Praise God!

Last Thursday John had a meeting with the high-school kids' parents. They brought a bunch of the necessities for the kids (lotion, t.p., toothpaste, soap, shoe polish, etc...). *ANSWERED PRAYER* This is gonna be a huge help. John also informed them of the upcoming fundraiser we are doing on April 26. Please be praying for this! These people do not have much money at all. Mark did the numbers according to his old job and said that it would be the equivelent of him paying about $65 for a two pound bag of rice! They just don't have the funds. However, each parent has agreed to pay 1500Ksh (Kenyan Shillings) for the fundraiser! This is way awesome becuase most only make 80Ksh per day.

NOTE: Currently it is almost 80Ksh to $1.00

On Friday John met with the primary school kids' parents, and they brought a few things as well! We added them to the storeroom and are thanking God for his provision.

NOTE: So AMCC acts as both an orphanage and a children's home. Some kids' parents are deceased and others simply can not afford to feed them.

Sunday was the best day of all and the Lord showed His faithfulness in a great way. We've been praying for rain for a while because Kenya has been in a drought. We prayed Saturday night for rain and the Lord answered our prayers! It poured on Sunday three or four times in the morning! More rain means more growth in vegitation from friends and partners of AMCC, which means more food for the kids! Praise God! THEN, Sunday afternoon brought with it the sunshine and a pleasent surprise. Some employees of BIDCO Oil Co. showing up with cabbages, carrots, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, maize and wheat flour, cooking fat, rice, sugar and even clothes!!! Our God is King over all things! He knows our every need and want! They didn't bring any maize or beans! Halelujah!

We put our faith in Him to give us food and He has! It didn't come from the wazungu but from the God of Heaven and Earth and Kenya and BIDCO and AMCC and us, His people! He is soo good and He is so faithful!

Other than that things are becoiming quite the routine. Sometimes when we finish washing clothes, Mark and I will help to hang them.

Mark by the way rocks my face off! He's the best partner in advancing the Kingdom of God I could have asked for in this situation. We're quite the team and I'm so excited to be here with him. He's so dang smart.

So things are pretty awesome here, except for one incident that happened three days ago. Our landlord's son, Steven drinks too much and seems to cause a lot of problems around Kimata. So on Sunday morning i was awoken by a woman screaming bloody murder. John beat me out of the locked gate in the back of AMCC only to find Steven mauling his wife with a hammer! We ran him off immediately. Mark and I inquired whether we should call the police but John said that Steven had gone to jail many times and had paid his way out because of corruption. This is the only violent thing that has happened around where we live. Please pray for Steven and his drinking problem and for peace with our landlord's family. And for wisdom in dealing with Steven as he is an aquaintence of Mark and me.

Steven's wife had minor wounds and I think she has left Kimata for a while. Alas, God is good and will bring justice! I hope to be writing another blog in about a week. And we're up to 8 followers! Thanks guys! You make this time writing blogs worth while! Till then...

Life Abundant for Mothers and Babies- sounds pretty good right?

I had a wonderful opportunity to tag along with nurses Shaune and Kath and Cindy and Katie as they provided health training and education to children and young adults in another part of aThailand along the border. I was kind of the "games and activities" girl and pulled from years of camp counseling to keep the kids' attention spans sharp!

FYI: Germ tag is going to start a Public health revolution!! I'll play with you any time and then get really excited to explain the microbial world to you!

IMPORTANT!! Stuff To Pray For!

John and Nancy, send their greeting to you all. Both of them, along with Mark and I, have decided to get together and pray for about 2 hours every morning! I have to admit this will be more than I've ever prayed before. At first I was wondering about what we could possibly pray about that would take 2 hours every morning. Well, here it is:

1. House Rent (for which we have no money. It's due in about a week!)
   
2. Sauce Pans (We only have one that doesn't leak and it's wearin away fast)
   
3. Healthy varieties of FOOD (Beans and maize, three meals a day, for three weeks so far w/ occasional fruit)
   
4. Funds for school exams
   
5. Clippers! (for the kids hair. Evidently having anything more than a shaved head is shabby)
   
6. Funds for cell phone use (for social and safety reasons. Remember we have no electricity)
   
7. Firewood (for cooking the food we have)
   
8. Gas for lanterns (especially important for praising, study and eating after 6:00)
   
9. Children's Neccesities (Lotion, toothpaste, laundry soap, bathing soap, shoe polish, t.p.)
   
10. For God to raise up partners, supportors and friends for AMCC
    
11. What to do with the income generating projects (chickens? rice fields? cows? small business?)
    
12. A Self-Sustaining Project (This differs from and income-generating project in that it is something done that may not make a profit but will cut costs instead)
    
