Internet is Good

The first few photos posted so well we thought we'd add a few more. Sorry no good ones of the mommy or daddy yet. We will take more and post more as we get a chance.


We have a great backyard where the boys dig in the sandbox. As you can see, Isaiah is shoeless - against the rules - and completely covered in dirt. You can also note the brown grass. Everything here is dry-dry-dry. We knew from our friends before we came that there was a drought but now we feel the effects.



Nathanael "superman" Hilkemann. Swinging on our huge front porch. All of the neighbor kids like to come over and play with the swings and the other toys the boys bring out. They also like playing with the boys.



The boys climbing in our back yard. So much fun.

Our house helper Mbula or Constance has been at our home the last two days. She is a huge help. She not only is doing our wash, helping to clean, and even making shopping runs for us, she is also tutoring Jenny on how to do "simple" Kenyan things like make Chai.

Todd spent some significant time with students today during orientation. It is good to finally meet some of the students that I will be teaching. They mostly come from Kenya but are many ages and have many stories. I'm thrilled to be working with such a fine group of students. I also completed my first full Syllabus today. Upon approval, my "English Grammar and Composition" course is done - now the hard part - teaching it. I still have two syllabi to go and need to have them done no later than Tuesday of next week. That gives me two days a piece. At this rate, I should make it.

For those of you who want to try and call us on Skype in the evenings, we seem to have a better internet connection now, so feel free to give us a try. Even if you don't have Skype you can call us using a Nebraska phone number. If you want the number shoot us an e-mail and we'll get back to you with the number- we don't want to publish it on the 'Net.

Goodnight.

Two quick photos.

We're still having a few internet issues and having a hard time uploading stuff. But here are two quick photos.



Nate at the Mayfield Guesthouse in Nairobi - cool safari Dude.
This is a rare moment as Nate's clothes are still clean even though he is outside. Both of the boys are getting dirty - the way boys should!




This is a photo of Isaiah's "Beautiful" rash. The front side of him looked just as "beautiful." He's fully recovered now.

It sounds as if we will now have three days per week of no electricity, so all of our honest plans to stay technologically connected have changed. Thankfully, we have power most evenings so we do have light in the house.

Good night for now.

Hello everyone!

This is my (Jenny's) first time on the internet since Thursday. What to say? Life is different here. We have had electricity more often then not. We have water, but we have to be very careful. Feel free to pray that there would be rain in Kenya (rain will increase the amount of electricity, food, and water for everyone).
Our boys are absolutely loving playing outside. They come in covered in red dust. They are enjoying new-found freedoms. Nate's coping mechanism for all the changes seems to be speech. He now talks to us (in English) and tries kiswahili words. It has been so much fun to start conversing with him. He also seems to be showing off a more introverted side. When he wants to be done playing with other kids, he wanders over to the sandbox and plays contentedly for 30-40 minutes. Isaiah on the other hand seems to be all extrovert. He is finding lots of children to play with and he is exercising leadership (sometimes bossy would describe it best). He continues to be curious and asks questions of everyone. We learn things through responses that he gets. He will know how everything works around here before we leave.
As for me, I'm doing pretty well. I'm tired often, but I had a good first doctor appointment here in Kenya and I like the doctor. Tomorrow my house helper starts. She will be a huge blessing. Our clothes will get washed and she will help with cleaning all the red dust inside the house. I will be doing the cooking. This afternoon/tonight it took me four hours to make dinner. (And this was an easy recipe for me in the States). I am learning by experience. I needed tomato sauce and made it from scratch. Did you know that a potato masher works very well to mash tomatoes? :)
Well, I'd better go. It's almost 10pm and I'm wilting. I'm so excited to "connect" with friends though. I hope you have a great day and maybe tomorrow I'll be able to see my email or facebook and start responding to people.

Quick Updates While we have Internet

We've arrived in Machakos! We have moved into our lovely 3+ bedroom ranch-style home in Machakos, Kenya on the Scott Campus. We have most of our boxes unpacked and are enjoying our lovely home. The missionaries who lived here last put a lot of work into this home and we appreciate their hard work. We love this house. We will try to post a photo or two later this week.

