KENYA Post 1

Hujambo!  Hello from Nairobi, Kenya.  I can’t imagine a place more beautiful.  The sky is clear blue, the sun is shining, and the altitude is high enough to give us a constant cool breeze bringing the temperature to an average of high 70s.  Living in the city is not exactly what you imagine when you think of Africa.  People wear suits, have jobs in tall buildings, and own cell phones.  Cars, matatus, and buses flood the streets.  But, tropical plants are everywhere.  Monkeys, large birds, and goats have free reign.  Farmers sell mangos, beets, sugar cane, and green oranges on the side of the road for a dozen or so Kenyan shillings.  Most of the flora I have already seen for years living in Florida.  Another surprise is that not everyone speaks fluent English which is what I assumed.  Rather, everyone speaks fluent Swahili and their tribal languages (Kuluo, Kumassai, etc.), while fluency in English ranges from only “Hey and How are you” to masterfully teaching it at the local university.

Day one, I arrived in Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (named for the first Kenyan president after independence from British colonization in 1963).  There, I met Jamal and Mama Mary – two of my program directors.  My program consists of 13 students and 4 program directors.  We all have been staying in a hostel this entire time, until we are ready enough to move into our designated homestays with Kenyan families in the city.  Until then, adjustment is quite the stretch!  For me, cold showers, different tasting food, an entirely new language, and mosquito nets are not uncomfortable.  I crave those kind of cross-cultural experiences.  Rather, the biggest stretch has been lacking the support system I had in DC and Tampa of fellow believers/Christians to fellowship with and encourage me.  I think when we go to new places by ourselves, we forget that our loved ones and friends aren’t going with us.  And we will be alone temporarily.  But I know that even without a church or an accountability partner or what have you, the Holy Spirit is my biggest teacher and Jesus is my best friend.  Always.  In this time of being stretched, I have seen that more than ever.  I constantly crave quiet time with God.  I’ll take my guitar and go sit under a tree and sing softly to him with a Bible in my lap.  I’ll look out at the stars at night and pray.  I’ll scribble notes on the bus of what I feel the Holy Spirit telling me even in the midst of others around me.  When I finally go to church on Sunday, I will be home.

The other huge adjustment has been not having a cell phone, and not having wireless Internet.  I have to sit in designated computer rooms/spaces just to send an email or check my Facebook, whereas in America I constantly had unlimited access to the internet/communication.  Tomorrow afternoon when I move in with my homestay mom, Mama Rose, I will finally get a cell phone as well as a wifi bar!

But the anticipation I have towards my increased communication is dwarfed in comparison to the excitement I have in simply becoming Mama Rose’s daughter.  When I walk through that door, I become part of her family, a life-giving family that will love me as their own.  According to my homestay directors and my very dear friend Liz who stayed there last semester, Mama Rose is one of the most compassionate of all the homestay parents and she has been praying for me for months knowing that I’d be in her home soon.  She is a very Spirit-filled woman who loves anything and everything Jesus and loves others with a big big heart.  She has two sons.  They are both away from home, one just got married and one is at the University of Nairobi.  But they will be my older brothers nevertheless, something I have been craving for as long as I can remember.  She will cook me traditional food from her tribal ancestry, as well as speak Swahili with me and take me to her church!   But more than anything, she will be my mama.  Tonight is my last night and my excitement has often brought me to tears and light-headedness!

I also have been choosing to devour everything I can experience and learn from in this beautiful nation.  My Swahili lessons are exciting and fun!  We sit in classes of 3-4 with a native speaking teacher.   We walk around the city and talk to natives as part of lessons too!  What I love about classes here has everything to do with the culture.  First, “Africa” time to me is not simply a slow pace of life.  It is a pace of life that recognizes what is truly important by taking time to invest in relationships and what is in front of you rather than meeting a deadline.   During classes, we take a break called “tea time” at 4 which consists of Kenyan brown tea, hot milk-water, sugar in the raw (but really actually raw…because this is a part of the world that grows sugarcane), and “drinking chocolate” if you want.  We sit around until everyone is satisfiably recuperated.  THEN we are ready to digest another mountain of information.  ALL SCHOOLS in America should do this.  I can’t learn when my brain starts shutting off and I’m bored/tired.  Tea time is a freaking MUST and I never realized it until I came to the country. 

 

Day two, I got to feed and pet giraffes at a local conservation center!  So much fun.

