Up and Away

Adele, on behalf of the team

They’ve left
Dave and I are back at Topaz, the Internet café close to the hostel we all stayed at last night. The team got on the plane this morning without any hassles, thankful that they had very little carry-on luggage on their return flight. As I’m writing this, they are somewhere over the Sahara Desert and will be landing in Amsterdam, Holland in about an hour or two. They will spend the night at an airport hotel and catch the next flight onwards, first stopping in Washington, DC, then Chicago, then, FINALLY, Cedar Rapids. It’s a journey of almost 40 hours to get home… Be nice to them when they land, OK?

Since Dave joined the team late, he didn’t have a ticket with the rest of them. He’s flying out tonight and spending a day around Heathrow Airport. (He was originally supposed to fly out tomorrow night, but there’s a seat on the first leg of his journey to London, so he changed his ticket to fly out this evening instead.) I will leave for South Africa tomorrow afternoon to spend Christmas with my family.

Update on Kids
Some of you had asked how Sheila, Obediah and Brenda are doing. When we left Ilula on Tuesday, Obediah was almost totally back to his old self. The malaria meds and prayers seem to be working wonders. Sheila’s finger was healing well, and Brenda was scheduled to see a cardiologist in town. Some of the other kids were also taken to see a dentist since they needed some teeth pulled. We are praying about inviting some dentists on next year’s team. It will be a TREMENDOUS blessing for all the kids to have their teeth cleaned as well as to get some fillings done before the teeth are beyond repair!

Debriefing
Our debriefing time was wonderful. I believe strongly in spending at least two days working through what you’ve experienced on a short-term mission. It allows for you to process and solidify the experience, asking questions such as “What did I learn about God during this time? About myself? About the world? As a result of having seen what I’ve seen on this mission, what will I do differently when I’m back home?” And so on and so forth. If you return directly home without such a time of debriefing, you can easily end up resenting your own culture, or loosing what you’ve experienced by just getting back into the regular flow of things without thinking through what you experienced on the mission field.

Anyway… so we did debriefing while appreciating God’s incredible creation in Kenya, doing safari. (The team paid for their own safari; it wasn’t part of the money they had raised.) We saw incredible beauty, including at least 10 grown lions and six of the most adorable little two-month-old cubs. We had a full-grown male lion drag the carcass of a wildebeest past our vehicle, within touch of Alissa and I. (And no, the vehicle has no windows—it’s wide open!) We were a bit scared, and obviously didn’t reach out to touch the mane, nor the carcass…

We also saw two beautiful young cheetah males, a rhino, several elephants, and thousands of wildebeest and z. We had a full-grown male lion drag the carcass of a wildebeest past our vehicle, within touch of Alissa and I. (And no, the vehicle has no windows—it’s wide open!) We were a bit scared, and obviously didn’t reach out to touch the mane, nor the carcass…

We also saw two beautiful young cheetah males, a rhino, several elephants, and thousands of wildebeest and zebra. Typically, at this time of year, the majority of the wildebeest and zebra are in the Serengeti National Park (in Tanzania). They migrate to the Maasai Mara in July, after Kenya’s rainy season. In October, they migrate back to the Serengeti since it’s then the dry season in Kenya, and most of the grass is dry and dead. But this year, when they got back to Tanzania, it was dryer there than in Kenya, so they turned back to Kenya. When we saw them, they were starting to migrate back to the Serengeti.

We stayed in tents that overlook the savanna, and at times elephants and other wildlife would walk right up to the fence surrounding our camp! It’s exhilarating, yet scary. (Not as scary as having the lion drag its prey within reach from your open vehicle, though!)

As we spent time talking about the experience in Eldoret, some of the comments from team members included, “Of all the good and bad experiences in my life this far, this has been the most profound experience ever. I will never be the same…”

Many of the team members are talking about coming back, though I believe it’s too early to say for sure who will be back and who won’t. But whether they come back to Kenya or not, every single team member has been touched in a profound way, looking VERY differently at what they’ve been blessed with at home. There’s just no way you can spend 10 days with people who live from hand to mouth yet are filled with incredible joy and peace, and NOT be changed. There is no way you can work with the orphans here and return home unaffected by their sincere love and care.

Now what?
As you prepare for the arrival of your friends and loved ones, may I encourage you to please take time to ask them about their time in Africa? Even if you don’t “get it,” please ask. That is one of the most important things you can do. Ask them about the food, the facilities, but most of all, about the people they met. If they aren’t ready to talk about it yet, please understand that this has been a profound experience, and they may only be ready to share details in a few weeks. But please do ask, and please continue to pray that God will solidify in their hearts and minds what He wants them to do as a result of what they had experienced in Kenya.

Coming Back
I know that there will be future teams from Cedar Rapids serving with ELI. I also know that some of you who are following this journey online may already be thinking and praying about the possibility of coming on a future team. Please do keep praying about this, and keep your eyes and ears open for news on upcoming missions.

It’s a joy and an honor to be representing New Covenant here in Kenya, and to learn both from visitors and from the Kenyans. Please keep me in your prayers, too, and feel free to follow my journey on my blog.

Until a next time,
Adele