Since arriving in Kenya a few months ago, we have done a lot of moving. Our surroundings are constantly changing and there has been very little constancy. BUT…it has been so good in so many ways.
I left my house 3 days before I had to leave for training camp and stayed in River Falls, WI with some of my best friends. Then, I flew to Atlanta, GA. The first night we stayed in a homeless shelter and then moved to the training camp in Gainesville, GA for 3 days. Finally, we arrived in Kenya after a stop in Amsterdam. We stayed in Kijabe for one night, where all 11 of the girls on my team stayed in one 6 person tent and got to know each other very well.
The second day we were in Kenya, we piled into a matatu to drive down the bumpy remote roads to the Tangitatu tribe where we stayed in tents under the beautiful African sky surrounded by mud huts, mountaints, and donkeys, sheep, and goats. After 2 weeks there, we moved back to Kijabe for 2 days where we stayed in 3 tents in the church's youth center and had some days of rest. Then, lickety split, we moved to Karati, Kenya where we stayed in tents inside a church surrounded by chameleons, beautiful acacia trees, muddy roads, and singing pastors. After two weeks there, we moved baaaack to Kijabe for a few days of rest in our beloved tents and then it was off to Pokot, deep in the bush. In Pokot, we stayed in an old missionary's house, but once again, stayed in our tents to ward off the bugs crawling all over the house (I have come to love and cherish my sleeping pad and sleeping bag and actually find it incredibly comfortable:) After two weeks in Pokot, it was back to beloved Kijabe where we once again moved into our big tents for a few days and then took off for Uganda, where we stayed in very damp tents on the banks of the Nile River. Now, we are finally in Kijabe for good, but have still been moving from tents in the youth center to tiny rooms upstairs in the youth center to our contacts house (where I slept in a BED for 2 nights!!!!!!!) and now fiiiiinally back to one big tent in the youth center in Kijabe.
Things have changed so much in our short time here in Kenya. But, everywhere we go, God is CONSTANT. He never changes and He never will. When everything around me is new and foreign and confusing and hard to look at, God is the same. He is familiar. He is faithful. He is beautiful. He shows Himself to me in each new place. He comforts me when I am having a hard time with a new village or country and shows me His love for the people there and asks me to love them as He does. Although we have been in each place for such a short time, the Lord has used that time in such powerful ways. We have not gone the places we have by accident. The Lord has had a purpose in all of it and has been moving everywhere we have moved.
This give me so much HOPE and EXCITEMENT for my future. I still dont really know what I will exactly be doing when I get back home (although the Lord is revealing that to me more and more which is exciting 🙂 What I do know is this: Where I move, the Lord moves also. He will never abandon me. My circumstances and address to not determine how good God is and do not change how faithful, loving, and just He is. <3