 Today, I walked to the local market and had the best fresh squeezed juice blend of my life - fresh avacado, beet root, mango, strawberry, and pineapple.  Then on the way back to the hostel, me and three other friends split a sugarcane in fourths.  It was only 20 shillings.  When we got back I saw MONKEYS in the back yard.  Forreals.  Monkeys.  Just casually eating the garbage.  Walking back to our rooms, one monkey RAN UP to me and just kind of looked at me in a semi-aggressive playful manner.  I WAS FLIPPING OUT.  Started screaming "HELP!  HELP!  I DON'T HAVE MY RABIES SHOT! HELP!"  The domestic servants watching me were laughing so hard they were ROLLING in the grass.  I just start yelling even louder while in a stand still with this monkey.  "I DO NOT HAVE MY RAAAAAABIIIIIEEEEEESSSSSS SHOT PEOPLE!"  As if these Swahili-speakers have any idea what I'm talking about.  They just laugh and laugh and I eventually laugh along with them once the stupid monkey runs away at my perceived aggression. 

The people here are incredible.  From the clerk at the store to the nun at my hostel's convent, from my compassionate and loving program director Odoch to the chef Patrick, from the guy who sold me sugarcane on the side of the road to my Swahili teacher Josephine, from my SIT family of fellow students/adventure-seekers to the other program directors Jamal and Mama Mary, I am seriously blessed.  

This is only adjustment period.  Can't wait for the real stuff to start.  Driving by some ragged-clothed Kenyans sleeping in the gutters feeling just as helpless as them because I'm staring at them unable to help, that's what drives me to keep learning Swahili and learn from the local people who have been working against poverty, injustice, crime, corruption, health epidemics, and ethnic tensions here for decades.  I didn't come to Kenya to fix Kenya.  I came so Kenya could fix me.  Fix my American pride of what I think people need without ever getting my hands and feet dirty and patiently learn about complicated issues, fix my cultural biases, fix my fears of things I am actually stronger than, and fix the apathy I didn't realize was there.  God bless Kenya and all its people. 

Kwaheri!

Katrina Doyle

If Blood Diamond moved you, then do something to stop a far worse conflict today

In 2006, a political war thriller highlighting the conflict in Sierra Leone came out to the big screens.  Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is a gripping tale of injustice, human evil, corporate greed, unlikely heroes, and the power of photojournalism.  Anyone who watched this movie remembers the dramatic scenes of Dijmoun Honsou yelling really loud, his son turned boy soldier, and Leo's character's tragic death (whoops spoiler!).

The critically-acclaimed film, however, shed light on a terrible truth.  That during the Sierra Leone Civil War, kidnapping, rape, slavery, war crimes, and human rights violations were being funded by the extraction of diamonds in the mineral-rich country.  Forced labor was used to bring these diamonds out onto the global market which were then sold by international diamond companies including DeBeers and middlemen in Antwerp.  Rebels used the money to buy weapons and perpetuate their control of entire communities.

What surprises me, though, is how easily we can repeat history.  Because right now, not to detract from the historic devastation in the West African nation, there is far worse conflict going on.  If Sierra Leone was to diamonds, then the Democratic Republic of Congo is to tantalum.

Tantalum (Ta) is this big ol' rock you see above.  It's used in computers, tablets, cellphones, and almost every electronic we use on a regular basis.  In fact, there is tantalum in the MacBook I'm using right now to talk about conflict-causing tantalum as well as the iPad/computer/cellphone you are using to read it.  70% of the world's supply of tantalum is found in East Congo, the sight of the deadliest war since World War II.  While diamonds from Sierra Leone were being sold to just a few international markets during the civil war, the tantalum in the DRC is probably used by a majority of the major corporations and makers of electronics.  Companies that a 5-year-old American kid could recognize (Nintendo, anyone?).  Deadly minerals that have cost at least 5.4 million lives are finding themselves inside our laptops, cell phones, video game consoles, and other electronics with no concern for the manufacturer. 

DRC's "conflict minerals" also include tin, tungsten, and gold.  All the profits go to barbaric militias in Eastern Congo who've been fighting each other for decades.  And they continue to fight over control of these mines and the slaves they inherit.

A particularly gruesome and organized militia is called M23.  They receive additional weapons and funds from the Rwandan government, a recent site of a mass atrocity.  As if government leaders can't learn from history, Rwanda, who experienced a terrifying genocide in the 90s, funds the humanitarian disaster happening next door instead of denouncing it.

