Changes... inside and out

Today while I was in the US still helping my Dad recover from bypass surgery, Len was in Kenya continuing to prepare for our new phase of ministry. We are excited to get into the community where we will be serving and he'll begin preparing the house where we will live in a few months.

We are so blessed. This house will be a wonderful place to live among, serve with and care for the people of Githioro and the surrounding communities.

Len sent pictures of this wonderful house and I am anxious to get back to Kenya. I have to say I realized today how far the Lord has brought me  in the last ten years. When Len and I put the addition on our house after we got married, I was obsessed with many things.... but I was most obsessed with the master bathroom. I found pictures of a cabinet and had it custom made. I HAD to had a clawfoot bathtub... had to have six nozzles in the shower... had to have pine floors... took several weeks to decide on just the right toilet.

So today, Len sent pictures of the house and here's the master bathroom. I am happy now that my anxiety about which shower curtain would be best has been relieved.

Perspective

As most of you already know, my Dad found out about a week and a half ago that he had to have open heart surgery .Apparently, I am very hard on the hearts of the men I love most . Len, my husband, had a quad bypass in 2006. Now Daddy will have a triple or possible quad.

So now I know what it feels like to be half way around the world when someone you know has something major to deal with - although he's calling it a bump in the road. And it will be a bump, but I know from watching Len that the next two weeks are going to be tough on him and on my mother. It is incredibly hard to watch someone you love suffer.

Our passports were with Kenya immigration finalizing our work permits. Work permits are very difficult to get in Kenya right now and we have been working on it for months. So we had to wait for the process to be rushed and finished before i could get a flight to come home. At first, I was flying out last Friday... then it moved, and moved and moved again.

Today, it looks like I will be flying out. I think without the Lord by my side I would be completely nutty by now. But beyond that, the Lord has given me the greatest friends and family ever. Len has been a rock. I pretty much shut down after Sunday - felt desperate.  We came to Nairobi and " the boys" Anderson, James and Timothy came with us. They have been a great distraction as we hang out waiting.
One of them will stay one more night with Len so that he is not alone. Peter and Mama Shiko are here as well... holding my hand, praying, just "being" with me. I am blessed

So... as I thought about how much I miss my family - especially my Mom and Dad right now... the reality of the life of these boys smacked me right in the face. Anderson and James are total orphans. At such a young age they lost the two most important people in their lives. I have had my parents for such a long time and that is a blessing. I still get to talk to them and ask them things. I do not take that for granted. And I am gonna love those boys harder because they deserve it. They have been good to me and I thank God for them. These are the three taken at the beginning ot he year on their first day of high school.

Just when you think God is done....

As we prepared this fall to begin our second full year of ministry in Kenya, we were blessed to be able to stay at the Spiritual Life Center of St. Matthew's UMC - our home church. Len and I had been very restless at the latter part of our first year's stay in Kenya. We both felt God trying to speak to us about our ministry in Kenya. And so when we got back to the US, I spent a lot of time in the spot pictured below - praying, reading, praying, studying - and well maybe a nap or two. My dear friends Daphne and Elaine invited me to a bible study that began two days after we arrived home and that helped me "stay in the word" as soon as we got home even though my head was really spinning trying to figure out what our ministry in Kenya was really supposed to look like.

Part of what the Lord kept saying to me over and over was just three words... WIDOWS AND ORPHANS.... WIDOWS AND ORPHANS..... Every scripture... every thought. And then it happened. I had already begun to very amateurishly  draw a picture of what I thought God wanted me to be doing... how he wanted me to live in Kenya... how he wanted us to minister.  Some friends and I had talked about what that "compound" would look like....I asked them each to draw what they saw.
Each of us, without prompting of any kind drew something that looked like this. I shared this drawing with Len - in fact, it was sketched out on a whiteboard that sat in the middle of the floor of the SLC.

Shirley Sprouse came over to visit us at the SLC one day because she  had heard from the Lord about a foundation of some sort having to do with our ministry in Kenya.

And so after  a blessed time at home , we returned to Kenya to begin ministry still feeling that God was trying to tell us something.

One day just a very few days after we got back to Kenya, Len was out with our friend Sam. He passed by his church and just for information shared with Len that it was indeed his church and then was telling of the struggles the church was having as well as the opportunities.  He described current projects, prayers they had about future ministries and Len sat quietly and listened. All he said to our friend was, you have to talk to Susan about this. You see, Sam had described what God was telling me in the US  in the fall.

And so Len shared the story with me, and then Sam came to the house and began to tell me about the compound of his church. And I began to weep. I asked him to hold on and brought out the very first pencil  sketch God had shown me. All of the items on my sketch were in that compound or planned to be in that compound. That drawing was a real place - the foundation was there. Coincidence... I think not.

And then we went to look at it. I was literally speechless. Never had God spoken so clearly as he did with this plan. Things began to happen. We started to become a part of that church. Turns out the pastor's house is empty because the pastor has his own house. So they had a church member just living there for security purposes and prayed for someone to come and live there. A primary school was already in the early stages of development. This is a google maps view of the current church and it's compound. We are blessed that the AIC church in Githioro has agreed to allow us to be their partner in ministry in this community.

So, in July we'll begin a new phase of ministry in a community - living in community with those we serve. Our first challenge is to raise funds for a well. That community suffers greatly because water is not readily available and many walk miles and miles daily for water. In the dry season, water is not available. Getting water to that community will be our first priority. And it's a big goal. It will take about $23,000  to dig this well that will provide water for the community, the church, the vocational training center and eventually a hospital.

We will be calling this new ministry Neighbors Outreach Worldwide. We hope that this "banner" of ministry will allow for others to join us in ministry whether it be  in Kenya or any other place in the world.  You are all part of the ministry. Len and I happen to be living and working IN Kenya but all of you are helping us minister here and are ministering in your own place where God has put you.

We base this ministry on Mark 12:28-31

Mark 12:28-31 The  Greatest Commandment

28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.30And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’31The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

We are Neighbors Outreach Worldwide - Called to love and serve our neighbors.

www. neighborsoutreachworldwide.org 

More to come.... please keep praying

In His Service
Len and Susan Eastwood