Sweet Greetings from Kenya

Happy Mail Call Monday!!!

This week I was so happy to get TWO letters. Since I have 10 kids, sometimes I get lots of letters, but sometimes things are kind of slow. We are in a slow period right now, so I am extra joyous whenever I find letters in my mailbox.

On Saturday I got a letter from Victor in Kenya. He is just the sweetest thing. My Kenya kids write their letters in English, which means they have more room to write!

27 July 2013

Dear Jessi, 

How are you? I hope you're doing well with your family. On my side I am doing well and God has protected me with our family. I receive the letter you send to me, and I was glad for it. Imagine it made me to learn a lot about your country and your family as well. I want to tell you that in my schooling I am doing as I can and hoping that at the end I will achieve something good. 

Beside that I want you to know that the subject I like the most and that is mathematics. In every exams I do I must make sure that I get above 65% and it make me know the career I would be in the future that is engineering. Imagine in the course of next week we will start our term exams and I know I will come out with good marks. 

I also want to tell you that last three months we elected our 4th president and he is trying his best to make our country one of the best country in the world. Here in our country, in this month where I live is hot while other parts is cold. I would also like to know about your country and soon I hope I will receive a letter from you. May God be with you. Goodbye!

Your beloved child, 

Victor Otieno

I just love Victor's letters! He is a hard worker, very ambitious and sweet. 

Then this morning I got a nice long letter from Mary, who also lives in Kenya. Mary has very neat, tiny handwriting, so her letters are usually pretty long- and I love that! 

15 August 2013

Dear Jessi

I greet you in the name of our Provider. I hope you are fine. I am great and fine. My family is also doing good. We honour fathers on 11th June and also not forgetting the mothers on 9th June. It is fun honouring them because they are special gifts from God. At school I am doing well. I am now in form 3 (grade 11) hoping that next year I will be in form 4 (grade 12.) In the music festivals we went to provincials and we became number 2 then we proceeded to nationals. 

At church we are all great. We praise the living God so that he cannot be angry and let the stones to praise Him. When I am in need I usually read this verse- Psalms 121: 1-2. It says I lift my eyes to the hills, where will my help come from? My help will come from the Lord who made heaven and earth. I am spending my August holiday at home. I want to be obedient to my parents because obedience is better than sacrifice. 

The country is fine and cool. Peace is around each and every person. The weather is cool and only a little rain is falling and also the land is green. My mother's name is Rahab Njari and she is loving. We do not grow crops but we go to up-country to help my grandparents. My parents are doing well. 

On November 25th, I will be 18 years old and have an identity card. I have lots of cousins and we like joking when we are together. The babies are blessings. We buy gifts for them and they are taken to the church to be dedicated. I enjoy being in school because it is a privilege. I learn English, Kiswahili, Biology, History, Agriculture, Maths, and CRE (Christian Religious Education.) Thank you for the book, photos, and stickers. I appreciate them. 

I pray for you and I am great having you as my friend. 

Yours faithful, 

Mary Mbari

Wow! Mary packed a lot of info in her letter! I was very happy to read that her singing competition went so well- Mary loves to sing and has told me so in just about every letter she's sent! I was glad to read about mother's day and father's day in Kenya. 

Victor's letter arrived on Saturday, which is when an upscale mall in Nairobi was seized by terrorists. The hostage situation and shootings continued through the weekend. It's kind of complicated, but here's a basic explanation: a little while back, the African Union sent troops into Somalia to deal with some extremist rebels there (Somalia has problems like that kind of often, it seems.) Kenya played a part in that. So this group in Somalia got mad about the other countries interfering in their business, and decided to strike back. This whole thing was very strategic- they went in to a mall in Nairobi, where diplomats, tourists, and Kenya's wealthy and important people hang out. Allegedly, they announced that Muslims should leave the mall, as this particular group is fanatically based. Then they started shooting. The last I heard, 30 hostages were still being held, and the death toll was creeping up toward 60. The president lost family in the attack- his nephew and the nephew's fiancee were killed. Military personnel and police have been working very hard over the weekend to get the situation under control and end the violence. It's all very heartbreaking. Please keep Kenya in your prayers as they strive to end this horrible situation. 

