Into The New Year

Is it too late to say Happy New Year!!? 

The Lord has answered some prayers to kick of 2020. One, we were reminded of how many awesome people we have praying for us and as we opened Christmas cards, we were encouraged. Thank you for being a part of filling our mantle and our in-boxes this season!

Around Christmas, we started looking for a vehicle online in Nairobi because we knew we would be without in a few more days (we had been renting our landlord's car). There is so much unknown stress that goes into buying a car here. We have heard many stories of car sales that hadn't gone well, so we were praying the Lord would point us in the right direction for a car. The day after Christmas we got a call from a fellow missionary that is transitioning to more time in the states and was willing to sell his 1996 Land Cruiser. It was the amount we had raised and everyone locally seemed to know that this car was well kept. The blessing was, the Lord provided. the Lord brought this car to us. We didn't have to go and make it happen. We felt peace about it and knew this, even though it is older,  was exactly what we needed.

Remember when we shared about Acacia trees falling down all over our property? Well it has been a huge job to clean it all up. In fact, the chain saw(s) are still running all day long cutting up all the wood. As a thank you for working so hard, we bought a couple goats with our neighbors and had a goat roast for our staff. We made nyama choma (bbq meat), sukuma wiki (wilted greens, kechumburi (Pico de Gallo that is not spicy), ugali (cooked maize portage), and chapati (fried chewy tortilla).

Kicking off the new year doing school. The first day was hardest on the teacher but by the second day, we had a routine, and its been going better and better each day since.

To be honest, the transition has been hard for all of us these last 3 months. I was really hopeful that we would slide into a "normal" and be thriving at this point, but I think that I was maybe overly  optimistic in my expectations. In the struggle for normalcy, we have been praying a lot for things that would help us to enjoy our now. Two days ago, our dog had this guy in his mouth and was being very protective of it. Jed and I saw if from afar and though it was a dead rat or something. Being curious we went to look. It was moving so we got a box and took it away form the dog. What we didn't realize was the dog was being all mama about this baby Tree Hyrax. She was so concerned. We didn't know if it would die, but by the next morning it was doing well. We picked it up and quickly fell in love with this little guy. Welcome to the family Mr. Chitters.