Hakuna Matata

"Means no worries for the rest of your days....Its your problem free philosophy, Hakuna Matata!"

 I know you just sang that to the tune of the well known Disney song on the movie the Lion King.  This is what I was wanting to burst forth with in song while driving through Kenya last week.  (However, the bumpy roads, speed bumps, and scary 18-wheelers did not allow me that luxury!) I also wanted to break out in the Circle of Life song (especially when we got to watch up close and personal a dikdik being attacked by a rock python!--more details to come!).

Our drive through Uganda and Kenya was just beautiful!  I will just post some pictures and let them do the talking! 

The girls needed a Cheetos snack about 2 hrs into our drive!  

So at one point during the drive the main road was blocked off and they directed traffic onto this little bumpy, down hill road!  It was quite the adventure!  We had no clue how long we would be on it or where it would come out! HA!  TIA is something I have learned to say a lot = This Is Africa! 

During our drive to Kenya, on the second day we sighted our first zebra and gazelle on the side of the road!  I was more excited than the girls!  We stopped at one point in order to get better photographs of the magnificent animals!

On our way back to Uganda we stopped for a night at a wonderful lodge that we will be visiting again one day.  It was called Lake Naivasha Sopa Lodge and it was great!

 I cannot say enough about it.  The service, for the most part, was wonderful and the food even better! The attendant in charge of your cottage came in your room while you were at supper and turned your bed down for you!  My girls were just thrilled that there was a bathtub in our room! The grounds were gorgeous and the fact that wildlife was right outside your door made it even better!

You can see the cottages that we stayed in for the night in the background.  There were 4 units in each cottage and ours was on the bottom floor. The entire backside of our room was windows that we covered at night with curtains.  You could see all of this from our room! If you had to walk from building to building at night you had to call your attendant to be escorted around the premises.  You did not want to walk up to a hippo and scare it and become its supper. (Seriously!)  On the way back from dinner, our escort shushed us and pointed his flashlight at the biggest hippo I have ever seen!  We were less than 15 feet from it! 

I loved seeing all the wildlife but some of my favorites were the monkeys!  When we first arrived we walked through what me and the girls termed "monkey jungle". 

At first we did not see all the monkeys but then......

and....

Then we found a lot of monkeys on the grass playing!  Brad and I told the girls to stand back while I got a good shot of this baby monkey.  As we are concentrating on getting the best shot, we hear the girls (not 10 feet behind us) shriek in fear!  We ran towards them because about 6 monkeys were starting to approach both of them! Needless to say, our walks through "monkey jungle"the next time consisted of each of us holding a girl! 

More monkeys...

During the day at the lodge we drove down the road a little bit and took a boat tour of Lake Naivasha.  We all got to wear the normal orange life jackets but my girls pulled them off pretty well, I think!

The first animals that we came across on the lake were a family of hippos!  The second family of hippos we came across was even better because the baby hippo yawned for us!  

We also saw a lot of beautiful birds!

After we got back from our boat ride we decided to take a guided tour of the land the lodge was on.  You could walk freely around the premises but had to have a guard go with you if you went past one certain area.  As our guard was pointing out the hippo trails and their large mounds of poop we heard some rustling in a bush down to our right.  We turned around and saw this guy...

We kinda spooked him I guess (go figure) and he turned around to head back into the bush.

We saw some of his friends running out of the bush on the other side and he darted into the bush to try to get through to join them.  However,....

his poor little life ended as a rock python jumped out and smothered the life out of him!  Imagine our surprise as we just stood there in awe!  Brad was jumping up and down from excitement and wanted to get closer to get some cool pictures.  This of course freaked our travel guide out but Brad managed to get close enough to get this close of a zoomed-in shot!  Our guide kept telling Brad that snakes can just disappear and reappear anywhere!  Bless his heart! 

Here are some random animal pictures that I don't want to leave out!

All in all, we had a blast!  I can't wait to get back to the beautiful country of Kenya and explore more of our Father's majestic creation! 

ZAMBIA: Part 2

One of the important things to do if living or doing work in an African town/village (whatever) is to meet the chief, greet him, and ask for permission to work in his area.  The men in our group had the opportunity to go and meet the head chief and the women had the opportunity to have the head chief's wife come to bush camp and have an interview with her. 

