To Australia

Today we fly as a family back to Australia to say goodbye to my mother who is dying of cancer. Might be a day or five or silence here.

Kenya Diary - Day 2

Got up at 8am and saw the surroundings for the first time - it is SO GREEN here.
Tropical plants everywhere - moist. Last nights sleep was average, it was nice and cool.
Today early we start meetings - the real reason I am here. Tom is very tense. I find he has strong giftings and I so admire the way here goes about confrontation - I can learn much from him. I can't say too much of what happened - those details are written elsewhere. ****** can not stop thanking us for coming. I feel a huge burden lifting from him the further we go.
We had no bfast or lunch today - it was good for me!
We headed down to Nairobi around lunch time to visit the ******* fellowship. There were about 20-30 people there. They were so happy and open in contrast to the ***** people I have et in Minneapolis.
I sat with everyone else and listened to a seasoned missionary give a message - way too long, and way too short of the gospel. God help us if this is what we are spreading. He gave a clear and in-concise summary of the gospel without once ever mentioning the word LOVE. To quote Dallas Willard, it was all about "sin management". Later Tom and I talked about how messages like that make the whole question "What is the Gospel?" very important and worth relentlessly pursuing.
I felt for the first time in my life today that being white was a disadvantage. It was good for my soul to get the equivalents worth of a fading polaroids worth of a taste of what many Africans and Asians feel in my world.
Driving in the 4WD was an experience - the roads are practically nonexistent, heavy traffic and no observable road rules.
I was also shocked today. There is so much poverty here. For some reason I had imagined that Kenya was somehow different than the so much of Africa. Not abject , just poverty. (only someone relatively rich like me would have the audacity to suggest a difference) It reminds me so much of Thailand that way.
Every place has a guard - you feel a real separation between the have and have nots - much like I imagine roman Palestine days.
For dinner (first meal of the day!) we went to an outdoor mall - there were lots of UN type white people around - it didn't feel right. I had my first fresh squeezed mango juice at Toms insistence. It was very good. We also had samosa at the fellowship (I forgot).
It was good though to have a meal in clean surroundings. The trip home was scary - the driver was angry!
Afterward - the evening meeting went as expected - thats all I'll say.
We left early and walked back to ****** compound in the dark - I mean Dark. It was good to do so - much humour and joy in the midst as well as an informal debriefing on the way.
Tomorrow will be free until lunch. I am planning to do some videoing and maybe get some local fruit for lunch. The drop in intensity will be good for everyone.

Kenya Diary

I've only recently come back from visiting an IT team we have in Kenya.
Here are some of my diary entries:

Day 1 - Flying
From the moment we arrived at MSP I knew it would be an eventful trip. I began to feel nauseous before lunch and it didn't end until we arrived in Nairobi. The seat on the flight were ok. The AMS-NBO flight had me sitting next to a short plump fellow who loved to spread his elbows over both arm rests. It kind of felt a little unChristian, but about an hour into the flight, he only had one.
Boy - I don't do a whole lot, but the more I do these long haul flights the harder it seems to get.
Tom misplaced his camera at Schipol airport - that what we think anyway. What a blow.
We arrived about 10pm local time and talked with ***** until about 1:30am. By my calculations that puts my total awake time at 31 hours straight. I hate how I cant sleep on flights.
The trip home in the dark felt semi dangerous. There was one part of the trip near the end where he would not use indicators so that bandits wouldn't we able to prepare to jump us.
I am very tired - skeptical that I'll get some sleep.
PS - I'm glad that the T-Mobile texting seems to work ok from here.

A Compassionate Liberal . . . can it be?

Refugees in Australia being allowed to wait their case in public circulation? Makes sense doesn't it?
Petro Georgiou the standing liberal member for Kooyong has made a stand against the mainstream of his party. In essence, his position is this:

"One of the strengths of this nation is our commitment to justice, tolerance and compassion for others. Our treatment of refugees and asylum seekers who have arrived uninvited should reflect those values."

Amen!

Men and women who take stands like this normally suffer one of two ends: They wither under the backlash, and suffer regret for the rest of their career, or they go on to suffer for what is right for however long and short that duration might be - and see little reward for it during their career - but they sleep well at night, and their grand children are usually proud to have the family connection.

Lets pray that Petro choose what is best over what is good.

The full article can be viewed here:


Petro Georgiou's article - THE AGE

Homeschooling

I just read a really succinct summary of my own views on home-schooling written so much better than I could by a guy at our church - Tony Jones. Click here to read it:


Tony's thoughts on homeschooling

Little League

Karl registered for Little League baseball today.
We now officially enter the parents with children in sports phase.
We also enter the arena of American sports. It will feel a little wierd trying to teach and play a sport with Karl that I don't know how to play myself?

Purpose Driven?

It is just me or am I the only person living who doesn't get excited about the whole purpose driven movement?
Not being one to jump onto the next best thing(I test as 'Individual/Investigator' in Enneagram), I deliberately chose not to read some of the Saddleback stuff.
Not wanting to miss a wave I flicked through a copy the other day.
There is something numbing about treating kingdom life mechanically.
Do this - and this will happen, deconstruct this - a kernal of truth appears.
The gospel is far more analagous to an organism than to a machine. Mysterious, overwhelming, beautiful, untamed. When I read material like this, the taste it leaves in my mouth is metalic, definable, explainable and dare I say it, non-miraculous.
No doubt, there is valuable information contained in the book, especially for those who have no idea of some of the disciplines of living a good Christian life, but to me it just seems too deductive and consumeristic to sum up the teaching of the smartest man who ever lived.
I have no doubt that Pastor Rick is a good man. . .