Coffee with Christine

I am planning to be away for a time of prayer at a place not too far from home by myself this Tuesday, since Wednesday is a public holiday here. Tony often go away somewhere for a night or two just to spend additional time to seek the Lord, away from our busy lives and home! I don't do it as often as he does, but lately I have been feeling such a drawing to do that. So many things are happening..in me, around me, through me, etc I really need time away just to be alone, to have time in the Word, in worship and with the Lord. If you think of me, pray with me that this time will be refreshing and renewing for me.

We are still processing the case of the little girl. My heart continues to be heavy over the situation, I am doing what I can to help. Please pray for all of us who are involved. Last Sunday was a very special day for us. The church we founded, ROG, officially dedicated the new sanctuary. The KAG General Superintendent (GS) was with us. He preached and then officiated the dedication. After the service, we went out for lunch with him together with the Pastor and the church board. He continues to encourage us to work hard for the Lord. It was such a time of encouragement for us all. The GS is such a visionary leader and his leadership has greatly inspired and impacted our lives and even shape some of our leadership style and principles. One of the many things we learn from him is to invest in people, not buildings. Both personally and also the church he is pastoring has planted over 38 churches and supported many Bible school students. He also shared with us that the KAG has bee...

Lucy, our orphanage director came today very distraught and in all the years I have known her, I have never seen her so shaken. She found out today that one of our girls was being raped repeatedly by a neighbor. She was threatened and had kept it secret all these time. This abuse started since last year. The child whom was being abused is one whom we rescued since she was very little. Lucy is especially close to this little girl, you can imagine how devastated she is. Lucy has made reports to the Children Welfare department and the Police. Things will be potentially "messy" and difficult with the involvement of these departments. Lucy will be very busy with lots of meetings and interviews and paperwork, this will be in addition to the heavy responsibilities she already bear for the orphanage. Tony and I spent time praying with her and encouraging her. Please pray for her and the little girl.

We took our friend to visit our orphanage. It was exciting for us to see the new dormitory. These are our nursery and elementary classrooms. These kids are in the under 5. Wambau (with the blue sweater) is one of our newest orphans. She is TOO cute. Tony wanted to take her home. She ran to me when I called to her! They were giving thanks for the cookies we brought them... We got new exercise books (notebooks) with our school name printed. Rice to be cleaned for lunch for over 200 kids. We have to clean the rice because they are often tiny stones and sometimes bugs in them.... Dirty little feet but oh so precious! 11 tray of eggs were collected from our chickens that day and I took all of it so that I can sell it to friends on campus. They were all gone the following day - with orders for more....that's over 300 eggs, people!! The new dormitory... Kitchen...we also took some pictures of the rooms but it was too dark and the pictures didn't turn out well... A neighbor buying...

We use to have a wooden fence with tons of bougainvillea at the back of our house. For security reasons, the wooden fence was replaced recently by this nice stone wall. Instead of bougainvilleas (with their thorns!) deterring anyone from climbing over then fence, we now have these razor wires at the top of the wall. These are pretty vicious! These are very common on most walls in Kenya. These babies are all gone~jellie covered chocolate....they were yummy. On the other hand, why would we need a new wall or razor wires when we have Max - always hard at work protecting us????

We've been getting updates from a student from Zim. Here is an excerpt of his emails. 9th September : J ust to remind you to keep me and my family in your prayers. Zimbawe is becoming tough to live in each day many basic goods are becoming hard to come across and prices are changing daily. Here in Zimababwe the maximum withdrawal from the bank that is allowed daily is Zim $500 which is now equal to less than 50 us cents. Just pray that God will come through for this nation we are facing serious stavation if nothing happens soon. 12 September : What a relief it was for us When we woke up today it was a joy to hear that the talks had come to an agreement as we wait for Monday we are hopeful that it is something that will help our beloved people Imagine the daily withdrawal limit from the was now an equivalent of four us cents. Waht i got as a salary last month is today's price of 300g brisket grade beef Life has become so hard for us here in Zim but we keep trusting G...

We have a Malaysian visitor with us since last Saturday and it's been fun for us to take her around. She is a member of one of our supporting churches. We don't often have visitors from Malaysia so it's a treat for us to show her Africa! She brought us some very yummy gifts from Harrods...teas and chocolates Kathryn is the tea drinker in our family and she thinks that Kenyan tea is the best, so she very excited to see that the tea from Harrods is blended with Kenyan tea. We are enjoying the tea. We've never had chocolate covered fruit jellies - they are yummy. As of the time of this writing, it is all eaten :-) Cream filled chocolate....we still have some of this left... I thought I post a picture of our grill gate that we locked ourselves out of last Sunday. Can you see how tiny it really is and that my 12 year old Vickie was able to slide through that last year... This is my tiny Vickie, cooking breakfast for the family on Saturday.... Yup, they are our slaves.... A...

Since we got back to Nairobi, we are slowly getting back to the routine of school, church, university, ministry and life in general. Tony is scheduling the different invitations he has received since our return and will be busy preaching again. He is also working on the chapel services on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Staff Lunch Hour fellowships on Fridays. He is also mentoring several pastors. As for me, I have resumed some of my counselling cases and taken on a few new ones and working on the Ladies Fellowship and the Couples Fellowship on campus. I am also helping out with a local church in their administration to help firm somethings up. It's a growing church and I think if we tighten the nuts and bolts, the church will really take off. I am excited to be part of that but that will also involve many hours of some tedious work. Ok..I titled today post as "counselling" because I want to shed some light on what I do as a counsellor. There are so many misconceptions that co...

This past Sunday was the Malaysia National Day (Independence Day). We got up early to attend the flag raising ceremony. We sang the National Anthem together. It felt good to be able to sing our national anthem with other fellow Malaysians. My three favorite people in the world goofing off. Our Ambassador giving a speech, encouraging us to uphold the good name and reputation that Malaysia has in Kenya and to be an example of unity since we are a multicultural, multiracial, multilingual, multireligions, etc. It was a good speech. The kids were given cool Malaysian visors.. Nasi lemak for breakfast!! Nasi lemak is a Malaysian breakfast food consisting of coconut rice (yes, rice for breakfast, people!), sambal (a spicy salsa like condiment that is very yummy); hard boiled eggs and cucumber. There were also fried noodles and special Malaysian desserts. There were about 50 of us and we enjoyed getting to know more Malaysians. I especially enjoyed getting to know two ladies working for P...