SUMMAH!!!!

Yo yo yo!

Three momentous occasions have occurred during the past two weeks:

1. School's out!! I (Kelly) am officially on vacation! We've got various "this and that's" planned for the summer, but I will enjoy the down time greatly.

2. We had a baby!

Well, actually, our friends Ed and Tricia had their baby! Her name is Mackenzie Kay. This is the first baby Matt and I have been around start to finish... AND we got to be there during the first minutes of her life. It was really neat to see her for the first time. This picture was taken about two hours after her birth. I have never been a baby person (I've always been afraid I would break their necks if I held them), but I REALLY like this baby!

The day they brought MacKenzie home was actually their anniversary as well. Ed asked me to bake a cake for the occasion. I decided I wanted to make a two-layer cake. Having never made a two-layer cake, it was quite the experience.  Of course, everything had to be homemade... and I had no cake pans. So... one cake came out in a bazillion pieces. That one got eaten and trashed. The next one came out in 16 pieces and I glued it together with icing. I wanted to try out a different technique, so I made a third one. That one came out as two perfect squares. That made two final cakes. They were quite tasty, if I do say so myself.

3. Matt traveled to a village called Mwingi. One of his students from Kenya Baptist Theological Center is from there, and Matt was looking for potential students and a meeting place for future ministry there. He wants to do a Kenyan version of Global's Institute, visiting the villages twice a month to do trainings and classes.

This is Matt, with his student Sam.

Matt with another of his students, Dennis... with a slingshot..? They were trying to hit poor lizards.

Matt got to visit a cattle market, with tons of goats, sheep, cows, etc.

Matt buying some cassava- which is like yucca. Basically, a big root you can boil.

Here, Matt is meeting with potential students for the Kenyan Institute.

Well, that's it for now!

Visiting Friends

Forgive us for our royal slackness! Here's a recap on the past month:

Our good friend from FSU, Ryan Mattox, come visit us, along with his new (relatively) wife! We had a great time getting to know Kate, and hanging out with them.

Getting some dessert out on the town with Mattox!

We took them on a safari to the Nairobi Game Park and saw some cool stuff.

A group of girls from my bible study (Kelly...obviously. Hopefully Matt wouldn't be in a bible study with a bunch of girls) took an overnight trip to a house near Lake Naivasha.

The house we stayed at

This is about 2.5 hours from Nairobi, in the Rift Valley. We had a great time, playing lots of games, laughing, and eating! The trip took the place of a baby shower for our friend Ann. Since this is her 4th baby, she has all the supplies she needs!

All the girls, except for me. This was on top of a hill that overlooked Lake Naivasha.

The View

It's the rainy season, and we've had some good rains, especially at night. We woke up one morning to the rushing sound of water. Matt ran outside, and the small river in down in the valley in our backyard had flooded up to our yard!

Overflowing into the neighbor's yard

It came up over our dock and into the lower garden area

We had a random visit from our friend Erin Oxford. We first met Erin when we attended First Baptist Church in Chatsworth, GA. She was a music teacher at the local middle school. Shortly after we left for Kenya, she began working in a neighboring country- Ethiopia, bordering the northern part of Kenya. This past week, she came to Kenya as a companion to one of her partners, who needed medical treatment here in Nairobi. So we got to hang out with her a bit as well! It seems like the more you travel, the smaller the world gets :)

Matt and our friends over for dinner- Erin is in the middle

Less than 3 more weeks of school!
Until next time!

Back!

We're back in Nairobi, getting back in the swing of things!
We had a great time touring around Israel.... it is such a neat place with so much history and the Bible just comes alive when you get to see all these places mentioned in it. The trip was quite tiring though, so we're recovering from our vacation!
Here's a few highlights:

On the Mediterranean Ocean at Caesarea

Climbing Mt. Arbel looking over the Sea of Galilee

The southern steps that led to Herod's temple- Jesus actually walked on these steps!

The Dead Sea- it was beautiful and was so much fun to swim in

Spring Break

It's Rosslyn's Spring break!!!! We're off to Israel. We're going with Ed and Tricia Berngen, friends from Rosslyn, and we're going to visit with Matt and Jillian, mentors from Global who live in Nazareth.