The woman in the middle, in blue, is the chief's wife. 

Our group asked her several questions and we got very short answers.  However, she was shy and could not speak a lick of English.  The woman on the far left would answer a lot of the questions for her actually.  She was like her spokeswoman. 

During the hour or two that she was there, we asked questions, sang songs for her, had a devotional, and one group even did a drama for her. While we were singing one of the songs though someone noticed a snake was crawling down the wall right behind where these women were sitting.  It was kinda funny though because we all kept singing while Suzie ran and got Bart to come and kill the slithering creature!

I was able to capture a picture of Bart in the act of snake killing! 

African culture is so very different than what you are used to in the states.  We assume things about them and they assume a lot of things about us.  One thing I found so interesting and true is how little the women in this culture know about their husbands.  We asked the chief's wife how her husband was picked as chief and she explained that to us.  However, the next question was what kind of job did her husband have before they were married and she had no clue!  It is also very common in this setting for a husband to be gone from the home for days and the wife have no idea where he is.  I thought it was crazy, but this is the norm for them. 

After going into the small town several times on the back of the flat bed truck, our assignments changed once again.  This time we got to go to surrounding villages in the area! We went to the village and asked some of the questions that we asked in the town and in the big city of Lusaka.  We focused on life cycle questions: birth, maturity, marriage, and death.  On one day we sat down with some women and I thought they were going to tell me their secrets!  When a girl reaches maturity or it is time for her to be married she is taught by the elder women in the village the "secrets" she needs to know.  The women we were talking with shooed all the young girls away from our circle and I thought I would get a little insight into their traditional teachings.  However, they were very vague about what they teach a girl and gave no specifics. Oh, well.

This is a picture of the village Brad and I went to on our daily assignments. 

Pretty cool door I loved in the village! 

I handle smells pretty well....I am talking about stinky ones.  However, in the village we went to they had mounds and mounds of rotting corn.  Before it was ruined they had it ready to sell but an unexpected rain spoiled it all.  It was the yuckiest smell...so thick smelling that it stuck in the back of your throat. ugh. I will never forget it.  How sad that this much food was ruined! 

The last 3 days of our time in bush camp we spent out in the villages with a national in their home/hut.  Every family was put in different homes but some of us were in the same villages! We packed enough stuff to get us through 3 days and off we went!  We stayed with our helper, Iwell, and his family.  He was a pastor and his church was located right beside his house!  He had 4 girls and  2 boys and a lot of different kind of animals that Macy and Mara had a blast playing with.  If I thought my girls got dirty at bush camp, you should have seen them out in the village! 

This is the family's home that we stayed at.  On the far left you can see a small building that was the long drop room. 

This is the house that we slept in for 3 nights.  Our room was one of the 3 rooms that made up the house. 

Village kids looking in at some of the family's animals....chickens, guinea pigs, bunnies, roosters....

When we arrived at the house we put our belongings in the room we were to sleep in.  The room was bare except for 2 things:  a reed mat to place our mattresses on and guess what.....AN OPERATION CHRISTMAS CHILD SHOE BOX!!!!  I thought it was so neat to see one all the way out in the bush in Zambia!  I wanted to open it up and see if anything was inside (hoping that I could find the person who sent it and let them see who got it) but I felt that that would be prying and decided a picture of the box was good enough! 

After we set up our room we set out on a short walk to go to some meeting.  I found out we were headed to a certain tree where women with children under the age of 5 met monthly.  The women gather to weigh their children and a doctor comes and marks their weight on a growth chart that all the women have been given for their child.  It was scary to see the charts.  The family that we stayed with had 2 children under the age of 5 and both of their growth curves were dropping sharply.  

The women standing in line waiting to weigh their babies.

The scale was like a grocery store scale.  The woman to the right of me is holding the growth curve pamphlet in her hand. 

 After our little trip to the weighing tree we walked back to the house I found out I was getting to help Ida kill a chicken and prepare it for lunch.  This is my second experience killing a chicken and I am not so sure if I am good at it yet!

