Murembe muno!

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To my family and friends,

Hello! How are ya? Its been almost three weeks since we last chatted and for that I've got to apologize. For two weeks I was in a village called Keumbu near Kisii in Western Kenya, a good 30 km away from any cyber cafes, and for the past week I've been lazy. It's for that last bit that I'm apologizing. However, while the last three weeks put me into a semi self-imposed exile of internet silence, the noise and sounds and alarms in the rest of my life have more than made up for it. This I'll get to in a bit. But before anything else, there's something real important that I need to share with you. In my first post from Kenya I greeted you all in Kiswahili by questioning if there was peace in your lives. I met you, "Habari Yako?", and taught you the reply, "Mzuri Sana", explaining to you that the first asked "is there peace" where the second replied "there is peace". Sadly, and bruised a little bit in my pride, I was wrong. I've learned since then that "Habari Yako" is a Kiswahili greeting but that it generally asks, "How are you?" and "Mzuri Sana" is also a Kiswahili reply but it simply means, "I am very fine". My Luo teacher and the pharmacist at the hospital, Alex, taught me this greeting on my first day but he also taught me a greeting in his native Luo tongue, and, if you haven't already guessed, I mixed the two up. So, correcting my mistake, here's the real greeting of peace; a greeting from me to you asking if you've known the satisfaction and joy of peace in your lives.

Murembe? (is there peace?)
Murembe muno! (there is peace!)

Some call it shalom, Kenyans know it as amani, but for the most part you and I see it as good old fashion, commune living, two fingers to the sky 'peace'. So, my dear friends and family...murembe? My prayer is that over the past three weeks you and your loved ones have encouraged each other in the redemptive power of peace and that by doing so you've shared peace with the rest of the world. Peace is coming friends, that much is for sure, but I believe that instead of waiting for it we should be hastening it. I desperately hope that you've been hastening peace in your lives and making what so many know as only a dream, something they hope for but can't see, into a reality. If not, let's start!

So, as I already told you, for the past two weeks I've been in a very little place called Keumbu in Western Kenya. What I haven't told you is that this place is pretty much the New Jerusalem! I know, Bellingham already holds this title in my heart and Puyallup come in at a close second, but this land of pineapple bushes and banana trees, of rolling green hills and afternoon thunderstorms, of brilliant starry nights and soul warming sunrises definitely challenged all things beautiful and awesome in my life thus far for the title of #1. Coming here for two weeks ended up being a last minute decision based on my need to explore and be spontaneous but in my two weeks in Keumbu I believe that I've found a second home. Originally there were seven of us who made the six hour bus ride from Nairobi but only four of us stayed longer than three days and three of us for more than a week. We stayed with a local pastor and his family and taught at the pastor's school (pastor AND school administrator...phew!). I taught standard 5, a class with one 11 year old, three 14 year olds, and three other students landing somewhere in-between. At first, teaching scared the pants off me when I learned that I wasn't just to be teaching math but even worse that I'd be teaching fractions! I HATE FRACTIONS. In my opinion fractions are the STDs of the math community. They corrupt perfectly wholesome whole numbers with their filthy numerators and promiscuous denominators and at the end of their pillaging divide that which was once united (rough logic, I know, but it works). I HATE FRACTIONS. Lucky for me the kids I was teaching hated fractions just as much as I and together we breezed through them with some hard work and some serious mistake erasing. I also taught English and Science at the school, both of which I really enjoyed, and discovered that teaching, true teaching, is something my heart craves. I'm not talking about distantly instructing a class from a podium about material they'll need to know for a test. I'm talking about investing and directing and learning so that at the end of the day you and I might have journeyed a bit closer to wisdom, together. This kind of teaching makes my heart happy. It's because of this that it was really hard to leave the dirt floor classroom, broken windows and tin roofing at the end of my two weeks. However, GOD willing, I'll be coming back at the end of December for another week with these incredible kids and prayerfully we'll be able to do some more learning together. Please pray for us.

