you'll find yourself standing in a sky-blue painted room with a rainbow to your right and the smiling faces of the young and old telling you that they've been loved and that they want you to be loved too. GOD said to Isaiah, "in quietness and trust is your strength" (isaiah 30:15), and I'm finally starting to believe him. I'm finally starting to believe, like Joel, that its all about the love and that its only about the love.

I pray that you've been living loved as fall makes its way into your bones and that you're living to love others. I pray that you're being taken to a place where all the static stops and that in that room or under that tree or on top of that roof you're realizing that you are loved and that you in response want to do something about it. Imagine what would happen if we all chose to do something about love. What a glorious day!

So those are my thoughts and activities as of late. Please keep praying for me and for Kenya as those prayers and your notes are a huge source of encouragement over here! This weekend some of us volunteers are off to Mt. Kenya to spend a night and hike around a bit and then we're off to Kisii in Western Kenya for 2 weeks. I think that I'll be working in an orphanage over there, which I'm stoked about, but we'll see and I'll keep you updated. I'm not sure how close a cyber cafe will be in Kisii so it might be a bit before I post again.

I love you all and look forward to hearing how your lives are going! Please keep me updated!

Peace and Love to you

kyle

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