Unfortunately after these pictures, my phone decided to die!  I was disappointed because I did not even get a picture with the whole family that we stayed with!  On the last full day in the village we all went to Iwell's church and all the Mzungu's (white people) gave their testimonies followed by a sermon from Brad that Iwell translated!  It was great! 

The next morning we all got up super early, walked our luggage to the paved road, and said goodbye to our new found friends!  We had a great time in the village but we were all ready to GO AND STAY IN A HOTEL!   

We arrived at a super cute place called Ibis Gardens late that afternoon!  I headed straight to our little house and showered off the girls and took the most heavenly shower I have ever taken in my life!  I like village life, but man I LOVE RUNNING WATER THAT IS HOT! Ibis was wonderful! It had a beautiful pool that the kids loved to swim in even though it was the temperature of the north pole. We also had a buffet to eat from every meal of the day and desserts too! We thoroughly enjoyed our time here and relaxed and fellowshipped more with all of our friends!  

The pool at Ibis Gardens.

Our house at Ibis Gardens. 

My girls!

Lovin on daddy!

After 30 days of fun, it was time to head to the airport and fly back to Kenya for who knows how long! Hopefully we can visit Zambia again one day!

Waiting to board the airplane.

ZAMBIA: Part One

We had a great time in Zambia! To be honest it was almost like a vacation for me and my family. The weather was cool (not the 90s and 100s we had been experiencing in West Africa) and someone made your meals for you 3 times a day! Plus there was dessert at supper every night! We were so happy to see some of our cherished friends that we trained with in the states and made many more friends that we will keep for a life time! We were there for 30 days but it seemed to go by so fast!

 We first stayed in the capital of Zambia, called Lusaka. Our group was very large so we were split up between two different places. We were housed in a seminary with other families of 4 and the singles. (All the other larger families were driven back and forth each day from another guest house.) My family and I stayed in a small room that had 4 twin size beds, 3 of which we pushed together to form a giant bed that we all slept on. The 4th one was a bunk and I don't trust my girls on top of those things yet! It was a bit cramped, but we had what we needed! There were 2 showers and 2 toilets for the girls in the shower room to share and the same for the men. For those of you from my hometown of Cleveland, TN, I kind of felt like I was in a weird version of Camp Cherokee again! HA!

The King family's room at the Seminary in Lusaka. 

Our days there were packed full of daily assignments in order to help us learn more about African culture. While in the capital, Lusaka, we went out daily and rode the "mini buses" (public transportation) to different areas of the town. We were packed in those things like sardines but it was fun! It is very easy to strike up a conversation with someone when you are practically sitting on them so we talked a lot on the buses with the nationals too! We were all paired into groups and each group had their own helper. This picture is of me, Sarah, and our helper Rose.

Rose took us around her neighborhood and we talked to some people she knew but mostly those she did not know. We had fun each day talking and interviewing the nationals and would drink a nice cold Coke (in a glass bottle because it is cheaper) each time we were out!

After approximately 2 weeks in arriving in Zambia it was time to head out to the bush!  Everyone readied themselves by taking the local form of Dramamine since it was to be curvy, hilly ride!  (I opted out of taking dramamine so I could actually be awake for the entirety of the day though! That stuff knocks me out!)  We all rode on a really nice grey-hound type bus to a small town called Petauke.  The landscape and view from the bus was great on the way there!

We finally arrived at our destination...BUSH CAMP!  This was probably my favorite part of our time in Zambia!  We, of course, had no modern conveniences here.  You had to draw your water out of the well each day and carry it a good distance.  (Well to me it was a good distance...the nationals put me to shame with the distances they carry their water!)  If you wanted to have hot water then you put your water in a metal kettle and heated it over the fire before you showered!  The shower was a fun experience too! You had a bucket attached to a pulley system that you would lower down, pour the hot water in, lift the bucket back up, and then pull a small lever whenever you wanted to release some of the water from the bucket out of a small shower head attached to the bottom of the bucket.  Fun times! It did not come without its dangers though. One guy got stung by a scorpion while in the shower and one girl got stitches in her head when the bucket full of water fell on it. Yikes! 

