An Albino in Africa???

I wrote this blog last Sunday, the 21st, but I am just now getting to send this to my sister, who posts the blogs, because I have been without the laptop. Sorry for the delay. It is now Sunday afternoon, September 28th. I just finished teaching Sunday School, playing soccer with the children, and resting under a tree while reading a book with the cool breeze blowing around me. Anyways, here is the blog for the week leading up to Sunday the 21st. I will hope to catch up in the near future…

Psalm 13:6 says, “I will sing to the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me.” I wanted to start this blog by thanking God for His sovereignty in leading me where I am today. I cannot remember if I mentioned this on a previous blog, but I will say it again regardless. Bro. Scott Pace from First Baptist Daytona had one simple request for me while in Kenya. He said that during at least one point in my trip, I have to stop, relax, and say, “Wow. God is good. I am 22 and in Kenya. How cool is that?” I am not writing that out of pride or in a bragging manner. I wanted to remind myself how fortunate I am to be here, even when things get difficult—like they have this past week. This may be cliché, but if God stopped blessing me today, He will have still blessed me much more than I deserve in my short life. Thank You, Lord, for putting me where I am today.

Recently, things have been a little difficult for me emotionally. I will admit it. I don’t want it to sound like circumstances here are always peachy and that I am living in Paradise. But I won’t dwell too much on the negative. I am pretty sure my emotions have been playing tricks on me lately due to the fact that I have been sick, it was my mom’s birthday on the 21st and my birthday is on the 23rd, and I’m not home for either of them, the Tennessee/Florida football road trip was this past weekend, and Director Rose has been gone for about a week. I have experienced some loneliness recently, and even though I have written that God is all that I need, my weak body and mind do not always feel that way. I have been praying for deliverance from this recent cloudy portion of my trip. My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. This I know to be true.

There have been a few strange occurrences in my life in Kenya lately. Most of you know by now that I teach English, Math, basketball, and Sunday School, so unless something out of the ordinary happens in those, I won’t really talk about them. I continue to get the opportunity to preach Jesus to the children during Sunday School. Anyways, back to the weird happenings. Earlier in the week, I was walking back from Kakoyi Corner, which is where Director Rose’s office is located. That is where I usually get on the internet. It is about a fifteen minute walk from there back to Rose’s house where I am staying. On that walk, I always get approached by the same children who touch my hand and ask me how I am. Sometimes, they will just walk up to me and say, “I am fine.” That is about all of the English language they have mastered. Well, during the last walk, I was stopped by an Albino boy. He was a real, authentic Albino. Apparently there are some of them in Kenya, I was told. The bizarre thing to me is that he ran up and pointed and shouted Muzungu (white person) just like the other black, African children. He acted as if he had never seen a white person before. He got so excited when I shook his hand, and he ran off and laughed with the African children while saying, “The Muzungu touched me!” I am still baffled by it.

The other odd incident took place in the teacher’s office during a heavy rainstorm. This man, who I often see hanging around the area, stepped into the office to stay dry during the rain. His English is very poor. He started talking to me, but I could only catch every other word or so. One of the teachers helped me interpret the broken English. It appears that the man was asking me if someone doesn’t get married in my country by a certain age, do we take them and put them in a special place. He was asking if they get injected or taken to the hospital. Evidently, he thinks those people are diseased. None of the other teachers held this opinion, thankfully. He is just slightly crazy. He was trying to tell us that God requires marriage and that something is wrong with a person if they don’t get married. I was assisted by the other teachers in taking him to the passage in 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul talks about remaining unmarried. I won’t get into the details, but we basically shared with him that in the sight of God, it is okay to be married or unmarried. We don’t cast out people who don’t get married like they are diseased. His views on marriage nearly left me speechless.

Since my blogs are a bunch of random events that happened during the week, it is kind of hard to write them with any real semblance of organization. I am really just writing a bunch of random stories. I don’t know how to segue from abnormal happenings to the beautiful children, but that is exactly what I am going to do. This week, I got to spend the night at the orphanage again. After dinner, I decided to have the children play a game called “Sleeping Lion.” You may have heard of it. It is a game where the children must rest perfectly still on the floor like a sleeping lion while I, the hunter, look for anyone who moves or makes any noise at all. It is a good game when you want to get kids to keep quiet. On this night, I am pretty sure we played the longest game of Sleeping Lion in world history. After nearly fifty minutes of shouting, stomping, and joking with the children who were still playing to try and get them to move, we finally ended up with a winner. Three of the children, Pius, Fesa, and Helen, were completely still for almost an hour. Let that sink in for a second. It is truly amazing what these kids will do when I offer sweets (what they call candy) to the winner.

