10 January 2016
It was such a nice surprise to talk to my brother Kim and his wife on Skype last night—even if only for a few minutes, and with a bad connection After we got disconnected for the 3rd or 4th , and final time last night I was remembering back to 1992 and my early days at Shimba Hills.
Back then the only way to talk to someone in the States was to make the 2-3-hour trip into town, go to the single AT&T phone kiosk outside the Kenya Telecom Office and stand in the queue of mostly Somali people waiting to talk to family in America. I would pick up the receiver and an American operator would come on the line and ask for the number I wanted. Communication has come a very long way hasn’t it?!!
We will have to do the Skype thing again but plan ahead a bit so that I can set up in a different part of the house. I usually work from the dining table which sits in front of the dining room window and is only about 6 feet from Fred& Nancy’s bedroom window—keep in mind that our “windows” don’t have glass so sound travels far and fast. I had my speaker turned to 100% but couldn’t hear them very well last night so assumed they couldn’t hear me either and so I was talking very loudly.
Things here are moving along, although not really as I had expected. Fridah felt strongly that we should run a DTS every year and offered to lead the school this year if Karen could do the communication and I could do the finances, to which we both agreed. Karen was supposed to have surgery in early December so she would be back on track by the new year but it got postponed until just before Christmas so she is still home recuperating. That I am doing communication and finances for the base and the DTS. On Wednesday night Fridah left for Burundi to teach in their DTS and will be away until the 20th. One of her last actions was to hand me a list of the speakers we want for our DTS and the topics she wants them to teach and the dates they should come and ask me to send out the invitations. Finding their e-mail addresses…or phone numbers…or searching for them on Facebook took me a whole day not to mention writing the 12 invitation letters. Christine got hit with malaria on Wednesday so I also temporarily took back the office finance responsibilities that I had handed over to her last year.
Also, we are expecting two DTS teams from Germany to visit this month. One team from Nuremberg and another from Hernhutt. Both teams are in Africa already but are working in remote areas of Ethiopia and Kenya so far we have not been able to contact them to find out if they are still coming, how many men & women are in their teams, when they expect to arrive, what their skills are and which demographic group they want to work with in Mombasa….etc. This is another communication job that has fallen to me. The base evangelism and hospitality teams are waiting for information so they can get ministry planned and rooms prepared for the 30+ people---no pressure, right?
I have been trying to follow up with the government people to get our land lease renewal finalized but bureaucracy is…. Bureaucracy, the world over. The person I need information from is the Director of Survey for Kenya and his office is in Nairobi. He is a busy man but last Feb when Richard& Valerie Vicknair and I met with him I was given his personal phone number and told to keep checking with him for progress. So, now I have started phoning him every morning.
Sometimes he answers, sometimes his phone is off, sometimes he says he will phone me back, …..it has become a song but I am determined to persevere.