Bush Camp

Macy and Mara enjoyed bucket baths each day for the most part!  They were so dirty each day! I felt they could have been poster children for some humanitarian aid organization they looked so filthy! 

For the bathrooms, we used small buildings with "long drops" in them.  For the most part they were very easy to use, unless, of course you had bees swarming around your legs OR bats making noises below you.  The first time I walked into one, a bat flew out of the bathroom and I ran like a ninny.  I am not sure if anyone saw me and I don't really care! 

Macy and Mara loved sleeping in the tent at night! I have to be truthful...I slept well! It was cold at night but we had plenty of blankets to keep us warm! The hardest part was getting out from underneath the covers in the morning! (Breakfast was each morning at 7 am).

The King family tent

Macy and Mara outside our big tent. 

 In order for us not to have to walk around in the middle of the night to go and use the restroom we were provided with potty buckets (they called them choo buckets).  I really appreciated that since my girls had to go potty several nights when we were there.  The downside though..the potty buckets look like small trash cans with lids on them.  The place we are staying at in Kenya has small trash cans with lids on them....Guess what we found Mara doing? :)  

Of course there were no mini buses to ride since we were out in the bush so we all got to ride on the back of a flat bed truck each time we went into the small town for more daily assignments!  It was not that long of a drive and we all enjoyed it!  The girls got to ride on it twice with us too!

The flat bed truck that we rode in the back of! Wood benches were placed in the back that we all sat on. 

View of Zambia from the back of the flat bed truck! 

The first part of bush camp we went to the small town that was close to us.  Our group had the opportunity to go the office where passports, driver's licenses, and things like that were made.  So...we walk into a small room that had a small number of people lined up outside and about 3 people sitting down inside waiting their turn in line.  When we came in, the man made all the nationals leave and let us take their seats and spoke to us for about 20 minutes.  What would you have done if you were at your local DMV office and some foreigners walked in and they kicked you out?  Not the same reaction here in Zambia that I would imagine would happened in the states! 

Brad and Iwell, our helper, walking down a road in Petauke. 

Fun in Kenya!

Macy and I came to Kenya on March 8th. Since then we have done some pretty fun stuff that you are not able to do in our West African country. Some of the fun things we have done included: eating at Yogurt Planet, buying Barbie dolls, eating at Planet Yogurt, visiting the Giraffe park, eating at Planet Yogurt, eating at KFC, and visiting the malls! Did I mention eating at Planet Yogurt?



Macy loves her some yogurt! When we first left Memphis she was heart broken over the fact that we could not visit Yogurt Mountain anymore. It was so conveniently close to our house there that we stopped probably weekly!

On March 15th Brad and Mara joined us here in Kenya! Because Macy enjoyed the Giraffe Park so much and it is not something you can do everyday, we took Brad and Mara back to it! Giraffes are now my favorite animals! They are so beautiful and such a majestic creation ofour Father! Although, they do have the slimiest spit and it would hang off of their mouths and touch the floor. Ugh.



The workers hand you a handful of giraffe food and small carrot pieces and you get to feed them! You are only supposed tofeedthem one piece at a time but sometimes it was hard to keep them from getting all of them!



Mara loves giraffes and I wish you could here her pronounce it! It is sooooo cute! She was super excited to get to see the Giraffes but was not that fond of feeding them or getting too close! In this next picture she was clinging on to Brad and he was not even holding onto her! Bless her heart!



She would do her best impersonation of the giraffes though!



One of the ways to feed a giraffe is to hold the food in your mouth and let the giraffe "kiss" you. Brad was all for this. I am a little on the conservative side and would not brave doing this. ugh. It did make for a good laugh though!





We also took the time to visit the Nairobi National Museum, which was pretty neat! I felt as if the girls were on exhibit at times and actually had to ask some school age girls (high school age) to take their hands off of Mara. However, the taxidermy animals the museum had were great and the girls (and Brad..a kid at heart) had a tremendous time!





Macy loved the butterflies and all the birds that were on display too!





One of the things we have enjoyed the most about Kenya is all the beautiful greenery and flowers that are here! It is a huge change from being right below the Sahara dessert and then coming to the highlands of Nairobi, Kenya!