We'll be staying at their house and touring around the country, staying in a hostel while in Jerusalem.  We've been saving up money for awhile for the trip and are super excited!

Just to recap, last night we had 11 out of the 15 students from our CFS trip over for dinner. There were conference final games for soccer, field hockey and basketball at school, and after they were over, everyone came over. We had spaghetti, garlic bread, and yummy chocolate cake and blondies. We hope they had a good time!

Oh, and Mom, I wanted to show you cornbread I made this week. Look, I'm using my cast iron! I love it! It made my cornbread turn out WAY better than last time I made it.

A New Creation

This is a long post, but it's worth it, I promise! 

I can't give too much detail, but one of the students from Rosslyn has accepted Christ! We'll call her M.

M is from a Hindu family. Although they're not strict, they do practice Hindu traditions.

M had some questions, and we discussed them one day. She told me that after arriving at Rosslyn, she began to believe more about Christianity than Hinduism, and even told her mom this. However, she was not ready to give up everything to the Lord, to give Him her whole life, and all that that entails! She knew she would encounter opposition in her family, and from some friends. She told me she wanted to think about it some more. About two weeks later, she appeared at my office door saying she was ready to talk. This pastweek, M told me that she had been doing A LOT of thinking, and that she was ready to give her life to Christ. After discussing a little bit more about what would happen afterward, we prayed and M received Christ! When I asked her how she felt afterward, she said, "I feel good" with a smile on her face. It was soooo exciting! ( I teared up, hehe)

Please pray for M... she is planning to tell her mom about her new life soon, and we pray that her mom will be accepting. Pray for her whole family. Pray for M as she tells all her friends at school. Pray that God will mold her into the woman he wants her to be. She is a new creation, but like all of us, she has a lot of habits and inclinations that need breaking. Pray for a revival on Rosslyn's campus. Satan has a hold on a lot of the kids (and staff), and there is a division between the "goody-goody" missionary kids and the others.

It was so neat to be a part of this experience, and we praise God for it. While Matt seems to have been born with the ability to talk to people about anything and everything, I have dealt with fear and shyness a lot, especially within the realm of sharing my faith. I feel like this experience has helped me break out of that somewhat. All I had to do was be willing.... to go and to talk. God was already working in her.

Korean Cuisine

Rosslyn has a fairly large Korean community. The Koreans hold a yearly Korean dinner for the staff, and everyone raves about the food. The Korean teachers decided to hold Korean cooking lessons once a month for the rest of the year, and today was the first lesson. We made mung bean pancakes. They look like little egg omelets, minus eggs! You take yellow mung beans, soak them, put them in a blender with a little water, and it resembles pancake batter! You add hot pepper, onions, ground pork, bean sprouts, garlic and some seasonings, and then cook in a little oil on the stove. They were very tasty, especially dipped in soy sauce! We really enjoy eating all this food from different cultures here- Indian, Ethiopian, Japanese, Korean, Middle Eastern...

Here's a pic of me with my mung bean pancake!

New blog and randomicity

Well, since our first Global blog.... bit the dust, shall we say.... we have decided to start a new one! We will try to update fairly regularly, with ministry news, daily life happenings, and pictures. I'll probably link it to facebook... once I figure out how! This whole blogging thing is kinda new to us. So... bear with us as we begin!

Random bit of info #1: Matt and I have been exercising fairly regularly. Today I ran 3 miles and joined Matt in Rosslyn's Olympic-sized pool for some more exercising. Man, that pool is nice! It takes bravery to get in the cool water, but once you do, it's good. I know, we're suffering over here in Africa with a pool! God has really blessed us with my job at Rosslyn and getting to enjoy all the amenities that come with it.

Random bit of info #2: We ate bean burgers tonight with baked potato fries and salad. They were actually good!

Just thought you might enjoy a random glimpse into our life on our first post. :)
Below is a pic for your viewing pleasure...It was taken from the window at our old apartment. It's kinda hard to see on the webpage, but it's a double rainbow.