Attempt Great Things

I saw this lectern in Westminster Abbey when I was 19 years old. I wrote it on a bookmark and discovered it again about 5 years later. As we try to figure out what to do in the future, this simple phrase keeps coming back to me. Simply "Go for it. The Lord is with you."

(For some reason, I had thought it was a Lord Byron quote, but it's actually from William Carey, the founder of modern missions, and the full quote is "Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.")

It has seemed to me that the appropriate corollary to this is the Apostle Paul to the Phillipians. "But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from you faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you." Thus, attempt, and even if it is nothing more than an attempt, then your life is an offering poured out. So be it.

Ubiquitous

This was taken outside Nairobi. If you understand it, the humor needs no explanation. If you don't, it's not worth explaining.

Farther than We've Ever Been

Sam: If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been.

Frodo: Come on, Sam. Remember what Bilbo used to say: "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

It's official: This is now the longest period of time Eric and I have ever been away from the United States. One-twelfth of our time in Kenya has come to a close. It is different, not being here for a short trip. It's starting to feel like home instead of this weird foreign country. Not even thinking about it much, it feels natural to be meeting people, getting used to life at the hospital, investing. We of course mostly miss the easy communication with family and friends. But otherwise, we've compiled a list of things we do and do not miss about the US. Maybe it will be a surprise what we don't miss!

Things we miss:

Family

Knox (both the church and the community)

Being able to go out--to a movie, to dinner, to anywhere

Trader Joe's

Target

Wine

Great L&D nurses at St. Joe's

Ancillary staff

Things getting done at the hospital when you write an order...

Chinese dumplings

Washtenaw Dairy

Our bikes

Fast internet

Surgeries getting started on time

Being able to effectively communicate with at least 90% of our patients

Things we don't miss:

HIPPA

Documentation and dictation

Traffic/commuting to work--only a 5 minute walk

Cold weather

Monthly cell phone bills (pay as you go!)

Owning a home and all the maintenance that comes with it

Doing our own dishes (mostly)

Convincing patients they don't need antibiotics with a viral disease

Owning lots of stuff

Television

Trying to convince a doctor from another specialty to help you take care of your patient (since we all know each other, it's a very friendly process)

Evil Michigan squirrels...the Mara safari park is a nice trade off

Our garden (we have a larger one here!)

Good neighbors (while we had some great ones in Ypsi, the Faders and the Cropseys suffice!)

Knox Kids Update

We are really blessed to have a great "home" church in Ann Arbor, which we've mentioned before (Knox Presbyterian). So many people have supported us--financially, through prayer, or encouragement. Before we left, we had several chances to share with the entire congregation what we're doing, and another fun aspect was getting to share with the kids' Sunday school classes about our work in Kenya. The kids were pretty receptive, and each McCropder family was adopted by several Sunday school classes. We recently received a binder full of pictures and notes from our classes, grades 1 and 2. They asked lots of questions, and I just wanted to share our "newsletter" response with all of you as well. There were pictures as a part of this, but I couldn't get the letter up on our blog in "letter" format, and besides, all the pictures we used have already been posted on our blog.

Dear first and second grade classes at Knox,

Greetings from Kenya! We have been here for two months now and are getting used to living in Africa. It has been very fun so far. Dr. Eric and Dr. Rachel work in the hospital—Dr. Eric takes care of babies, and Dr. Rachel takes care of mommies. Maggie stays home and plays. We live next door to the Fader family and the Cropsey family. There is a nice church that we walk to every Sunday, but we miss going to Knox with all of you!

We had Christmas here at the hospital (Tenwek) and it was fun. There were lots of parties, and singing, and some church services. Maggie's grandma lives in Arizona, but she got to watch Maggie opening up her presents on the computer! We shared a nice meal with the Cropseys and

Faders, as well as some new friends in Kenya.

Here are the answers to some of your questions:

What kind of sports do you play in Kenya?

We have played soccer (but they call it football here), frisbee, and racquetball so far.

Are there forests/mountains/ jungles/trees/oceans/flowers in Kenya?

There are some forests and mountains where we live. The hospital is at 7,000

feet elevation, more than a mile high! There are beautiful flowers, some you'd recognize (roses outside our door) and some exotic ones, too. Kenya is on an ocean, the Indian Ocean. But that's a long ways from our house, so we haven't seen it yet. There are no jungles where we live.

What language do you speak?

