Thanksgiving with friends in Nairobi

For me, the holiday season tends to be a time when I am easily discouraged. Being so far away from family and friends is magnified during these times. The weather here doesn’t help either. It just so happens that December and January are the hottest months in Tanzania. While we are singing songs about sleigh rides, Frosty the snowman and Jack Frost we are cranking the fans up to high and wishing we had a swimming pool.

So, when we were asked to celebrate Thanksgiving in Nairobi with some new friends we jumped on that opportunity. We got acquainted with 5 other Baptist missionary families and even though we were more than 7,000 km from our loved ones in America, we had a wonderful time with new friends. The best part of course was the traditional Thanksgiving meal! My favorites: sweet potato pie, mounds of Stove-Top stuffing, potatoes and gravy and of course turkey.

While in Nairobi I had some work done to repair our vehicle. I knew that our van had some damage from a previous epic trip across the country so I was hoping to find spare parts in Nairobi to fix the damage. The mechanic told me that all the parts were available and that he could do the job in 6 hours or so. I am relatively new to Africa but I already know that you must automatically double the price quote and triple the time needed to do the work.

With this in mind I commissioned the mechanic to do his thing. After 6 hours or so, he informed me that there were more problems than originally thought. And then the next day he told me that there was yet one other problem. In the end, we got everything fixed but ended up a few days later than expected and $200 over budget. Not bad really.

Because of the time delay we had to spend the weekend in Nairobi. Well, we didn’t have to but we sure wanted to. We went to Karen Baptist Church that was started by Missionary Denny Madory. He asked me to speak briefly in the Sunday School class. It was really refreshing to do so in English. The fact is that many people in Nairobi want to use English instead of Swahili.

We left Monday morning and arrived safely at our home 6 hours after leaving Nairobi. Now it is time to set up the Christmas tree and lights in the 90-degree weather.

Please pray:
That we would not be easily discouraged
Our Christmas Day service (visitors and salvations)