We've been out of communication for the past few days for two reasons. 1) We haven't had power every day. Kenya gets most of it's power through hydro-electric means and because of the drought, we experience about two days a week without power. - This will take some getting used to. 2) We haven't had the access code to get online on Scott's wireless network. But we have that now so I thought I'd take a few minutes this afternoon to give you updates.

We got everything we needed - at excellent prices - and we got it all in our home. Thanks for the prayers. The highlight was buying the refrigerator. We could not buy one in Nairobi because we did not have a big enough vehicle to move it upright to Machakos. So we trusted the Lord to provide us a refrigerator once we arrived in Machakos. Not only did he provide one, he provided one that was larger and the same price and free delivery of the ones we could get in Nairobi. God does answer prayers - even for small things.

However, God's answers to prayers are often puzzling. We asked you to pray for the AIM AIR community after the crash last week. We received news on Friday that Ryan - the engineer who was riding next to the pilot - died early Friday morning. They evacuated him to South Africa to more properly care for his burns and upon arrival they discovered the burns were more severe than they initially thought. His Kidneys shut down and he never recovered. His wife and mother were preparing to leave from Kenya but didn't make it to South Africa before he died. Sadly he leaves behind a young family and a newly adopted Kenyan daughter. Pray for their family. Mercifully Ryan will not have the months/years long battle recovering from severe burns.

God truly is mysterious. He answers our prayers for material items - refrigerators/ stoves/ ovens/ yet answers prayers differently for a young father who dies in a hospital in South Africa - thousands of miles away from his family. We do trust our loving father and continue to see His hand all around us, even if we don't totally understand him.

More later.

We Have Phones!

For anyone who is interested in making an international call, Jenny and Todd both have cell phones. We will distribute our numbers in our next newsletter - due out probably around August 15th or so. However, if you are dying to talk to us before then, we are happy to e-mail our phone numbers to anyone who requests them. Send us an e-mail and we will send you our numbers. We are not sure how expensive it is to call from the states, but as long as you call us, we don't have to pay anything. On the other hand, we still have to find an inexpensive way to call you all back in the States. When I was serving at Calvary, the cheapest way to call our missionaries (besides Skype) was to purchase an international calling card - so you can explore that option if you wish.

Right now the boys are taking their first nap in 3 days. PRAISE THE LORD! Hopefully it will improve their attitudes.

Some of you knew we were supposed to see an OB yesterday to get the initial check-up for the baby. That didn't happen, so we will probably wait about a month or so to listen for the baby's heartbeat.

Tomorrow we would appreciate your prayers for favor at the shopping malls. We have many items to buy - some of which are going to be expensive. We are praying for good quality items at a reasonable price. Thanks for joining us in that prayer.

Praying for SERVE

Calvary Church we are praying for you this week as you host the SERVE Team. We pray for a Spirit of Unity, the Joy of loving others, and for a significant impact in Minneapolis and the suburbs. We are so proud of you for hosting this event and trust that the Lord will bless you and honor your faithfulness to Him.

We are praying for you daily.

Updates, Prayer Request, Cultural Lessons

Hamjambo (hello to you all)!

First some updates:

The last few days we have been busy with our orientation and acclimation to Kenya and Kenyan culture. We are still fighting a bit of jet-lag (especially the boys who seem to have given up nap time). Last night we all slept well, but we will see how today goes. The guest house where we are staying is full full (word repetition in Swahili is a way to emphasize something). There are lots of people who are ending month-long or summer-long mission projects staying in the guesthouse, so with all of the commotion, we think that is affecting the boys some. On the bright side we are thankful to meet so many people with so many different experiences from all over the world. It has been great!

We are actually cold (relatively speaking). Since we arrived we've had one sunny day, otherwise we've had cloudy skies and each day has been cool (highs in the low 60s). Nice, but we did not bring enough warm clothes for our stay in Nairobi (we were expecting lows in the 60s not highs in the 60s). Interesting to be so close to the equator and to be so chilly. We will be happy to be in Machakos and have access to the warm clothes we packed.

Isaiah's rash is gone! We will try to post a photo of it later when we have good internet connections (part of a full guest house means lots of internet traffic - slowing the connection WAY down).