The rest of my two weeks in Keumbu I'm not quite sure how to describe for you. I don't believe that I'm actually able to communicate how incredible frightening and awesomely grace filled they were but at the same time my heart is screaming at me with words that need to be shared and thoughts that have been looking for somewhere to bounce. So, knowing full well that I'll fail, I'll try to briefly skim the surface of something that I'm desperately looking forward to sharing with you in person. You should know first that everything in Keumbu, my host family and my teaching experience, speaking at a Kenyan funeral and sharing the good news at my host dad's church, riding a borrowed motorcycle through the villages of Kisii and even my solitude (I'm reading a biography by Katherine Sprink on Mother Teresa which is SWEET!), brought me to a place of absolute need and into a state of spiritual fear and its because of all that that my GOD made himself known. He tends to do that, I just didn't expect the thunder claps and lighteing strikes to be so loud! Quick story: I once knew a man who swore on his life that there wasn't a GOD until, standing in a field in Montana, a monstrous thunderstorm shook him into faith and the voice of the sky showed him that there is a GOD and that that GOD has a voice. My thunderstorm did the same for me but my storm was one of confusion and fear. It was in this storm though that HE was more than faithful and mighty to save and it's because of his ability in even the darkest storm that I can say with complete confidence...here it comes...that I now know what I'll be doing for the rest of my life! I don't know whether to call it a career or a job or rather more simply, a response of the heart, but regardless, what I think I've always known has now started to take form. Unfortunately, this "career" thing isn't exactly in the read-it-online-in-a-blog stage and I don't think it will ever get to that point (thankfully!). So, regrettably keeping the "leave you in the dark" theme alive for this blog, it'll be over a meal or tea or a beverage or some other sort that I share with you what my heart looks like in career-form and for that we'll have to wait at least two more months. Sorry everyone! I am however planning on blogging more about my time in Keumbu in a form other than narration so stay tuned for that in the near future.

Leaving Keumbu and my Kenyan home away from home as I said was very hard, but pressing on as of last Monday I've been back in Kitengela and am planning on staying here for the remaining two months, aside from a week in Zanzibar and spending Christmas in Keumbu. The hospital in Kitengela is definitely still the hospital and work is going well but lately I haven't been getting as much patient face-time as I'd hoped. In the past I was able to deliver medications to the wards and give shots and wound treatment to out-patients but with the new computer network we got last month, launching us very unready and ill-prepared into modernity, I've been spending my days entering hard copies of patient files into the computer. While its real mundane work it's definitely an opportunity to live the love I'm always talking about, to act with an extraordinary amount of love in even the littlest things, to be the uncommon man. You know, 5 years down the road nobody will remember who entered the 12,000 some odd patient files into the system, but the way I see it, if my love can make somebody else's job a bit easier and lube up the cogs that keep this hospital running efficiently, then sign me up for wherever there's a need! Momma T said, "All works of love are works of peace," and I couldn't agree more. I hope that you're choosing to live this kind of love in your own life, your families, your jobs, wherever. I hope you don't forget that that roll of commercial grade teepee in that stall was put there by someone unique, someone beautiful, someone created by the same "I AM" that created you. Be thankful for that teepee and be thankful for that teepee person. Maybe, one day, that teepee person just might be thankful for you! It's a redeeming circle of goodness when we choose to live like that. That's what we call community friends and that's what it looks like to live in peace. Murembe muno, my family. Murembe muno.

I pray that fall has been encouraging to your soul and before I forget I've got to reach out and thank all of you who painted pictures for me of the changing leafs and dropping temperatures with your words and with your cameras. As I sat in the cyber, roasting in my little cubicle and sweating from and through everything, a chill went down my spine when I heard from you and for a moment I remembered what its like to be cold and what its like to have the frost bite at your cheeks and what its like to stuff your hands deep in your pockets searching for warmth and hoping to never find a bottom. It was great, so thanks! I know I've told you how much your letters encourage me and how they renew me when I'm drained but again, at the risk of sounding repetitive, hearing from and about you is often the highlight of my day! I'm sorry if I haven't gotten back to most of you but know that my heart lifts you up in a prayer of thanksgiving each time I read your words. Unfortunately, my time online is both very limited and VERY slow. However, in 2 months I'll be able to thank you personally for all your unending and purposeful love and for that I'm extremely anxious. I love and miss you all a great deal. Keep loving like you do, always purpose to live in the redeeming cycle of peace, and somebody please do something about football in Washington. It's embarrassing. Go Hawks!

Peace and Grace to you

kyle

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