The Joys of Homeschooling

Seth has not started school officially yet.  He will start Kindergarten this fall with the Abeka curriculum.  But I wanted to go ahead and get both of us into the routine of school this year, and whatever he learned would be a bonus for both of us.

And I have found that I love homeschooling my son!  Much to my delighted surprise, he is already reading at three years of age!  What a sense of accomplishment as a teacher when your student starts reading words! A couple of months ago, I looked through some Pre-K books that I had brought over with me trying to gauge in my mind how much Seth might be ready for.  I have one for beginning math concepts, but he is already doing some of that in one of the other books we are going through.  So I decided to wait until that book moves on to something else.  Then I’ll continue math with this second book.  But I began wondering if I should start teaching him to read.  I had tried that a little bit in America on deputation, and found that his attention span was not yet ready for it.  But I have a book called Hooked on Phonics that starts out with the sounds of the letters (which he already knows very well) and small words like mat, bat, pat, cat, etc.  Something told me that he might just be ready to begin reading now.  So I started incorporated a page of phonics into our schoolwork everyday.  He was very excited about the “bright yellow book”, and I made sure to stop everyday before he got tired of it. Now he is reading simple words, and putting simple sentences together.  It is very exciting for both him and I.  Wow!  I love being a teacher!  It is the most wonderful feeling to teach something and see him get it!  Accomplishment! 

Also, I have discovered that Seth has a creative streak in him . . . 

which I know does not come from me!  I don't think I have a single creative bone in my body.  Instead, I have to borrow creative ideas from everyone else.  But he loves to make things, and he is constantly working with something in his hands.   

The other day, I was so surprised.  He came running in the house to show me his "pen" that he had made.  It was a stick with a piece of scrap plastic that he had found in the yard and shoved on the end of the stick. 

Then he had all kinds of fun outside acting like he was writing with it on a flat stone that was his "desk".  Three of those flat stones were piled up to make his "chair".

So I've felt the need to let him explore his interest and talent.  I ran across a couple of craft sites that have been wonderful.  Now I have all kinds of ideas!  On one of the sites, all of the crafts are made with toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls!  I have plenty of those--who doesn't?  I found great ideas for on TPcraft and No Time For Flash Cards.  We have been having lots of fun doing a craft together as part of our "school" everyday.  He is entertained for long periods of time as long as his hands are busy making something.  

One day this past week, we made a big, long chain.  I can remember making these with my sister when we were growing up.

 

Another day, we made a pretty picture with construction paper and stencils.  He made this picture for his daddy because his daddy was sick this past week.

And I made a batch of play dough.  Seth loves play dough!  The stuff I brought from America had become nasty.  He'd mixed all the colors together, so it was this ugly green-brown color.  It made me not even want to touch it!  Plus, it was getting a stickier than normal feeling, and when I had to clean up after he was done . . . Uh no thank you!  I finally decided we could use a new batch!  So I found a recipe for play dough on Amy's blog,  Daily Pleasures, and tried it.  It turned out great--very smooth, soft, and elastic.  I think it is even better than the store-bought stuff!

So, I must say that we are having fun, and I am constantly learning when it comes to being a teacher.  I love it!

Here is the play dough recipe that I used. I found it on Amy's blog--Daily Pleasures.

Play Dough
1 cup flour
1 warm water
2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon oil
1/4 cup salt
food coloring (I used about 25 drops)

Instructions:  
Mix all ingredients, adding food coloring last.  Stir over medium heat until it forms into a ball.  Remove from the pan and knead until blended smooth.  When cool, place in plastic bag or airtight container.  It will last a for a long time.

Things of Interest in Kenya

1.  Looooong words in Swahili.  Try saying this one:  Ninachanganyikiwa.  That one word is a complete sentence!  It means, “I am confused.”  Yes, that has been me many times in the last 5 months!

2.  Shopping carts.  Shopping carts in Kenya are much different than shopping carts in America.  Pushing a shopping cart here is an experience everyone should get to try at least once in their lifetime!  In America, the front two wheels of the shopping cart can rotate, but the back two wheels are fixed to go straight forward.  Not so in Kenya!  All four wheels rotate!  You would not believe what a difference this makes in pushing it.  It causes you to walk very awkwardly in order to get it to go straight forward instead of veering off to both sides of the aisle.  To my extreme embarrassment today, I ran my cart right into a British lady as she was shopping.  I’m telling you, these carts have a mind of their own!

