November 17^th, 2011

Our last communication and prayer request--another two part: Hello to all of you who have faithfully and lovingly prayed for us and communicated with us throughout this last month, as Lyle had predicated in his closing line of our last communication, our time did not come to a close. We had the opportunity to continue to serve our Lord even as we were in the airport waiting to board our plane. He showed that His will was continuing to guide our time.

We had wanted to come back on Monday night but British Air could not get us seats on that flight, so we were booked on the Tuesday night flight. Monday saw us heading into the City Center of Nairobi to meet with the Pastor of the church we were at on Sunday. I had left our camera in the back seat of his car when he dropped us back at the guest house we were staying at. I had a sleeping 3 year old in my arms at the time and didn't even think of the camera!! He was willing to meet us and give it back. He wanted us to take a matatu, which is like a 14 seater van which for 40 shillings will take you to the end of their service route. The sign on them says seats 14 so there are at least 18-20 people in each, and we were warned to watch our pockets when riding in them. Fortunately, a friend of ours, the young man who stepped out of Islam to serve our Lord Jesus, volunteered to come with us. We ended up on a bus instead of a matatu and were crammed in the back seat of it. As we rode this roller coaster ride into the city, I was enjoying it and Lyle was getting whiter by the minute because he hadn't taken any motion sickness meds before leaving. We arrived at the place we needed to get off and while trying to do so, as I was the last in line. The bus took off while I was in the open door trying to get out. I shricked and jumped as the bus took off. Wow, what an end to a spectacular ride :)

We met the pastor and our friend asked if we all would like to taste authentic Ethiopian food for lunch. We said yes, not knowing what we were getting into. Our friend called his cousin, one he calls a nominal muslim, because this cousin was one of the only family members that didn't hate him and want to kill him. Gebi, the cousin, met us and escorted us onto another form of transport, I am not sure what it is called, smaller than a bus, bigger than a matatu, and definitely more springy (poor Lyle). Again we ended up in the back seat, and experienced another first in African transport, the transport headed into a gas station and filled up with diesel with all the passengers on board. The driver turned on music and of course the speakers were mounted over the back seats.:) As the transport headed out of the station it's motor died in the middle of the street, centered with two wheels in front of a speed bump and two wheels behind it. The driver couldn't get the motor to stay on long enough to get the back wheels over the bump. Traffic did not stop, it just divided around us with much honking going on. I just sat there and prayed. Finally he reved up the motor long enough that it stayed on and we took off again. We arrived in a definitely muslim area, judging by what most of the people were wearing, and came to find out this was called the Eastleigh refugee camp made up of Somali and Ethiopian refugees. As we walked through this very rough and untended area, I was tendered by girls and women in burka's who dared to look me in the eye. I would say hello and just try through my smile to pass on God's love for them. I was surprised at the love in my heart for them. We ended up at a little restaurant serving Ethiopian food, which is brought out on a single pizza sized metal tray and everyone dips in the same plate to eat. The food was delicious but I was very much on guard as some of the Muslim men eating seemed to be eying our friend who felt no one would try to hurt him at this time because of all the trouble Al-shabab is causing. It was an interesting sensation for me, one I would not vote to repeat. Then we were driven home by a man from the area named Mohammad who had an "Allahu akbar Sticker" on his steering wheel and told Pastor Cyrus that he was a muslim. Our friend had us dropped off a ways from the house so Mohammad would not know where he and his girls lived. Again an interesting side of life we do not have to experience for our Christianity.