Outgoing Mail

Yesterday my mom, my mother in law, and I were having a conversation, and the topic of praying for our leaders came up. Whether or not you agree with a politician, you should always pray for them and for their decisions. And as a Christian, you can't ever really say that the wrong person won an election, because if you believe that, then you don't believe God's will is sovereign. Which is hard to deal with sometimes.

Anyway, between that conversation and the fact that Victor's most recent letter said he wanted to know more about my country, I thought I would make a list of different stuff about America that I could turn into letters. I wrote up the first letter this morning. It was about our president.

I opened the letters to all 10 kids by offering the usual greetings. In the second paragraph, I told them that I really like learning about their country. I told them that when I began sponsoring them, or writing letters to them, I read books about their countries from the library (that's one of my favorite parts about getting a new sponsor child- researching their country!) I told them that I also liked keeping up with news stories about their countries, so I can better know what is going on over there. This gave me the opportunity to tell Victor and Mary, who are in Kenya, that I am very sad about the recent terrorist attack there, and that I am praying for them. I told them that similar things have happened in America, and it is very sad, but Americans and Kenyans are strong people and they will work hard to rebuild and prevent something like this from happening again.

Next I told them a little bit about our president. I kept it pretty simple. I basically said the following:
"Our president's name is Barack Obama. He is 52 years old. He has a wife named Michelle and two daughters named Sasha and Malia. Mrs. Obama's mother also lives with them. They have two dogs named Bo and Sunny. Before he became president, Mr. Obama told his daughters that if he won the election, he would get them a dog! That is when they got Bo. He is black and white." I explained to the older kids that in America, presidents are only allowed to serve up to two terms in office, and each term is 4 years long. I said that our president will be president until the end of 2016, when we will choose a new president. I also told them a little bit about Mrs. Obama. I told them that she cares a lot about the children of our country, and encourages them to exercise and play. I said that she also has a project to provide healthy meals in our schools, and that she planted a garden. Then I told all the kids that it's important to pray for the people who work in our governments and take care of our countries.

At the end, I said "I hope you will pray for my president as I pray for yours." I even looked up the names of the presidents in all my kids' countries (Indonesia, India, Peru, Haiti, Tanzania, Kenya, and Mexico.) Then at the bottom I uploaded a picture of the president with his family. I put all of these letters on the world map stationery provided by Compassion with the online letter writing tool.

I'm looking forward to finding out what our kids have to say about this little US Government lesson.  : )

Photo Flashback

I was thinking about my Compassion kids earlier this week, how we should be getting photo updates for some of our kids. We haven't had a new picture of Said in probably a year and a half, so we should be getting a new one of him soon (we also usually get a special picture of him with his birthday gifts when we send a birthday present- his birthday is in November!) I realized that there were a few kids on our account that we've only ever seen one picture of, so I should go ahead and ask Compassion for their previous pictures while I still could! So I emailed yesterday and asked for Carlos, Mishel, and Victor's previous pictures. I wish I had known about this awesome little bonus for my first several sponsor kids. I would have loved to have seen their old pictures! Anyway, these pics I got in my email are super cute, so I wanted to share them with you.

Here is the picture of Mishel we received when we began writing to her earlier this year, back in the spring:

And here is her previous picture, from before we knew her: 

I like that she's smiling a little bit in the picture! She looks pretty much the same. I wonder if that means her project updates pictures on a fairly regular basis? 