3.  Having to stockpile.  This is a must in many countries.

You try many different products to find the ones that taste the best and work well.  Then when you go to the store and they have it in stock, you buy TONS of it because they may not have any more for weeks on end!  I can remember my dad raking the shelves clean of an item that we particularly liked!  And now I find us doing the same thing!  It is a way of life for many missionaries, I think.  We actually have a “stockpile cupboard”! 

4.       Filtering water.  The water here is known to sometimes have typhoid, so all the water that we drink or cook with comes from our water purifier.  I am very thankful an abundance of clean water.

Soaking fruits and vegetables.  I have to soak all of my fresh fruits and vegetables in water and a very mild type of bleach that they have here called Aquaguard.   

     

      Since I am buying for the whole week, and we eat a lot of fresh food, it usually takes me the rest of the day to get all of them cleaned, dried, and put into the fridge. 

      But it is worth it.  The food tastes wonderful here.  The fresh fruits and vegetables are so sweet—-carrots, bell peppers, everything.  Nothing has preservatives in it either.  So, of course, that means that I have to use it up fast, but it is a lot more healthy for us that way.  And all these fruits and vegetables only cost us about $6.50!  They are very cheap here. 

6.       Cooking from scratch.  This one I really enjoy.  They don’t have all of the box mixes and prepared foods here.  So, cooking takes longer, but it tastes so much better when it is made from scratch!

7.      Bouquets of flowers.  My husband is very romantic.  Every week, he brings home a fresh bouquet of beautiful flowers.  

 
This week it was red roses with baby’s breath.  I’ll bet you can’t get 18 red roses anywhere in America for $3.75!  The flowers here are beautiful and cheap to boot!

An Opportunity to Witness!

We had a good day in church this past Sunday.  It was our first Sunday as interim pastor and pastor’s wife in the Madory’s church while they are in the States for six months.  Yikes!  I’ve never been a pastor’s wife before, and it is a little scary for me.  My fear is that I will forget something really important.  And I also fear that I will make some huge mistake in the culture here and offend people.   Honestly, I feel like a brand new baby starting all over trying to learn a new culture.  I thought the culture here would be very similar to New Guinea, and in some ways it is, but it is still a distinct culture of it’s own.  But it is excellent experience for both BJ and I in the ministry.  BJ is loving every minute of it.  He spends many hours in his office (part of our shed) reading, praying, and studying in preparation for his sermons.

I will be teaching a couple of ladies’ meetings in February and March, and I am looking forward to that.  I love to teach.  I am tossing around the idea in my mind of trying it in Swahili!  I much prefer communicating in Swahili in Kenya even though I am still far from fluent!

I have had such a heavy burden on my heart for my neighbor, Elpina.  I have been begging God for opportunities to talk with her about salvation, but at the same time did not want to push too fast too soon.  I have her constantly on my mind.   I am hesitant though, not knowing the culture very well yet.  I do not feel confident witnessing in this culture yet.  What is the best approach?  Will the same questions we use in America work in Kenya?  You know, as a missionary kid, I never paid much attention to the culture.  I just lived life and loved it.  But as a missionary wife, I am learning more than I ever did as a kid that people think and act differently because of their culture.  So I have been asking God (rather impatiently) for wisdom and an opportunity to talk with my neighbor in His time.  I told Him, “Please drop it in my lap, so I can know it is time.”  Well, today, He did just that!

She sat on my veranda chatting with me for a while about different things.  

