Our last day in Nairobi - this year, anyway

This post is from Moriah (written on Thursday afternoon, posted Friday from Chicago O'Hare).

Today we went to Simon's house and church. The church was just a small room. After, when we were in the car, one of the men asked me if I liked it. I said, "yes." He asked me if it was like my church and I said ,"no." But now that I think about it, I would say yes. The building was not like ours, but he asked if it was like our church, not if the building was like our church. So yes, we both worship the same God, and sing to Him and thank Him. I need to stop thinking of our building, but of our people.

The last testimony

We finished videotaping all 19 translators' testimonies this afternoon!



Remember, you can click on any image to go to its Flickr page and download a larger version, or see all the blog pictures and more on the Kenya 2007 photoset.

More celebration!

I already talked a bit about the celebration. It included worship and a Bible lesson, as well as the handing out of certificates.







After the formal ceremony, we had lunch and took some pictures of some of the kids.



After dinner we had a more informal time of gifts for the translators and story telling.

Moriah handed out some busy bags to staff kids.



Tesfaye tells about his first plane ride (to come to DOOR this year). He had us all laughing at his descriptions. Pray for him as he is a new Christian, but very much on fire and excited about taking the Bible to the deaf in Ethiopia.



The highlight was when the DVDs were presented to each team. These DVDs are the first Bibles that the Deaf have in their heart language. They are just a part of the Bible, but an important start. The gifts of personal DVD players for each translator will enable them to share the Word of God with deaf in villages throughout four countries in Africa - Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia and Burundi.



This was like seeing the Gospel of John given to a tribe in South America, only there were four countries, each with their own sign language. What an awesome privilege to witness this and to have been a part of this in a small way!

Praise God for His faithfulness and the faithfulness of His people!

Celebration day!

Today was a full day. We started with the celebration/graduation and ended with presentations of gifts and the Bible in sign language on DVDs that the student/translators put together over the past 11 months.

It was an awesome privilege to be a part of the process. They even asked me to bring a greeting from Christ Community Church in Tucson. I kept it short - short enough to include the text of what I said here:

Praise the Lord!

My name is Mark Newhouse.

I bring greetings from Christ Community Church in Tucson Arizona, in the United States. This church loves you and is praying for you. And there are people all over the world praying for you.

We are excited because we know that God loves you.

We are excited because we know that God sees you.

We are excited because we know that God hears you.

We are excited because now God speaks to you in your own language.

And we are excited to hear how God will use the Bibles on DVD as you take them with you to share with the Deaf in Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Burundi.

Thank you and God bless you.

I hope to write a longer post about today and add some pictures, but now it's time to go to bed.

Tourist Time

Yesterday we did the tourist thing. Since we had a (relatively) short time here, we decided to forego a full blown safari. But we did go see some animals. Rather than describe everything, we'll let some of the hundreds of pictures that we took tell most of the story. Click on the picture to get to some larger ones and see more on this flickr set.

We started at the Giraffe Centre:




Up close and personal:




For $600 (US) a night you can stay at the manor and feed the giraffe from your window:




Then it was off the the baby elephant orphanage:




Cute, isn't she?




Many of these elephants were orphaned due to ivory poaching. It's too bad they didn't have access to this shovel in the wild to beat up on the poachers:




Then it was off to the Nairobi Safari Walk (after lunch and some shopping):



Some lion pictures:






The sign says "SPEED LIMIT 20 KPH, WARTHOGS and CHILDREN HAVE RIGHT OF WAY"




The end:

A Revisited Passion

God is so good! With too many "coincidences" to mention, He has orchestrated lining up a layover in London with a layover of another short term missionary who is a niece of a friend of ours. She left for South Africa in May and is coming back to the states at the same time Moriah and I are returning from Kenya.

We'll meet for the first time in person in London. But, as you can see from reading her blog, A Revisited Passion, we have already met in spirit.

God bless you, Jenna.

Psalm 34:18

After writing the previous post, I felt led to read Psalm 34. The Psalm begins with praise to God:

"I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the LORD; the humble shall hear of it and be glad. Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt His name together."

This is exactly what Fenelon was talking about - loving His glory more than my life. And then verse 18:

"The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart and saves such as have a contrite spirit."

Thank you God, for being near to me. Keep my heart broken so that You will always be near.