Here's the picture of Carlos we received when we started writing to him a few months ago: 

And here is Carlos' previous picture: 

Wow! He's grown up quite a bit! He looks like he was playing pretty hard before this picture was taken. : )

And this one is probably my favorite, because we've been writing to Victor since the beginning of this year, and I have only ever seen this stern picture of my tall lanky boy:

And here is Victor's previous picture: 

I just love this so much! I hope Victor is smiling in the next picture we receive of him. He is actually a very happy, loving kid! He sure did shoot up like a weed in the time between these pictures, though! 

Outgoing Mail

I spent some time this morning writing letters to my kids. It's been a little over a week since I mailed a packet of letters, along with birthday cards and gifts for Prayer and Brenda. This week, I had some fun things to share with them.

Each of our ten kids pretty much got the same letter this week. I started off by asking them how they are doing. I also told them a little bit about our weekend. I told them that the weather is really nice right now, and the weekend was fun. We went to a party for Brandon's uncle. His uncle Charlie recently retired, but that would have been kind of hard to explain. So I just said that there was a party for his uncle and lots of family members were there. And on Sunday we went to church and it was good. I asked the kids what they do on the weekends. I know some of them attend Compassion's program on Saturdays, and others attend during the week.

Next I shared the fun stuff! Recently I got to go to my friend Ashley's house to see her and have a playdate with my buddy Anell! We took them dinner on behalf of our Bible study group, and Anell and I read books and played. I told our kids a little bit about Anell and how he's doing. I have been telling them about him for months, asking them to pray for him before he came home, and then I told them about the airport party. I told our kids that he is speaking a few English words, like "mama" and "daddy" and "thank you." I told them that he has grown a little bit but he is still small for his age. I also told the kids that even though I'm an adult, I still feel like a kid sometimes! I like to play with toys and read kids' books. I asked them what they like to do with their friends. And I sent two pictures of Anell and I reading books together.

Lastly, I shared a prayer request and our plans for this weekend. My mother in law is traveling to India soon. My mom and I are picking up carry-out from a local Indian restaurant and having her over for dinner, as she's never had Indian food before (Brandon will be there, too, watching football!) So I told the kids that we will be having an Indian dinner this weekend, and that it's fun to try foods from other countries. I asked them if they would please pray for Denise, that she would be safe during her travels. In Jayid's letter, I told him that she will be in a different part of India from where he lives, but that I was really looking forward to seeing the pictures she takes while she's there. Jayid still doesn't know that Denise is taking a bag of presents for him!! That will be an awesome surprise.

Speaking of Jayid, I got his bag all packed. I had hoped to find a mini-backpack to send the gifts in, but I was having trouble finding one. Then this past week I found a mini backpack with the University of Kentucky logo on it! It is little and cute and blue and white. Everything fit in there perfectly. It's just about the same size as a gallon ziploc bag. The only real difference is that I can fit a little bit more at the top since there is a real zipper on the backpack, which will hold everything in. That meant I could fit a taller coloring book in there (it's just a regular-sized coloring book, but the ziploc bag wouldn't quite close with it in there.) I am including a letter for Jayid that says "SURPRISE!" at the top, and in the letter I explain that the bag has the logo and the colors of our favorite sports team, and that we are proud to share a part of our state with him. I am really hoping that they will be able to send a picture of Jayid with his gifts! : )

What have you written about to your kids lately? Have you found any cool extras to send along with your letters?

They are all our daughters.

I don't know this young woman, but I can tell  you about her. 

She lives in India. She's female. That means a lot of things. 

She's a survivor, for one. Gendercide of the unborn is a huge problem in India. Parents who learn they are expecting baby girls are aborting them at an alarming rate. The reason? They're daughters, not sons. This has become such a problem that there are now laws in India against parents utilizing ultrasound technology to learn the sex of their unborn children. This is an important part of the journey for expectant parents in the US- couples even have parties for their friends and family where they reveal the gender of their baby in clever ways, like cutting into a cake to reveal a pink or blue confection inside. Despite the laws that are in place to protect baby girls from sex-selective abortion, these laws are often not upheld, and on average, one unborn baby girl is aborted in India every minute. 

