Colleen's Take

What an amazing experience.  Cason said it all when he described the beauty along side slums, dirt, and filth of Nairobi.  When we flew in from the airport it was dark and so I did not see Nairobi well until the next day.  What a shock!  I was very intimidated by number of people and the hurried city life.  Thankfully Nakuru (where we live) is a slower paced town and not quite as overwhelming as Nairobi.  I am thanking God he did not send us to Nairobi! 
 

The people here are caring and welcoming. We have been very blessed to meet Cate, the assistant treasurer, and her husband, Meshach, who is the pastor of our church.   I am excited to get to know them!   Jim and Alice Vanderhoof have taken us under their wings and have made these first few days so wonderful. It has been great having them with us and answering our questions constantly!
 

I have been floored by the incredible birds here!  We have seen so many bright and neon colored birds, which has been a striking contrast to the somewhat brown landscape.  We are excited to see how the rain transforms the color of everything though.  We have been told there hasn’t been rain for a long time, but when it comes everything turns green and lush.  Like Cas mentioned yesterday, I did get to see Zebras and Baboons on the drive in, which was great!  We are hoping to go the park right by our house, but have to wait until Cason’s work permit comes in. 

 

Our house is such a blessing.  All of the noises from the city are carried up the mountain and through our windows and are oddly relaxing combined with the exotic birds singing to each other.
 

To all those who were worried about me touching and picking up animals… I have already disobeyed the warnings. It’s actually quite a funny story…

So, last night we were alone in our house for the first time.  I was going to close the curtains when Cason pointed out a small yellow gecko stalking bugs on the window outside, so naturally I went running out there yelling for Cason to come look.  Well it was a bright yellow lizard with red spots and common sense says to not touch bright animals b/c it typically means poison… so naturally I wanted to touch it.  So while Cason stood beside me telling me repeatedly to leave it alone I slowly reached my hand up to touch it’s tail.  The lizard the promptly kamikaze back-flipped off the window at my face, ran down me and off into the night.  Needless to say we were both screaming, which turned to laughing, which turned to hoping that our screams didn’t alert the guards.  What a great first night.  Cason hasn’t completely forgiven me ;)

In other news I visited the baby center today!  It was a quick visit but very fun.  The children are beautiful and lively - I can’t wait to start working with them.  A little 2 1/2 yr old named Timo climbed over the playground fence and into my arms within the first few minutes of being there.  The older children (2-3 year olds) seem eager for more stimulating activities… but figuring out how to teach them and keep them interested will be challenging.  I really need to learn some Swahili!  But I am up for the challenge and can’t wait to begin.  God has given us both strength and joy since being here, so we can praise Him for that. 
 

Tomorrow (Friday) we leave for Tenwek for a field meeting… it will be great to meet all of WGM’s missionaries in Kenya, and to see some more of the country. 

We Made It / We Love It

Thank you so much for your prayers as we were on our way to Kenya. We made all of our flights, and all of our bags made it except for one, so we can praise the Lord for that!

We arrived in Nairobi on Monday night (afternoon in Eastern Time) after traveling for almost 24 hours straight. It took us a little while to get our luggage situation straightened out once we figured out that one of our bags didn’t make it. (Side note: We added a bag last minute, taking our total from 5 to 6… and 5 out of our 6 bags made it. I think that we prayed hard for those 5 bags, but apparently not hard enough for the last one. Lesson learned. : )

After a great nights sleep, we ran some errands in Nairobi with our Field Directors, the Vanderhoofs, which was quite an eye-opening experience – especially for Colleen. Nairobi is a big dirty city, with beauty/luxury right next to ugliness/poverty on nearly every street. As she and I discussed last night, I think that will be a theme for our entire time in Kenya – scenic tranquility and magnificence, good times, and laughter on one hand, and abject poverty, filthiness, difficulty, and fear on the other. Which I guess is just like life anywhere else. My prayer is that our perspective on life/Kenya would include both extremes, and that above all we would remember why we are here: Because of the Love of Christ – to live it and share it.

As Paul says, “For Christ's love compels us…”  2 Corinthians 5:14

From Nairobi, we drove to Nakuru, our new hometown. The drive has some incredible views and Colleen was so excited to see zebras, gazelles, baboons, and all kinds of exotic birds along the way, as well as some fantastic views of the Rift Valley. In Nakuru, we started to move in and had dinner in town. We also met some of the incredible other WGM missionaries in town with whom we will be working – we are so excited to get to know them more and to start work. Everyone seems quite pleased to have a field treasurer again, which makes me a bit nervous; hopefully I live up to expectations!

I’ll let Colleen tell you more about her perspective of Nairobi, our drive to Nakuru, and our house since she is seeing it all with fresh eyes. I will just say that our house is amazing, and we feel so blessed to have such a beautiful place to call home – we might never want to leave!

We are still trying to get our phone/internet situation sorted out, so at present we don’t have good internet access. We’ll let you know more information in a few weeks, but once we are up and running we should be able to email, blog, and skype on a regular basis – our skype moniker is casonandcolleen, so send us a add request if you have it.

Thanks again for your prayers and support! Colleen is going to post more of an update later tonight I believe, which will be afternoon for most of you.  Hopefully we'll be able to post some pictures soon!

4 days to go....

We're just a few days away from leaving for Kenya, and we are getting so excited to go!  There is quite a bit to do between now and then, but we're thankful to have help this week from friends and family.

This picture is of all of our stuff packed in a truck before we took it up to Colleen's sister Adrienne's apartment at Taylor University... Colleen was sad to see her table and sofa go.  Right now our apartment only has a mattress and piles of clothes on the floor, which is a little strange.  For those who were concerned, all of Colleen's pets have homes while we are gone - world beloved bunny, Mr. Tumnus, will be living at Taylor with Adrienne. : )

Thanks to all of you who were able to come see us at our parents' houses in Wooster last Friday or in Greenwood on Sunday.  We were overwhelmed by the turn outs, and loved getting to see so many people!