At school, I have been playing Hangman with the two older classes, class three and class four, during reading time or at the end of my English lessons. After thinking about the potential implications of me teaching these African children a game where you draw a person being lynched, I decided to call the game “Flower” instead. I drew a flower on the board, and I colored in a part of the flower if they guessed the wrong letter until the whole thing was colored. That is how the game would end—when the whole flower was filled. I know what you’re thinking: that is extremely silly or corny or however you want to say it. I realize that now. I don’t know what was going through my mind. After playing this game for a couple of weeks with the title “Flower,” one of the children raised his hand and said, “This is like Hangman, isn’t it?” It took me more than half my stay here to realize that all the children already knew the game as “Hangman.” Oh well, how was I supposed to know?

A while ago, I had a paragraph full of random thoughts or events that had happened to me recently. I will do that again here. (1) I got to see the birth of a calf. It was one of the more disgusting experiences of my time here. It took everything those men had to get that thing out. (2) Barack Obama’s dad is from a town called Kisumu which is just a couple of hours away from where I am. I flew into Kisumu. His face is on shirts, hats, money, and vehicles, and he has had several songs written about him. I heard one on the radio not long ago. (3) This next bit of information may mean nothing to most people, but to those who know me, they will be surprised. I got to put a fence together with Hesbon this week. I finally feel like a man. I got to hammer the whole thing together. That poor fence probably won’t last a week. I have also been able to do some planting, harvesting, and starting fires—the village way. (4) My head hits everything. Kenya was not created for tall people; I hit my head on something almost every day. I have to do a lot of bending over or slouching so my back hurts a lot as a result. (5) I “preached” this past Friday to the entire school. I used a storybook to teach them about David and Goliath. In a few weeks, I will talk to them strictly about how they can be saved and know God personally. (6) I am teaching most of the children the song “How Great is Our God,” with some African flavor. I hope to tape this, along with the Gator fight song and the “Go Gators” chant that I am attempting to teach them.

That is just about everything I can think of that has taken place in Tumaini for the past ten days or so. I want to close by sharing with you all what God has been teaching me this week. As I wrote earlier, the last several days or so have been difficult for me. It has been during this time, thanks to my mom’s reminder, that I have been forced to remember that Christianity is not all about our feelings. So many times back home I “feel” great after worship services, after time in God’s Word, or after talking about the Lord with friends. However, John MacArthur said, “Living by emotions rather than right thinking will produce instability.” I have felt some of that instability lately as I have occasionally put too much faith in my feelings and emotions. Chris Rice wrote the lyrics, “I’ve never ‘felt the presence,’ but I know You’re always near.” I am not saying we cannot sense His presence or that you never have before, but we won’t always feel it. I have been alone a lot lately, and while there have been times where I have been confident that God is near, I have not always “felt the presence.” I have had to, more than ever, trust in God’s promises in His Word. If we live according to our emotions or our fleshly feelings, we will experience times of doubt, sorrow, and loneliness. If I trusted my emotions, I would have a difficult time making it through this entire trip. In between periods of fullness and joy that I have experienced here, there have been times of loneliness and spiritual valleys. Paul describes this battle with our flesh in Romans 8, saying we are at war with ourselves.
What have I done about these difficult times? David said that we need to hide God’s Word in our hearts and meditate on it day and night. It has been my desire to call on God’s Word whenever Satan tries to bring me to despair. When I am in the midst of sorrow, I pray several verses to God. “Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:11). “My soul also is greatly troubled; but You, Oh Lord—how long? Return, Oh Lord, deliver me! Oh, save me for Your mercies’ sake” (Psalm 6:3-4). “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man, and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13). I try, and it is sometimes difficult, to praise God even when I am feeling so far away from everyone and even Him. I am praying that God will use these lows to strengthen my faith and to allow me to know Him more intimately.

I would not trade this time in my life for anything. Even though there have been tough times, this has been an incredible experience. I can’t believe my time is almost up here. I am praising God that He has me right where He wants me and that this is His will for me. I am praising God for His goodness. As Mr. Potochnik shared with me this week, “Mungu ni mwema wote,” which means “God is good all the time.”


I love every one of you! Goodbye!