I'm sure we will do more fun things while we are here and I will try and post about them! For now, I am grateful that we are not in our West African country of service and that we are enjoying everything that Kenya has to offer!

Someone pinch me please

Someone pinch me please. Sometimes I am still in awe of the job the Father has allowed me to do AND that I am in Kenya AND how we ended up here AND what we happened to escape because we are here. Basically, I am in AWE of the Father and how he orchestrates things when we are totally oblivious to His ways. I know that I have sent out numerous emails to everyone that keeps up with us but I figured I could also explain on here what has happened the past couple of months to our family.

Since we have been in our country of service in West Africa we have battled sickness after sickness or some crazy injury involving one of us. I will not go into all of them but lets just say there has been enough of them to cover the next 10 years of my life. :) Even though we have had some traumatic times the Father has been faithful and has affirmed our work in our town EVERY TIME something crazy went down. EVERY TIME!!! For example, one of the worst days we had on the field (the kind that makes you want to buy your airplane ticket home) the Father allowed us to lead one of our new friends to Him the very next day!! Another day that was really bad we received EIGHT care packages!!! Who receives 8 care packages in one day!?!? Another bad day we received a financial blessing and on another bad day we got our crate!!! There were smaller blessings throughout these times but these are big ones that jump into my head at first!!! We have no doubt that we are where we are supposed to be.

The first week of January we had our first volunteer team come out. Since that week, things just went down hill concerning Macy's health. When Brad left to get the team (my first time at home by myself with the girls) both girls were great....until they both started throwing up in the middle of the night. We had been sleeping in my bed all together because we had a girl movie night since Brad was gone. I ripped the sheets off of the bed and we all headed to their room to sleep after showering them off. The next morning I was crazy tired (whoever gets good rest sleeping beside a child needs to give me their secret because I never sleep good beside one of my girls!!!) and then noticed that the dog had chewed a hole in our egg-foam mattress that was on top of our not-so-comfortable mattress!!! ahhhhh!!! The girls did fine that day but Macy threw up more that night also!

Finally, Brad and the team get back and Brad comes down with a double ear infection..what in the world? The teams' trip to a village is delayed a day, but hey, the girls are back to normal. The teams leaves and Brad and one of the translators are exposed to bats while sleeping in a hut. This means automatic rabies shots even if you don't think you have been bitten. Great. (Here I owe a shout out to Fred's Pharmacy for making me give immunizations the past flu season!) We got the shots for Brad and I get to give them to him! Fun times!

A couple of weeks after this Macy began to complain about a hair in her throat. She would come up to me every 30 minutes or so and open her mouth for me to see if there was a hair in her mouth. After the 3rd day of her asking me and Brad this question, she started screaming LOUDLY saying her throat was hurting. At this point she could not even swallow her saliva. We were very concerned and after talking with our medical folks, we decided to get her to the closest Dr. that next morning. The doctor at the hospital we went to diagnosed her with Strep, however, I still believe to this day that it was not strep. There was no actual test done to verify it to be strep. Macy took the 10 day supply of amoxicillin but her eating habits never went back to normal.

Because she was not eating normal, Macy started drinking profusely (in my opinion) and would use the restroom every 30 minutes or so. She also started having horrific dreams for about 2 weeks and wet the bed for that time period also. I know that the dreams could have been caused by her malaria medicine (which we stopped and changed to Malarone) but I am convinced that spiritual warfare was taking place because of something I experienced myself. We upped the amount of time we spent in prayer and praying with the girls and over their room after they were asleep. At this point, Macy had lost a lot of weight and complained of not getting enough sleep at night. What four year old complains of not sleeping well at night?

We took her back to the hospital we originally took her to and they did another round of tests....urinalysis, CBC with diffs, and a stool analysis. Everything was fine. They said it was viral. Hmmmm.

After another week of this going on we headed to the capital to see the best Pediatric doctor there. She was wonderful and did everything in her power that she could do there. Again, all the tests came back normal and they sent us home. She believed Macy was just dealing with a fear of swallowing because of how bad her throat hurt (which is true now, we know).