Jenny and Todd have been busy with orientation and taking care of our children. We are doing lots of learning and meeting all kinds of new people. Yesterday Jenny, Isaiah, and Nathanael, were able to go to the Elephant Orphanage here in Nairobi. They saw lots of baby elephants who have been orphaned (for whatever reason). They were there for feeding time which was very cool. According to Jenny, "If the boy's arms were as long as mine, they could have touched the elephants." We have some fun pictures that we hope to post. Emma and Kayla we'll share them with you! Wish you could have seen it too.

Second a prayer request:

On Saturday night our mission organization African Inland Mission (AIM) had a tragedy. Part of AIM's ministry is an avaition ministry AIM AIR- Pilots fly all over the Africa doing various ministries from emergency evacuations, to medical deliveries, to documentary filming. One of those planes crashed in Nairobi Saturday night. The reasons for the crash are still unknown. The pilot, Frank Toeves was killed. His engineer, Ryan ?, was seriously injured and is being treated in the hospital with burns and broken bones. Frank and Ryan both have young families. This is the first pilot who has ever been killed while flying for AIM AIR. AIM would covet your prayers for them as an organization, and especialy for the families of Frank and Ryan. You can also pray for the two passengers (who were riding in the back of the plane). They were photographers taking photos of the area. Neither of them was seriously injured, and there is reason to believe neither of them are followers of Christ. We are praying that they might come to Christ even as a result of this tragedy.

Finally cultural lessons:

Jenny and I are spending between 1 and 2 hours each day with Ezekiel who is teaching us kiswahili. It is stretching and challenging. We have two major advantages 1) the alphabet is the same as the English alphabet, except that Kiswahili does not use x or q. 2) All of the vowel sounds are identical to the vowel sounds in Spanish - so the words are easy to pronounce for both Jenny and me. One thing we are learning is the importance of people and hospitality. That is evidenced in the long Kiswahili greetings. As Ezekiel says, when you greet someone it takes a long time. First you say hello, and invite the person to sit down for a chat. Then you say good morning/afternoon/evening. If you don't know them you would exchange names and likely where you are from. Then you ask about their lives - how is their home? how was their journey? how are your children? how is your spouse? - how are you? Then you might begin your "formal" conversation. I couldn't help thinking about Lord of the Rings in "The Two Towers" when the Ent says something like, "We ents don't think something is worth saying unless it takes a long time to say it." This long process of greeting emphasizes once again the importance of relationships in Kenyan culture. People are much more important than the "task." Something we North Americans need to learn about.

We've also made our first (of what will be many) cultural blunders. When we were introduced in Church on Sunday I announced that Jenny was pregnant. Something that is almost never spoken about in public in Kenya. Kenyans are very private about anything and everything that has to do with sexuality. (As another example when our house help does the wash we must not ask her to wash our undergarments because those are considered too private - we must wash those ourselves). So until a woman actually has the baby, almost no one talks about the pregnancy. If they say anything they will say, "she is heavy." It will be strange not talking about the pregnancy we are so excited about, unless we are at the doctor or with other muzungu (foreigners).

We've also been learning about hospitality. Hospitality is central in Kenyan culture. When they are home, most Kenyans leave their front door open. When someone comes to visit (which often happens unannounced) they will always be invited in and offered tea and biscuts. They will then remain in the home until they are "released." The seriousness with wich Kenyans take hospitality reminds me of the central role hospitality plays in the Old Testament. It wil be a stretch for us to be so open and communal with our way of life, but it will be very good for us to practice hospitality and to consider others better than ourselves.

We do love you all and appreciate your prayers.

Beautiful rash!

Isaiah has developed the most beautiful FULL body rash. Thankfully it just seems to be a non-serious allergic reaction to something. We have no idea what, but we have benadryl. There "happen" to be a few doctors around the Mayfield Guesthouse right now, so he even got to be looked at by a physician.
Anyways, we are not worried, I (Jenny) just wanted an excuse to write a blog. We are doing well and not feeling too much jet lag. Tomorrow Todd and I get to take a Swahili lesson. We may have a couple more in the next week, after that, we don't know about language lessons.
We scouted for a stove and a refrigerator today. We've seen some new birds and Isaiah woke up this morning talking about the birds singing. I've gotta go for now. Have a great day everybody!