13. Upcomming Fundraising Project! (this is mostly for food to last through the year)
    
14. LAND! LAND! LAND! (There seems to be so many possibilities if we only had some LAND!)
    
15. Replacement workers and volunteers for AMCC
    
16. Funds to pay replacement workers
    
17. John Muhika (specifically for his chronic back pain and for good relationship with his family who lives in another town due to children's educational need)
    
18. The enemies of AMCC
    
19. Against any spiritual enemy or power of darkness
    
20. Intimacey in relationship within and amongst the staff and children
    
21. Health for the children and staff (getting sick is a serious threat because there is no health fund)
    
22. Future school fees for the children going to high-school next year
    
23. Wisdom in setting up a bank account
    
24. Vehicle for AMCC
    
25. That Mark and I would be more of an asset to the community supporting AMCC rather than a detriment
    
26. Wisdom and direction in decision-making
    
27. Strenght in Unity, Patience, Faith and Love for each of us at AMCC
    

Please pray with us over any of these issues! I know there's a lot here so I don't expect any of you to pray for them all, but pick a few please! It means so much to pray and it's so good for us to be asking the Lord for His Kingdom to come together.

As the Lord answers these requests and petitions, I will be updating the blog. The Father is so good! Till then...

Hello friends! John and Nancy greet you all in the Lord Jesus Christ! There have been some exciting things happening lately at AMCC.

Last week, one of the kids ran away because he was made fun of by his peers for speaking his mother tongue at school rather than Swahili or English. This is against the rules in school and here at AMCC. We prayed for him that night and found out before we went to bed that he was picked up by a paster about 6 kilometers away. Apearantly he had run away because he didin't want to face the shame of being kicked out of AMCC. Early the next morning, Mark and I had the duty to go and retrieve him because Pastor John's back has been giving him some serious problems lately. So Mark and I made the hike, thanked the pastor and started toward home with Jeffrey walking between us.

We told him that we loved him as our own little brother and that there was nothing he could do to make us love him less. As we spoke to Jeffrey, he started to cry and my heart began to melt. At this moment I felt the closest to being a parent as I had ever before. We assured him that he was still a good boy and that having good character didn't mean one was always perfect, but rather one faced his mistakes when he made them.

There is no doubt, I am growing closer to these children. They have always been my little brothers and sisters in Christ, even before I knew them, but now I'm beginning to feel it. At night, Mark and I take turns doing the night watch. We go to each room with a flashlight 5 times throughout the night and check to see whether they are covered or not. You see, currently AMCC doesn't have a bank account, let alone any saved money. If one of the children gets sick and has to go to the hospital, they have no money to pay the bill. So to prevent this, we make sure they're nice and cozy in their blankets.

We're also learning how to cook gethari! Whoo hoo! Straight up maize and beans. I think we're on week three for having gethari for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Mark and I had to pass a health inspection to work in the kitchen, which also carries the requirement of wearing an apron during preparation!

Thankfully, over the past week, we've gone to meet John's parents down the road and also to see his family who lives in the town where his daughter is going to school. At both places they served us way too much food, and it was extra delicious.

Among other things, Mark and I have helped pull water from the well and to carry firewood. I was trying to do it the native way with the rope around my head. I didn't realize why all the Kenyans were standing along the roadside laughing (more than usual) unitl I met another Kenyan friend who informed me that only women carry the wood this way. :P He told me that men carry it on their shoulders. So I chuckled, nodded at the laughing Kenyans and repositioned the wood on my shoulders. This was evidently more amusing than carrying wood like a woman. They laughed all the more, only this time it was accompanied with applause. Sometimes I feel like I might as well be a circus clown on a unicycle jugling fire. Even if they aren't laughing, they seem to stare almost as if they are in awe.

The greatest news lately is that AMCC has just been granted, by the government, to go from a Community Based Organization (CBO) to an actual Government Childrens Center! What this means exactly, I don't know yet. But what I do know is that the government has been keeping a close eye on AMCC for the last two years and AMCC has passed all the neccessary requirements to achieve this status. So it must be a good thing.

About the chickens...It's gonna be really tuff cause AMCC doesn't actually own any land and the space that we have isn't adequate to support chickens. We have heard of a rice field oportunity though. According to the information that we have currently, one can make a 200% profit after the first harvest. It sounds too good to be true, but so do many of the Lord's greatest blessings. More about the rice fields later.

This update was written a bit later than I had expected, but the last time we had access to the internet, Mark was typing away while I was frequenting the toilet! Praise God that's overwith! And I don't think I'll experiment with drinking the water again.

On Wednesday we're going to look at the rice fields! Please pray that we can use these as a means of self-sustainability for AMCC. Till then...

Jesus is the King!