Not only has she survived the womb- she survived babyhood as well. The mortality rate for girls aged 1-5 is 75% higher than little boys. This cannot be a coincidence. 

This young woman has faced risk all her life. Because of the gap between the number of men and women in India (a result of the sex-specific abortions and infanticides), instances of violence against women in India have multiplied rapidly in recent years. It seems we can't go a few weeks without reading a news story about India- gang rapes, kidnappings, child marriage....this is what happens in a society where girls are devalued. Girls and young women are sold into sex slavery. They are kidnapped and forced to marry men who don't have wives because there are no women in their villages. 

And just because she has made it this far doesn't mean she's not still at risk. Dowries are illegal in India, but they are still expected in many areas. This means daughters are expensive to their families. And if the dowry is considered insufficient by the groom's family, the bride may be abused or killed. After the wedding, if she fails to produce a son, she may be abused or killed. 

Girls in India face an extreme and horrifying prejudice. Society tells them that they are worthless because of their gender, that they lack basic human rights like protection from sexual violence and abuse. But you can help change that. You can let a girl in India know that she has value and worth, that she is loved. You can help her reach her full potential by helping her receive an education, healthcare, and protection. You can change her world. Please consider sponsoring a girl in India today. 

Jhansi is 5 years old. Her birthday is November 11. 

Sayamma is 9 years old. Her birthday is March 14. 

Aaishwarya is 9 years old. Her birthday is June 1. She has been waiting 411 days for a sponsor.

Pratiksha is 9 years old. Her birthday is December 20. 

Manju is 15 years old. Her birthday is September 27. 

Sweet Greetings

Hooray for Mail Call Monday!

We're over halfway through the month and this is the first opportunity I've had to write a mail post in September! I was so thankful to receive a letter from Said on Saturday. And let me tell you, it was an important one. Even though I just sent a packet of letters last Wednesday, I had to sit down and write him back right away.

Let me preface the letter by sharing something with you: I have been confused lately. I am so excited about my trip to Tanzania. Ecstatic. If I'm feeling sad or sick or anything negative, I just think about my trip or look up pictures of past sponsor trips to Tanzania, and I feel better. But I have been confused about why I'm not going to Indonesia, because I was so certain that that's where God wanted me to go for my first trip. When I found out that the east Indonesia trip wasn't happening, my friend Blaire told me that all this just meant that one of my other kids needed to see me more. And that made sense- Tasya lives with two loving parents, has close family bonds and her family seems really stable. Her dad is a pastor and her mom is a teacher sometimes. She is just really grounded. Said, on the other hand, struggles in school, doesn't know who or where his dad is, and has to travel twice a year to do hard work in the fields, helping his grandmother plant and harvests her crops. The letter I got from Said this weekend is just a giant flag that says "yes, Blaire was right." March can't get here fast enough.

Dear Jessi, 

Praise the Lord Jesus indeed. I thank you for the letter you sent me. I have liked them. They are so nice. I and my family are fine and they all greet you indeed. We wish to see you face to face so we wish you to come visit us one day to Tanzania. I like school and I enjoy it so much. I thank God he has helped me to pass to advance to form one. In June I was 25th person among 165 students. I was so sad but I work hard so that in December I will score good number. I really like soccer. What do you like? In my family we are me, my younger sister called Imshi, another sister is called Huba and she died on 10 July 2012. I am so sad about it. So now we remain two. I and my younger sibling. I love you so much. May you have a good party. I wish  you the best and I love you all with your family. I hope you are all fine. I pray for you every day. 

