Chasing the Wind

December 27, 2005

I’ve been remiss in my blogging duties; oddly, I actually crossed “blog about Kenya” off my todo list accidentally, and it wasn’t until a friend email yesterday that I realized I had not written about this trip.

Let me preface this whole adventure by saying that I thank God for the opportunity to serve in this way. Working through friends, families and strangers, the necessary prayers and money came together in a miraculous way. It was a wonderful replacement for our honeymoon; we were truly blessed by this experience.

The night before we left I stumbled across something that I wish I had found earlier; my son gave me Civilization IV for my birthday last year. Marvelous game, and the opening song is intriguing.

Turns out the opening song was The Lord’s Prayer in Swahili. Later, Kenya Christians would sing the same words to a different tune.

Baba Yetu

Baba yetu, Yesu uliye
Mbinguni yetu, Yesu, amina!
Baba yetu, Yesu, uliye
Jina lako litukuzwe.

Utupe leo chakula chetu
Tunachohitaji utusamehe
Makosa yetu, hey!
Kama nasi tunavyowasamehe
Waliotukosea usitutie
Katika majaribu, lakini
Utuokoe, na yule, milelea milele!

Ufalme wako ufike utakalo
Lifanyike duniani kama mbinguni. (Amina)

————-

Our Father, Jesus, who art
in Heaven. Amen!
Our Father, Jesus
Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread,
Forgive us of
our trespasses
As we forgive others
Who tresspass against us
Lead us not into temptation, but
deiver us from Evil, and you are forever and ever!

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
On Earth as it is in Heaven. (Amen)

I had about 2 hours of this knowledge before we had to leave for the airport, so I didn’t do anything useful with it. Mom and my stepfather picked us up and drove us to the airport to save on parking fees since we’d be gone so long, and we met up with the rest of the team.

We were flying British Air out of Houston; they made a terrific deal to upgrade us to Business Class for something like $50 a person, but that was like $400 for the group. Considering where we were going, it was really hard to justify spending all that money just to be a wee bit more comfortable for 9 hours. I’m glad we skipped the opportunity.

Packing was heavy since we would be gone for 2 weeks. We packed jeans and slacks for the guys, long dresses for the women mostly (and since I’m a guy, I’m not going to be able to give a better description than that). We also have some suitcases with bibles and “Purpose Driven Life” that were really, really heavy. All in all 16 bags for check in plus a bag each for carry on. We were loaded down.

That’s it for the advance preparation, I think. Oh, shots for hepatitus and typhoid and yellow fever, pills for malaria, of course. I’m going to copy this to the Kenya mission team, so if I’ve forgotten something about the preparation, perhaps they can add it to the comments. We all watched a movie on the plane and crashed; we would be in London in the morning.