We are able to speak mostly English, but are also trying to learn Swahili. Do you remember some Swahili words we taught you last spring? Jambo means “hello”, rafiki means “friend”, and habari is “how are you?”

What kind of animals are in Kenya?

There are lots of cool animals here. On a daily basis, we just see cows and dogs and birds. But there are some special places called game reserves where the animals live, and we just went to visit. We saw giraffes, zebras, lions, wildebeasts, jackals, elephants, rhinos, buffalo, hippos, crocodiles, baboons, and lots of kinds of gazelles. There are also leopards and cheetahs, but we didn't see those.

Are there shepherds in Kenya?

Yes! There is a tribe of people that live near us called the Masai, and they herd sheep,

goats, and cows. Many times they don't have a permanent house, but travel with their animals all over the country.

Are there schools in Kenya?

Yes. Most children go to school, although you have to pay a fee. And they all have to wear the same uniform. Some children even live at the school.

What kinds of food do you eat in Kenya?

We eat mostly all the same food as you do. Some unique foods that we eat here, like the Kenyans, are called ugali and sukumu wiki. Ugali is a corn mush (like cream of wheat, only

thicker and you eat it with your hands) and sukumu wiki is a green vegetable like

spinach.

How do you go to the bathroom/take a shower in Kenya?

We have a regular bathroom and shower in our house with flush toilets and running

water. It's even hot water!

What kind of clothes do they wear in Kenya?

Most people wear the same clothes as we do, except women don't wear pants

here, only skirts and dresses. Some people also have a special brightly colored cloth that they can wear as a skirt or shawl, called a kikoy.

Thanks for all your questions! It's nice to know that you're remembering us and praying

for us. Let us know if you have any more questions.

Love,

Eric, Rachel, and Maggie McLaughlin

Truancy

What? 11 days and no blogging? Are Eric and Rachel becoming "one of those blogs"? You know what I'm talking about. Take heart, and allow me to allay the fears that I'm sure have been plaguing your days and your nights for the last 10 days and 23 hours. We recognize the problem and will be working to fix it. There have been a couple temporary roadblocks, namely Eric out of town for a conference with no internet access, and downage of our home internet as well. Things are slightly improved now.

While out of town, Eric did not lodge at the above hotel. However, there have been requests for pics of our nearby surroundings, and this venue is right outside the hospital. There's actually another titled "Extreme Hotel", and I confirm that it indeed looks much more extreme, but maybe not in an advertising-friendly sort of way.

The Mara

We just spent a 24 hr period in the Masai Mara game park in southern Kenya. Words cannot describe the awesome experience. The pics speak for themselves.

See the baby!

Sunrise

Our swanky "tent" room at the Fairmont Resort

Universal Tendencies

Some things in this world cross all cultural barriers. Today at the hospital:

Eric: Yeah, I tried to talk to that nurse on the phone, but apparently after she hung up, she didn't relay my message because she couldn't understand my accent. I wish she would have told me.

Kenyan colleague: Don't worry. We get used to the American accent after a while.

E: Sure. Same thing with the Kenyan accent.

KC: Kenyans have accents?!

Priceless, especially since Michiganders are among the guiltiest Americans on this front. Points to the American South, who are aware of their accents, and proud of them.

Maggie Turns Nine! (months)

I can't believe that Maggie has been with us only as long as my pregnancy lasted. She's been "out" the same amount of time she was "in"! And even though those last few weeks of pregnancy seemed to take forever, it's nothing compared with the sense that Maggie has been a part of our life for so much longer. Three-fourths of a year, wow! I think this will be the month she starts moving on her own. We'll see...Showing off how cute she is.

Half a zucchini picked from the garden. For some reason, she immediately grabbed it and started gnawing. A new favorite food?

Visiting Chepkurbet Church

Though we've already told a little (or rather giraffe-huge) story about our trip to Nairobi, there was a small excursion the week prior that we wanted to share.

Some new friends of ours here, veteran missionaries Jeff and Christine, invited us to ride with them out to a nearby (but not on the hospital grounds) church for a Sunday morning service. We jumped at the chance, and thus we found ourselves worshiping in an all-Kipsigis language service, and the church of Chepkurbet.

Part of the story of the church is that for years, they have been a very small congregation (probably about 40 people total our morning), and they slowly saved up money to buy a plot of land for their church. They found someone willing to sell them the property meter by meter. So when they had enough for a meter, they would pay the guy, and he would move the boundary fence another meter. When they had a strip about 10 meters wide (and this in the middle of a very rural area), they built the first church, seen on the left above. This became the church as they slowly bought meter after meter, eventually with enough land to build the structure on the right, which you can see by the interior picture below is a much roomier space, with much room to grow (especially with high crowd density that is the norm here).