May God be with you

Said

Wow. Let's talk about the sad stuff first. I had no idea about Said's sister passing away. He didn't talk about his siblings very often- I learned their names in the first letter I ever received from him. I know both sisters are younger than he is. And that's about it. Really, the most I've ever heard about them is "I and my sisters are doing well", basically. I wrote to all my kids earlier in the summer asking about their siblings, because I wanted to know more about their families. And this is what I found out. I opened this letter when I was on the phone with my mom, and scanned it briefly. I had to interrupt her to tell her: "um, I got a letter from Said. His sister died." I cried several times this weekend just thinking about it. My heart is broken for Said and his family. "So now we remain two" is possibly one of the saddest sentences I have ever read. I have added a prayer request to my list for my Tanzania trip: I would really like to meet Said's mom and sister. We are spending several days in a region closer to his home. It would be amazing if it worked out that one of the homes we visit is his. But even if we can't do that, I am going to bring special gifts for his family as well as him. I'm putting my mom in charge of packing a bag (maybe a pink mini-backpack!) for Imshi, and I had already planned on making a small bag for Said's mom (or Mama Said, as she would be called in her country.) 

But the happy stuff really needs to be recognized, too! I am so proud of Said for the progress he has made in school. When we first started writing to him, his performance in school was below average. He is listed as "average" now, but I got a progress report from his school last year, and his grades were pretty low by American standards. I always make it a special point to encourage Said in his schoolwork, and I am proud of the work he does. I know that under-equipped schools and crowded classrooms make learning difficult for these kids! But to hear that he is ranked 25 in his class- WOW! I am SO proud of him! I am a little sad that he felt that wasn't good enough, but I admire his tenacity and determination. When I wrote a response letter on Saturday, I made sure to tell him many times how proud I am of him. And the fact that I have been bragging on him to my friends and family. : ) Said also drew a picture on the letter, of the Lamb of God carrying a flag with a cross on it. It was a really good picture, but it's a little faint and hard to see on the scanner! 

I am so thankful that I received this letter from my boy this weekend!

Fear not.

You could pick a handful of random posts from my blog and at least two or three of them would contain a mention of my anxiety. It's just a part of my life. It's there every day, and it sometimes affects decisions I make and how I live. So it's going to get talked about occasionally.

Lately, I have been having more issues than usual with my anxiety. I know where this is coming from. I have had an increase in stress in my life, but most of it is spiritual warfare. Sometimes you can't talk about this topic without sounding weird, but if spiritual warfare wasn't a real thing, then the Bible wouldn't tell us to always put on the full armor of God. You don't need a full suit of armor unless you're going to be attacked from time to time, you know? Anyway. I started having more issues when I found out that the trip to east Indonesia wouldn't be happening, and I decided that a change in location wasn't going to keep me from going on a trip. Since that day, I haven't slept through the night. Every night, one of two things happens: either I have night terrors and wake up four or five times (night terrors are just super intense, specific nightmares that keep you scared after you wake up), or I wake up once or twice, either in the middle of a panic attack, or feeling sick, which leads to a panic attack. I've gotten to the point where I just go ahead and expect to wake up, and I keep my "supplies" near my bed, ready if they're needed (more on that later.) One night I woke up from a nightmare and felt as if someone had just audibly said "you can't go" directly into my ear. I know that the things I'm dealing with right now are designed to scare me into not going on my trip, not doing what God wants me to do. And I'm not going to let that happen. But so far, my determination has not stopped these things from happening at night. Hopefully they'll stop soon.

In the meantime, I'm trying some new ways to deal with my anxiety in addition to my tried and true methods. I want to share them with you, because I've found them to be very helpful, and we all have times when we're scared or depressed and need a little help.