We went back to our home, but nothing got any better. It finally accumulated to the day when Macy started screaming loudly again after eating a soft tortilla shell that food just kept getting stuck in her throat. After that, Macy and I were soon Kenya bound that next week.

Since being here in Kenya, Macy has seen several different kinds of doctors, from an ENT, Pediatric GI specialist and counselors. Macy had to have CT scan done when we first got here of her throat. Bless her heart, it was scary to her. She did a tremendous job but her little chin just quivered during the whole CT scan and crocodile tears rolled down her face during the procedure. I did everything I could not to break down right there in that room. I sang to her, talked to her, and prayed with her during this. (I am not sure how parents who have chronically sick children that need procedures like these done do it all the time. My heart goes out to them!) The next week Macy had an endoscopy done and we found out that Brad and Mara would be able to come and be with us the next day!! We were super excited because we did not expect them until the next week!! The endoscopy, though, revealed an esophageal erosion that had already began healing in Macy's esophagus and a couple of other inflamed areas. Her throat had at one time hurt her really bad...thus the fear now to swallow. She was placed on Nexium and will continue to take it for the next 6 weeks.

What a blessing it was for Brad and Mara to get out of West Africa when they did. If they had waited another week, they would have been stuck in our country of service because of the current coup there! The Father works in mysterious ways and it is always for the good of His children! I am torn though. I long to be back in our home and with our friends that we work with. I am happy that we are here but can't help but also feel guilty that others are there having to deal with the stress of the turmoil going on around them. The past 2 days I felt like a emotional basket case. Today I am better. Two nights ago I was struggling with all the emotions in my heart and finally just committed them to the Father. Like a wise friend said yesterday....I told the Father that night that as long as He gets glory from everything that has happened in our family's life recently, that it has been worth it.

That's really all there is to it. Whatever may come my way and my family's way, as long as the Lord receives glory, IT HAS BEEN WORTH IT.

Today we found out that all of Macy's biopsies came back normal. We are now set up to work with a family counselor to help us help Macy, and a little help for ourselves on the side. We will be here in Kenya for at least 2 more weeks. After that, who knows when we can get back into our country. We get to go to Zambia the latter part of April for 30 days so we may not get to return until after that. I will keep everyone updated!

Much needed encouragement

So I went to the first big worship service today in Kenya with a friend. (At home we worship with two other families once weekly so I have not been to a large service since last October.) I am already a little emotional because of our current situation....Brad and Mara still in our country of service...me and Macy in Kenya dealing with doctor appointments....parenting on you own....Macy not eating much...the list could go on and on it seems. I took Macy to the children's class, which she already had a friend in that she had made our first day here, but it took her a second to go and she started crying. This made me tear up too. She finally went shyly with her friends class and had a great time. I took back off to the auditorium and started crying as soon as I walked in the back doors. So many people praising our Father at one time blew me away and I was overcome with emotions I did not realize I had pent up. I could not even sing the first song I cried so much. I don't cry pretty either. I NEEDED that time of worship. I have been drained...physically and spiritually. I needed encouragement and the Lord so blessed me with that this morning. HE knows what we need and provides for us! Then the guest speaker preaches from Isaiah 49! The passage speaks of God glorifying Himself through us even when we don't think He is. I cant eloquently say it like the preacher did so go read it on your own! God spoke to me though thru this passage.....even if I experience personal discouragement God will still glorify Himself and then gives a promise in verse 6, "I will also make you a light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth." How I needed that message this morning!

I have been extremely blessed since being here too! Macy and I spent 2 nights with the Gandy's and some time with our Journey girl friends, Emily and Ester! Linda took me and Macy to the Giraffe park yesterday and we had a blast! Not to mention that Nairobi is beautiful! It is a city that has been placed smack-dab in the middle of a rainforest! There are flowers everywhere and crazy winding hilly roads that make up the city! We are trying to have some fun and much needed rest amongst the medical visits that must be made! I will keep everyone updated!

Also..thanks to each and every person that has prayed for us during this. From personal emails to my family telling me that people are walking up to them telling them that they are praying for us! This has meant so much. I will never be able to put it into adequate words! THANK YOU.