At least 5.4 million people have died since the DRC war's beginning in 1998.  Those numbers are from 2007 so it is actually much more now.  In 2010, Nicholas Kristoff made it an estimate of at least 6.9 million.  Recent numbers have shown that an estimated 45,000 people are dying each month in DRC from war-related causes.  Again, this is the deadliest conflict since World War II.

Congo is called the "rape capital of the world".  30% of women in DRC report being raped, as well as 20% of all men.  The UN estimates that 48 women are raped in the Congo every hour.  65% of rape victims are children, 10% under 10.  But rape cases universally are underreported, especially in a sexually conservative culture like DRC where stigma, being blamed for your trauma, and ostracizing victims is common.  So, sadly, we must presume that the numbers are even higher.

Rape used as a war tactic is illegal according to international law (see the Geneva Convention).  It is classified as a war crime and a crime against humanity, as well as one of the indicators of genocide. In addition to these crimes, the militias are responsible for a slew of human rights violations and war crimes including human trafficking, summary executions, forced recruitment, and more.

The atrocities are further complicated by ethnic animosities, lack of central government control, and an ongoing struggle for wealth.

 Amputee and rape victim in Eastern Congo

So.  I love how we in the West can watch a movie (ex: Blood Diamond or Hotel Rwanda) about something that happened in recent history, say "Oh wow.  How horrible!  Poor Africa" and turn a blind eye to the massacre right in front of us.  I'm blaming you, media, since you seem to have a monopoly on information these days.  Beloveds, don't let the Congo turn into another blockbuster multi-million dollar action thriller that makes us think about our terrible state of humanity.  Yes, we are humans.  Humans who have a voice and a choice to put an end to this injustice.  And moreover, we have an all-powerful all-loving good and sovereign God of justice who paid the penalty for our sins and longs to enforce his just, fair, and merciful kingdom on earth.  He desperately wants to use us believers in his work, but those of us with the resources are too busy spending our energy avoiding "getting depressed reading stuff like this".  (ouch)  As God says "My people perish for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6).   People are perishing right now from the international community's lack of knowledge.  The bloody battle for control of Eastern Congo and its mineral-rich mines will continue under the sun unless we do something.  It's time we make a stand.

Make Bosco Famous.  This past year we saw three Americans bring our attention to the indicted war criminal Joseph Kony calling for immediate action.  In 2013, let's make Bosco Ntaganda famous.  He is the leader of the M23 rebel group.  Known as "The Terminator", he is wanted by the International Criminal Court for the war crimes of enlisting and conscripting children under the age of fifteen and using them to participate actively in hostilities.   His group's actions are also responsible for the millions of refugees, deaths, and traumatized victims of the Congo War.  This is his face.

Demand conflict-free electronics.  Movements have started in campuses across America to demand conflict-free electronics in their schools.  Join a Conflict Free Campus Initiative or start one: http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/content/conflict-free-campus-initiative.  You can even demand your city to be conflict free.  Already, my neighbor St. Petersburg signed an agreement in 2011 to have conflict-free electronics in their government buildings.  Visit Enough Project's report on the big consumer electronic companies and how they are responding to the crisis.  Some have taken big steps to ensure conflict-free minerals in their electronics.  Others have not even acknowledged the conflict.  You can see their action out of 100 here: http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/content/conflict-minerals-company-rankings.  This way, you yourself can boycott conflict-mineral electronics (Canon, Nintendo, HTC, Sharp, Nikon). 

Call Obama for Congo!  Tomorrow on January 29 2013, the Conflict-Free Campus Initiative is asking anyone and everyone to call President Obama at 1-888-542-4146, asking him to appoint a Presidential Envoy to ensure that an international peace process is implemented in eastern Congo.  Read more information and join the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/148782468609833/?ref=ts&fref=ts

And to prevent past mistakes or current misgivings, I nor Enough Project nor anyone else (I hope) is demanding the US to send troops and start another war. What I am praying for and hoping for is a peace process that goes through the LEGAL channels of the UN so we don't end up being responsible for war crimes ourselves.  As well as experts on the Congo who have done their night and day research on this to come up with viable, fair solutions.  Congo is complicated.  A narrow-minded view of the situation is dangerous, and ineffective at best.  But we must act fast by contacting our leaders before another slow-moving peace process becomes the blood on our hands.