The new thing I'm doing has to do with my prayer life. My mom suggested that I pray for the kids in Tanzania when I wake up in the middle of the night, or when I'm having trouble falling asleep. I started making prayer cards- index cards containing information on the different child development centers in Tanzania. I'm looking them up on Compassion's website (gathering info from the pages of waiting kids), and I also posted a forum topic on OurCompassion asking sponsors to tell me stuff about the CDCs their kids in Tanzania go to. The cards with the most information kind of go like this: I put the number of the center in the top left corner of the card, and put the name of the center beside that. The next line tells where the center is. Then I start listing additional information, if I have it, such as the pastor's name, how many kids attend the center, and what special concerns they have (one sponsor told me that there is a very bad water shortage in the area where her child attends Compassion's program.) On the back, I'm listing names of the kids at those projects, along with their sponsors. For example, on the back of the card for 313, it says "Hannah- Magreth, 16 year old girl." And if another sponsor told me they had a kid at that center, that's where I'd list them. It will be really interesting to take these cards with me to Tanzania and see if I can match some names with faces, and let these kids know that I have been praying for them for months- and I don't even know them. : )

As I said earlier, I also have several tried-and-true methods for dealing with anxiety. I have mentioned some of them on here before, but they bear repeating.

The first and most important weapon in combating fear and anxiety is the Word of God. I hate memorizing things (at least, intentionally memorizing them.) I'm kind of terrible at it. But a few years back I filled a little spiral-bound notebook with special Bible verses (most of them from the Psalms), and I carry it with me everywhere. I mean that. It's always in my purse or my pocket. When things are bad, I can take out my little notebook and read the verses. Sometimes this means just reading them silently. Sometimes it means dwelling on a verse while I try to say it out loud (panic attacks are rough- sometimes it's hard to concentrate or you feel like you're going to throw up.) If I'm lucky, I only have to go through a few verses before I'm feeling better. If things are really bad, I make it all the way to the end of the book and have to start over.

The second thing is prayer. Enlist the help of prayer warriors. If you're really scared, sometimes you just can't do it on your own. It makes me feel better to know people are praying for me. If there's a random post from me on facebook in the middle of the night, you can almost bet that I'm up dealing with anxiety and am so desperate for prayers that I will  just throw out a request to the internet in general. I can also text my mom (if things are really bad, I might call her, apologize for being a pest, and beg her to pray for me on the phone), and several friends from Bible study. I can tell my mom to let our friends know that I need prayer, and though I usually don't hear back from them unless I speak to them directly, I know they are praying for me. Saying prayers out loud helps, too. It makes you feel braver and it helps you focus.

The third thing is music. People often tell me to play music out loud when I'm up in the middle of the night dealing with anxiety, but that's not really an option because my husband has to work early every morning and I don't want to bother him with the noise. I'm already being noisy wandering around the house trying to find a Sprite, my saltines, hard candy, moving to the living room where I can sit and read my verses by booklight, etc. My mom gave me her iPod shuffle when she got a new iPod (and then I got her iPod when she got an iPhone, lucky me) and I have loaded it up with two things: relaxing and/or empowering praise music, and some random secular songs that help me chill out (mostly Simon and Garfunkel, oddly enough.) Some of my favorites are as follows:

• "Revelation Song" by Kari Jobe
• "My Redeemer Lives" by Nicole C. Mullen
• "Your Great Name" by Natalie Grant
• "I Lift My Hands" by Chris Tomlin
• "Stronger" by Mandisa
• "Deliver Me" and "How He Loves" by David Crowder Band

I hope to someday get back to the point where I don't need to take medication to control my anxiety- I went a few years in high school and college without taking anything for it. Then I had to get "as needed" meds, and then right after I got married, I had to add full-time antidepressants to the mix. Maybe someday soon I'll be able to drop those again and just have my pills for when things get really bad. But in the meantime, all of these things help me out a lot when it comes to anxiety, whether it's a full-on panic attack or just a general feeling of uneasiness and fear. 

And if you think about it, I would appreciate your prayers as well. I am dealing with a lot of exhaustion as a result of not sleeping well at night. I am going to talk to my doctor about taking something to help me sleep for a few months before the trip, in the hopes that it will help keep me from waking up quite so much. Unfortunately I can't get in to see him for a consultation for another two months. Your prayers- especially at night, around midnight to 4 am eastern time- would be greatly appreciated. I'm thankful for all the help I can get. : )