Yesterday, we didn't have to leave for the airport til 6:00pm for an 11:30 flight. We had gotten acquainted with the night gate keeper at the place we were staying, and had felt led to give him some food at supper time and water as he had neither. He had a son who had asthma and had an attack right when the public hospital had gone on strike, so he had taken him to a private hospital. The cost for this and his medicine was $20,000 shillings, he makes $5,000/month about $48.00. He had in desperation asked us for help, and we had prayed about whether this was legit or a scam and felt that the Holy Spirit was telling us to help. So we had over the week provided him with half of what he needed for payment. I had also asked him if he had a bible and he said no, so I asked him if he wanted one in his language and he said he wanted one that was Swahili and English. We had not yet had time to look for one, and so Tuesday we did find a bible store and they did have one with both!! He had told Lyle that he wanted his wife to meet us because she had gone from feeling hopeless to having hope because of our support for them. Lyle was to call him on Tuesday after 10 am because they had to have their son rechecked at the doctor's. When Lyle called him, he asked if we could come to their place, to meet the wife and family. Our friend again agreed to help us find the place, as all we knew was it was in a slum. We took a taxi to the slum and when we got to a place the taxi let us out because we had to go on foot from there. The guard, his name is Evance, met us there and walked us back to his place. We walked for about 20 minutes thru an area that just devastated me. There was ditches with green/brown liquid running through it, and I was informed that this is what they have to drink, there are no bore holes or water wells for them. We walked through a part that definitely felt dangerous, and Imam walked behind me because I seemed the easy target. When we got to Evance's place, his home, it was about an 8 ft by 8 ft.room with beds on two sides, a sofa on the third side, with sheets seperating the beds from the sofa, and a charcoal cooker by the door. His wife was a precious woman, the mother of nine children, and we got to meet 6 of them, including the one who had asthma, Chris. When we gave him the bible, you would have thought we had given him a million dollars. He was so ecstatic as was his wife, oh my, I wish we hungered for God's word this way. Please pray for that family, the oldest daughter we met is a teenager, that can't go to high school because they can't pay the fees. She had been bitten by a dog earlier that day and had a dirty piece of cloth around her leg with blood seeping through; please pray for her leg not to get infected!! I hadn't brought my first aid kit with me or I could have cleaned it up. When we left this place we again had to walk out of the slum to an area where we could catch a taxi back, we walked a different way and it was so hard to see how people have to live to survive, but Evance also took us to a "daycare" in the slum, where he is able to drop two of his young boys off once in a while. This woman, had maybe 15 kids in a one room school, with hand drawn alphabet and numbers, on one wall. We got to meet her and she is a Kenyan Christian who feels God has asked her to serve this way and she feels God has told her to expand her daycare. She asked us to pray for her and this vision she has from God. The light in her eyes was the gentle light of Christ shining out, and she radiated hope. What a wonderful encounter for me to have in the midst of what seemed like endless despair. I have told the Lord that I will go wherever He wants His light to shine, no matter how dark and He allowed me to meet someone who is doing just that. I don't remember her name, but as God lays her on your heart, I would be so grateful if you would intercede for her.

We had dinner with our friend and his girls and two of the men who had arrived from the Sudan that had rescued the Pastor and family that we spoke about in an earlier update. They were in the bombing and tried to help the Sudanese that had been injured. What they described was horrific. Both of these men are from Tennessee and very gentle, but giants in stature. Lyle and I had gotten very close to our friend’s two little girls and we all had a very hard time saying good-bye. The oldest one Millie*, 5 years old, looked at me seriously and said, "Ingrid I will always remember you." And, Lana*, 3 years old, told me, "when I grow up, I will be named Ingrid." These precious little girls have already been beaten for not accepting Islam and saying they were Christians. Please pray for them!!! That they will never give up their faith.

Hi this is Lyle....Ingrid has done a splendid job detailing our last few days in Kenya. It was so wonderful and God filled each of our days with surprises. The trip ended as it had begun, God filling in the holes. When we first booked our tickets we only knew some generalities of where we were going, but God was faithful to use all of our time. When in Nairobi we thought we were going to Dadaab, then to the Sudan, then nowhere, but God took the time that we had and filled it with what He desired. He is so faithful to us!! In one of the other emails we sent I talked about how things might seem so large and difficult for us, but to the Lord they are really very simple and not complex. Another couple of examples of this happened since that email.

The two men Ingrid talked about that we had dinner with had gone to the Sudan to help extract a Pastor and his family from an area that was being bombed. There were two key people they needed to contact and them finding these men was critical to the success of their mission. The chances of finding either one of them was described to me as "finding a needle in a haystack". One of the men, Tim, told me that when they got off of the plane in Sudan they went to the market place and one of the men they needed to contact just "happened" to drive up in a jeep. The other person they needed to find was one of the first people they met when they got to where they were going. It really reminded me once again of how simple things are for God. It really drives home what we have heard so often: That instead of doing something we think is a good thing and then asking God to bless it, we stop and ask God what He wants us to do and then the blessing comes with it. This group went to the Sudan knowing it was what the Lord was directing them to do and God took care of the details. What seemed next to impossible for them was so simple for the Lord. It is so easy for us to forget that He is the one who calms the seas and stills the waves, that He is Lord not only of our lives, but is the one who through His power simply spoke the world into existence. No wonder things that seem so complex and difficult for us are so simple and easy for Him.

As a final reminder of who was in control of our trip a lady from the U.K. began talking to us at the airport in Nairobi. It turned out that she was a Christian and had gone to Kenya to deliver a message to a Pastor that the Lord had given to her. She had said that we looked like nice people and that is why she came and sat by us. We ended up having a wonderful conversation with her about what a surrendered life in Christ looked like. She asked where we were seated in the plane. We pulled out our tickets and she just smiled and pulled out hers. We were in the window and middle seat and she was in the aisle seat. She said she had prayed for God to have nice people next to her in the plane and He had answered her prayer.

We will be seeing you all soon. Thank you again for all of your support and prayer.

*Names changed for privacy