I hope and pray that you call Obama with me tomorrow. 

Love,

Katrina Doyle
Beloved and Friend of Christ

Endurance brings joy

In life there are going to be times when no one in the world is holding you up except you and God.  In fact, there may be a few too many who can’t understand and will criticize you.  Those are the times when you must fight for love.  You must fight to let go of the poison of unforgiveness and fight to be who you really are in Christ.  Not someone the world wants you to be.  But you.  No matter how much it makes your heart ache.  The more you fight to be you and to love others in their transgressions, the more like Christ you become and the stronger you are.  Endurance brings joy.  So fight the good fight of faith.  Let the tears roll down your pillow and wake up to a brand new day when it’s you and God versus Satan and you are pillaging hell to bring as many with you as you can.

Strengthen my heart

Dealing with difficult people in my life right now.  I don't know if you've ever experienced dealing with difficult Christians, but it can often be 1000 times harder than with non-Christians.  With unbelievers, you naturally have this recognition that they "know not what they do" and you have an easier time giving them grace because they don't know Jesus yet.  With believers, you expect so much more out of them.  And when they continually agree with sin, fear, anger, or the biggest turnoff - PASSIVITY - you start to get annoyed.  But as believers, we are called to have grace and unoffendable hearts, loving people and not caring what they say or do to you because you know your identity in the Father. 

Offended and you won't admit it?  It happens to the best of us. 

 Today God showed me that the first step in moving forward from irritation is recognizing and confessing that this person IS difficult and/or annoying you.  If you aren't honest with yourself, you will condemn yourself everytime you feel the tension of being around them.  You will condemn yourself for feeling annoyed and start falling into performance-based works in order to keep the peace.  After you admit that this person IS frustrating (because they are NOT perfect), you are free to move to the next level... to love them the way they need to be loved.  You will stop getting mad at yourself for getting mad at them and be able to walk in love and forgiveness with such a grace it will take you by surprise.  I did this with someone a couple years ago.  I freed him from my expectations and decided to pray for him instead.  I stopped blaming him for my problems and started really being able to walk in freedom.  Now I only have good thoughts toward this man, even though he has so many problems.  I totally love him with such a foolish love, considering how he has treated me and others.  But I don't keep a record of his wrongs.  Instead, I love.  (1 Corinthians 13:5).  Now, I am SURPRISED by how I act toward him.  It seems supernatural... because it is.  I used to get so angry that someone once referred to me as a cat hissing at a dog when it walked by.  That's what they saw in the spirit, an animal turning to fury by the very presence of this individual.  But now when he walks by I know I have released him from his debts and do nothing but hope for his salvation and restoration. 

Now I am dealing with offense toward someone who I have even BIGGER expectations for.  Everytime I am around her, I get annoyed because of her lack of maturity and angry/defeated mindset.  But instead of condemning myself for my fleshly reaction, I confessed it to the Lord.  I confessed my sin, and now I am free to move forward and love her.  She IS difficult.  I DO have a harder time loving her than others.  But, I want to do it.  And so when I started getting like that cat who hisses at the dog, I texted three of my accountability friends.  One of them said that God's grace is STRENGTHENING my heart.  Strengthening my heart.  I asked the Lord what that looked like and I saw someone's "heart muscles" being worked out.  I looked to the champion, the eternal and unchallenged world record holder for love - Jesus.  He continually prayed and looked to the Father for his identity and love and security.  This intamcy made him have such a strong heart that when he was crucified on the cross he looked to his offenders and said "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."  This he said not only about the unbelievers, but the BELIEVERS too.  Believers had betrayed him - Peter, Judas, the disciples.  But instead of anger, he had love. 

So as I prayed for a tender heart and thick skin - a heart that loves, but also is impenitrable to offense - I heard God say INTIMACY STRENGTHENS THE HEART.  That as I come to the throne of grace, I will have more grace for others.  That as I look to the literal personification and source of LOVE, I will be able to love better.  "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:3)  Jesus laid his life down, sacrificially.  And I will be able to have this great sacrificial love toward everyone when I come from a place of intimacy, because I will have so much more to give.  I won't have to depend on self-protection anymore.  But I can be free to love radically without limited resources.  Intimacy strengthens the heart. 