Partners staff retreat

Well, I just began volunteering with Partners and one of the first things I get to do is go on their awesome staff retreat! It was a blast and such a perfect opportunity for me to get to know the heart of Partners and its people. Let me tell you, I'm hooked. How do you get so many cool people to work in one place? They will never get me to leave!

Oh yeah, above is our team's border hopping Jet pack. Email me to place orders, they're going fast!

Orange Power!

The thing about pastors or any Christian clergyman in general, is that
even if they wear some sort of robe or distinguishing dress, it falls
into the color palate of “neutrals” or “shades of black.” Revered men
in Buddhism however, are most commonly found in the unmistakable fall
colors of a beautiful ripe Halloween pumpkin, with touches of saffron
and crimson here and there. (OU fans can be monks occasionally I
guess...) They are of course unmistakable when seen this way as well
as bald headed, barefoot and constantly have people prostrated before
them or offering food. I am apologetic when I say that in the last
seven months I have remained in a state of suspicion and dismissal
when it comes to this large population of men I am not allowed to
touch.


























Something funny happens to those who fear God, as He enjoys taking the
very thing that makes them uncomfortable, and transforms it into an
opportunity for them to be reduced to nothing but love without
prejudice. So, here is a quick account of a March weekend for you.

As I have begun visiting the office of Partners (I won’t describe
their work in more detail as I want you to go yourself to their
website and hopefully be as compelled by their work as I was
www.partnersworld.org), I was invited on an allusive trip to a place I
couldn’t remember to do some task that I wasn’t really sure about.
(I’m pretty sure that is exactly how I described it to my dad and
anyone else who asked me where I was going) I ended up the morning of
in a van with five others driving up to Mae Sai which is a town on the
Thai/Burmese border which I was endeared to up until this point only
for their super cheap DVDs and a coffee shop where one of my Thai
friends works. We arrived at a temple/monastery and encountered a
classroom with seven robed men sitting on the floor awaiting wisdom
and discussion.
I described the weekend in more detail in an email and you can ask me personally for more details...

Something else occurred during these trainings that had significance
on planes that can’t be seen or studied. A barrier broke and a
connection was made mainly through one of our Partners staff,
who is an excellent Thai speaker and learned much of it talking with
monks, so for a foreigner, has a broad grasp of the intricacies of
Buddhist worldview. Mysteriously though the duration of this training,
the Partners staff and all of the monks morphed into a little
family and at the end of the training the monks all agreed and said
that we had “brought light from Heaven to their dark place.” When
offered money and resources, they asked for none, only knowledge to
share and ensure the freedom of their people.



















From this point on, although I know in every group there are good and
bad, I no longer see bald heads and strange robes, I see men who are
searching for truth, who come from real lives and want to teach others
and have the same appreciation for a bright obnoxious color that I do.
I encourage you today to step across what seem the most impossible of
boundaries and ask to see people as God sees them and love them truly.









































In other news, moving out of the childrens’ home to a lovely refuge
with an Australian friend and a warm shower, grabbing my last visa
from Laos, loving Partners and the people therein and getting to tag
along with med stuff, and planning my journey home which will involve
helping to work at an orphanage in Kenya for about a month with Nick
Jackson and filling in as needed when he goes back to the States for a
week or so. I should be coming home at the end of July!

Please pray for me as I journey April 13 to a camp for displaced
people to share
about Leadership and Jesus for about ten days! I need protection, wisdom
for how to put together the program and words from the Holy Spirit as
I go! Also, please pray for God’s provision for the children at Dawn
of Life Children’s home here and for the children of AMCC of Kenya.

Love,
Maggs

How bout chickens?

(For some reason the kids love feeling my mzungu hair)

Hello my few and faithful blog readers! Just wanted to show a few more pics and let you know where we are in the situation. (Picking beans again)
Mark and I, after broken hours of discussion and prayer, decided to scrounge up $500 dollars (40,000 Kenyan shillings) and give the money to AMCC. Part of the money was from Bloom, my sending church in Denver, and the rest was left over from a benefit concert Mark put on a few months ago.

(A bridge we cross to get to electricity, 30 min hike)
We're still trying to hang on to the $900 that Mark and I set aside to help start a sustainable food project. This money came from Bloom, Grace World Outreach (home church in Oklahoma!) and many other much appreciated friends and families.

We should be alright on food for about 6 weeks or so now, but we really need to get crackin on that project. We're thinkin chickens! How fun would that be!?

If you guys have any suggestions, we're all ears. Please pray for us to do the right project. And if that's chickens, pray they won't die, cause I hear chickens like to do that a lot. I hope to be writing another update Friday. Till then...

(Imagine a 14 passenger vehicle with 24 people!)

THE LORD IS GOOD!!!