The inside is dirt floors, with rows of rough-hewn planks, with two backed benches, one of which was immediately offered to us. The service starts at 10ish, and we showed up about 10:15, and people trickled in over the next hour, and then we got started.

What followed was a long series of scripture readings, greetings (we were invited up to say a few words, and our untranslated English was greeted with unanimous smiles, if not comprehension), testimonies, a sermon by one of the village ladies (there is no trained pastor), and a bunch of songs. The music was interesting, but my discussion of it would really be too lengthy. Forgive me.

Maggie was, expectedly, the center of much excitement, especially in this child-dominated congregation. She endured the long service quite well, but started to get whiny towards the end. Rachel thought she would take her outside to feed her, and Maggie's exit was apparently a stimulus for the mass exodus of the children of the church. They followed her immediately, and more children were already outside. Thus, when the service ended 10-15 minutes later, I came out into the sunlight to be greeted by the scene below (though only a fraction of the kids are in the picture). No fear, Maggie never minds being the center of attention. All in all, a lovely excursion into yet another manifestation of the body of Christ.

Twiga Smooch

Twigas!

We do apologize for the lack of consistent blogging lately, but to our credit, we have been doing come cool things! The entire McCropder clan took a trip to Nairobi for 4 days this past weekend, and it was a busy time, which will be well documented on one of the blogs sooner or later. We shopped for, and found, an 11 passenger used van to buy, Eric and I got our work visas (making us "official" legal Kenyan aliens), and we visited about six grocery stores to stock up. At least we spent less than last time (about 25% of what we spent last time, which was a relief!!). Anyway, in the midst of all this we found time to do something touristy, and spent a few hours at the giraffe park in Nairobi. We were especially excited because our brand new Kenyan visas gave us resident prices ($1.25 instead of $10).

The pictures pretty much speak for themselves...There's one more of a giraffe kissing me (eating a food pellet that was placed between my pursed lips) that someone else took, which I'll have to post separately. Mags did ok, but got a little freaked out. When I look at the pics, I can see why. The giraffes' heads are bigger than her entire body!

Cross-blogging

In case you missed it on the other blog:

Obama Gum and

We Meet the Kenyan Police

Frederick Buechner on Prayer

"What about when the boy is not healed? When, listened to or not listened to, the prayer goes unanswered? Who knows? Just keep praying, Jesus says. Remember the sleepy friend, the crooked judge. Even if the boy dies, keep on beating the path to God's door, because the one thing you can be sure of is that down the path you beat with even your most half-cocked and halting prayer the God you call upon will finally come, and even if he does not bring you the answer you want, he will bring you himself. And maybe at the secret heart of all our prayers that is what we are really praying for." (from Wishful Thinking)

Total Eclipse of the . . . Sun

I just wanted to take the chance to share an astrological wonder with all of our North American viewers who didn't get a chance to see this. On Jan 15, there was a solar eclipse visible in Kenya, around 8:00 in the morning. One of the short termers had mentioned this fact to me, but I forgot until that morning, when, although there were no clouds, the light seemed a little funny. The last time I saw a solar eclipse was as a freshman in high school in Fort Wayne, IN--we all went outside during the lunch hour with our index cards w/ holes poked in them so we could look at the eclipse safely. I remember interesting shadows, and admonitions that if we looked directly at the eclipse, we'd most likely go blind.

So again, the first thing I noticed, other than the odd light, were the interesting shadows. This is the front of our house, and the sun shining through a nearby tree. Note the elliptical marks instead of regular shadows.

Our househelper Ruth showed up about this time and said to me, "The sun is bad this morning." There's some truth in that funny statement. The light was dim and it was colder than normal. Throwing caution to the wind (who needs their vision anyhow) I donned some sunglasses and tried to look at the eclipse, but all I saw was sun. Some of the home school kids had better luck though, as you can see below, with special viewing glasses. What a great science day! So, maybe in another 20 years, we'll be on some other continent and get this lucky again.

Family Portrait

We have this weekend off, and we decided to take a mini-adventure to the nearest town for some shopping. Stay tuned for more on that (good times were had), but on the way out, one of the other ladies here offered to take a family picture for us. This is in front of our apartment building, we have the middle unit on the bottom. Note how well Maggie is adapting to African baby transport.