We know taking offense is wrong.  Proverbs 10:12 says "Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses."  Proverbs 19:11 = "Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense."  But do we ever realize that it is not difficult people that cause the offense, but a lack of maturity and and a deficiency of the knowledge of God's love for you when you take offense from what others say or do?  Do we realize that knowledge of God's love for us and our offendable hearts are negatively correlated?  In other words, the more you know God's love for you, the less offendable you are.  The less you know about God's love for you, the more offendable you are.   This doesn't mean an offendable person knows absolutely nothing about God's love (though they could use some more revelation!), nor does it mean that a perfectly nice person knows Jesus.  But scripture shows us that if you want to escape sensitivity to other people's hurtful words and offenses, go to Jesus. 

 If you want to hold on to your anger, you will watch yourself getting cold and hard towards others and eventually toward God. We need the knowledge and revelation of God in order to grow in maturity and love (Ephesians 1:17).   We MUST grow in knowledge of this love.  It isn't something you ever graduate from, like Kindergarden.  It just keeps growing.


Nic Billman (Shores of Grace Ministries) says, "I fix my eyes on Jesus, and regardless of other people's behavior, I continue to show them how much he loves me."  Don't let other people's attitudes toward you change who you are.  You are beloved by the Bridegroom.

Finally, as intimacy strengthens our hearts we come to realize how much we tried to depend on ourselves to have peace in a relationship.  We thought it was on US.  That if we were just a little bit nicer, they would stop being mean.  That if we bring up Jesus in a conversation, they would be convicted of their wrongdoing and repent. That if we submit ourselves to the offender in humility and love, that they'd suddenly have a change of heart.  HA!  I thought this.  You thought this.  The answer is NO.  You will crash and fail trying to change hearts on your own.  Only God can change hearts.  We must stop trying to play the Holy Spirit.  Instead, we must pray pray pray and love them like CRAZY. Prayer and obedience.  Pray without ceasing and rest in God's perfect will, then follow him into the right moves to bring peace and reconciliation. 

His grace will strengthen your heart and sustain you to go into the valley of the shadow of death.  But we must lean on God.  We must be dependent on him to change hearts.  We must forgive our offenders of their wrongdoing.  We must have grace.  We must let go of our expectations of perfection from an individual.  And see that we are all sinners saved by grace. 

God blesses me!

God blesses me in the little things.  In the small details and inside jokes no one else will get.  He blesses me in the flower I see that no human eye will ever notice.  He blesses me immensely in the big things too.  He blesses me by giving me the desires of my heart, stewarding my calling and passions and visions.  He blesses me by giving me a companion, a partner to shake this world for his kingdom with me.  He blesses me by giving me the opportunity of a lifetime, to go to Kenya and see a part of the world I have never seen before - but he has seen it.  He blesses me by giving me community right when I needed it most.  He blesses me by giving me an incredible schedule.  He blesses me by giving me the freedom to worship HIM, the freedom to dance!

Thoughts for the week

Reading about International Economics.  Learning tons: "A huge misconception about international trade is that countries trade, when, in reality, it is people that trade." - Paul Krugman

Learning to put God first, and not the opinions of man.  Jesus burn off all my desire to have approval from man.  Purify me.  Let it be that I only want you and you alone.  But let me also love others with forgiveness and mercy and kindness.

Learning the difference between complaining/gossiping/slandering/and telling the truth. 
 Warning against elitism: It is not enough just to proclaim the truth, even the greatest and highest truths. We must also proclaim the truth with the right motives! - Marshall Entrekin

Sick of being called "charismatic" by others when all I want is to make Jesus famous, not some ideology.  I could care less about charismatic.  I just want Jesus.  Choosing to forgive others who keep ostracizing me from their circles and telling me I have nothing to give them and that I'm being too "charismatic".  It's not about me.  It's about him.  I want HIS kingdom to advance on earth.  Not mine.  Not my church background.  But Jesus.  I can't make that clear enough.

"Revival or bust." - Andy Byrd

I just want Him!

I am so totally in God's favor.  I never have to question it.  And I'm also walking in step with Him.  I know it with confidence.  And in the midst of my outward and inward holiness which I take zero zero credit for (in fact I take credit for trying to resist His discipline, so maybe -500 credit), all I want is Him.  All I want is Him.  I can share the gospel to tons of people, lead annointed worship sets, memorize the Bible, spend all my freetime advancing the Kingdom on Earth, but without my relationship with Christ, without LOVE I am nothing.  I just want Him.