We had a great week last week in Wooster, Ohio with Colleen's family.  The Ramsay family Golden Retriever, Rosie, just had a litter of Golden Doodles.  They were so cute (and distracting)!  I had grand plans of getting lots of things done, but every time I turned around, Colleen was in playing with the puppies... :  )  We didn't get as much accomplished as I had hoped, but we it was wonderful to relax and spend time with the Ramsays.

Here's another puppy picture just because... if you'd like to see more, you can check out our Facebook photo albums or check doodlesbyrosie.blogspot.com for more info.


Please pray for us this week as we make final preparations and say our goodbyes.  We are so excited to follow the Lord to Kenya and to serve there, but being away from our friends and family will be bittersweet.  We've had some great times this week with family, and are so thankful for their help and support (especially DaddyWittig and Corinn for painting our apartment today!).

These last few weeks, we've been greatly encouraged by these words from Philippians 4: "... Let your gentleness be evident to all.  The Lord is near.  Do not be anxious about anything... And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Thanks for reading this and hopefully our next post will be from Kenya!  We can't wait!

We're Leaving in 5 Weeks! - Update 7.26.09

Here is the 140 character Highlight of this update for the text/Twitter generation:

God is faithful – 90% support raised! Flying 2 Kenya Aug. 30th! (5 wks!) Open House @ Cason’s parents’ on Aug 23rd. Pray 4 us. God is good!

Read on if you want a slightly more detailed version…


Friends and Family,

Sorry for not communicating for so long… I had been waiting for our plans to get nailed down a bit more, but it ended up taking longer than we anticipated.

Departure/Funding Update
Through your generous support, we have raised 90% of our support and have purchased our plane tickets to leave for Kenya on August 30th! We are so excited and feel so blessed by how God has provided for us. It was amazing how quickly funding came in after we picked a departure day – proof yet again that God likes to provide for us on His terms once we’ve stepped out in faith. We are confident that we will raise the rest in time to stay for the planned 12 months and can’t believe we only have 5 weeks left in the US – we’ve got lots to do in that time!

Open House
My (Cason’s) parents are hosting a farewell open house for us at their home (see address below) on Sunday August 23rd from 2 – 6pm. You are all more than welcome to come; we’d obviously love to see people before we leave.

Jon and Marti Wittig’s address is: 325 Beechview Drive, Greenwood, IN 46142

Please email or call if you have questions.

Prayer
Please be praying that we would have a good last few weeks spending time with friends/family, and especially preparing our hearts to go. It seems this summer has gotten progressively busier and unfortunately sometimes the first things to go are quality time with the Lord and as a couple – so pray we would be able to prioritize and manage our time wisely.

Also, pray that God would provide the rest of our funding before we leave so we don’t need to be burdened with that from Kenya.

Opportunities in Kenya
We are still unclear of many of the details of what we will be doing (other than Cason’s treasurer role), but we are very excited about some potential opportunities. The Baby Center orphanage in the town we will live is for 0-4 year old children. The kids are extremely well cared for; however, there isn’t a formal education program or focus on early childhood development. There is an American girl there now who is leaving soon who has tried to start some learning programs with the older (2-4 year old) children. Colleen is communicating with her and is eager to continue and expand upon what she has been doing.

Also, we are hopful that we will be able to help out as youth pastors at a local African Gospel Church, which we are very excited about.

Wrap-up
Thanks so much for your prayers and support. We’d love to hear from you before August 30th (or after!) so please shoot us an email or call.

God Bless,
Cason & Colleen

PS – Please keep checking the blog and Facebook group. We’ll be putting out more consistent updates as our departure date approaches.

Update 6.2.09 - over 50% there!

Friends,

We have been so blessed by all of your thoughts, prayers, and financial support. It is wonderful to have such encouraging friends and family!

A few weeks ago we went to training for our time in Kenya at WGM, and we are now more excited than ever to get on the field! Our training was so encouraging and we loved learning about how to prepare for cultural differences we will face. Some of the sessions focused on spiritual preparation, and it was great for us to think about what we can work on now in our walk with the Lord to get ready to minister in Kenya. Most of the people that we went to training with are already on the mission field this summer, so we’ve been keeping them in our prayers.

We are excited to share that we have raised over 50% of the total support that we need to get to Kenya! Our goal is still to leave in August or September so we need to raise the final funds soon. WGM needs a field treasurer as quickly as possible since they have gone quite a few months without one. If you are planning on supporting us financially, it would be wonderful if you would send in your pledges or gifts soon so that we can leave on time and fill that need for them.

We are so grateful to all of those who have given and been praying for us. Please let us know if we can do anything for you. If you know of any individuals, small groups, or churches who would be interested in sponsoring us, please let us know!

We’d really love to keep up with all of you, so don’t hesitate to contact us!

Colleen and Cason

You, dear children, are from God, and have over come them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. – I John 4:4

Update 4.26.09

Friends,

Thank you for checking out our blog! It really means a lot to us. We know that many of you are praying for us, and we can feel God’s blessing through your prayers.

We are so thankful to have raised about 25% of the support that we need. To those of you who have been able to give, we are sincerely grateful.

We are really hoping to be ready to go by early fall, so please continue to pray for us. Because there is currently no field treasurer, there is need for us to go as soon as we can. If you know of a church, Bible study, or individual who might be interested in supporting us, please let us know.

Thanks so much! Please feel free to email, facebook, blog comment, or phone us… we’d love to hear from you.

Cason&Colleen