Then I remembered something!  I told her, “I want to show you something.” And I ran in to get my Swahili Bible.  I was just going to show it to her because BJ had bought it for me this morning at the bookstore he visited.  It is a beautiful Bible, and I am so proud of it.  Then when I got in the house, I thought, “What a great opportunity if she is holding my Bible in her hands . . . “  I brought it outside and showed it to her.  She really liked it.  Then she opened it and started reading Psalms!   She translated the verses for me into English.  Well, God opened the door to naturally ask her if anyone had ever showed her verses from the Bible about how to go to Heaven.  She said, “No,” so I asked her if I could.  She seemed happy about that.  How I longed for my English Bible with the verses marked and the pages almost memorized, but I was holding a brand new Swahili Bible.  I took her to Warumi (Romans), and went verse by verse through the Romans Road with her.  She read the verses in Swahili, and I then quoted them in English so that my mind could follow along.  She told me that her church does not explain the Bible like this at all.  It is a merely a bunch of rituals that they go through.  It was such a blessing to be able to tell her my testimony of salvation and what God did for me.  I could tell that she understood the way of salvation.  The Seed of God’s Word was planted.  Please pray with me that it will bear fruit in her heart. 

Visiting Nakuru

This past weekend, we drove up to Nakuru to visit another missionary, the Mickeys, and to see their ministry.  It is a beautiful 2-hour drive up there.  We drove alongside the Great Rift Valley, and the view out my window was amazing!  You could see the whole valley and the mountain ridge on the other side which is western Kenya.  We were able to see quite a few zebra along the sides of the road as well as baboons . . .

and gazelle.  I know what everyone is probably thinking!  No, there were no lions.  Most of the lions and larger animals stay farther south on the Maasai Mara where there are not many people, except the Maasai.  And the Maasai know how to handle the lions! 

Seth found a friend in the Mickey's church.  This little 5-year-old boy is almost the same height as Seth.  He latched onto Seth, and you could hardly separate them! 

They were so cute together.  The little boy's name is Gilbert.  He knew that Seth was exactly his size and that he was going to be his friend.  I couldn't even take Seth to the restroom hardly without Gilbert tagging along!  He didn't speak English, only Swahili, but they did fine together because they both understood PLAY.  After church, all the kids were playing in the grass, so I went out there with my camera.  They got all excited, and came running, saying, "Atapiga picha!"  (She will take a picture!)  

Looks like it is a big, exciting thing with kids over here to get their picture taken! Then they liked even more to see their picture on my camera after I had taken it. I am not sure who had more fun--them or me.  I guess I don't have to tell you that I already love these little children! 

This little girl was scared of us at first. 

She is the daughter of the Mickey's national pastor, so she knows the Mickeys very well.  She doesn't even think the Mickeys are "wazungu" (white people).  But when she saw us there at their house, she immediately said that we were "wazungu" and was scared of us.  However, after several hours, she got sleepy and wanted to be held.  BJ had been trying to get her to come sit on his lap the whole day.  Finally, when she got tired and needed someone to hold her, she raised her arms for him to pick her up. 

There is a deaf girl, about 12 or 13 years old, in the Mickey's church that we got to talk to.  She was very shy and rather reserved with us at first.  She uses different signs than the signs that we learned at the deaf school in Olkeri.  We are finding out that because KSL is not standardized across the country, it seems that every deaf school over here has a different dialect of sign language, which poses some challenges in communication.  So, at first we had to break the ice with her and try to learn some of her signs because she didn't have a broad vocabulary, and she was having a hard time understanding us.  BJ tried different topics with her, and finally found one that they both could understand--the sign names of different places and towns in Kenya.  BJ would fingerspell the name of the town, and she would give him the sign.  We told her that she was our teacher, and that is the first time we saw her tentative smile.  She signed to us, "Me teach you?"  Then I invited her to sit with me in church.  We couldn't interpret for her, not yet knowing her language, so she just sat beside me looking very much out of her element.  After church, I fingerspelled "friend" to get her sign for friend. Then I signed it back to her, and hugged her.  After that, I got even more smiles, and I felt that BJ and I had won her trust and broken down the barrier somewhat that she has toward the hearing.

Her mom desperately wants to see her daughter saved, but can't even communicate with her.  In fact, we learned that about 5-6 years ago, this girl's mother started praying, begging God to send a missionary to Kenya to lead her deaf daughter to Christ.  I got to figuring it out, and about 5 and a half years ago, God brought our deaf friend, Chris Harris, to Oklahoma Baptist College, and moved him into BJ's dorm room.  Then He fixed it so that his other roommate was Matt, a Deaf/Missions major, so the language of the room was sign language!  I can just see the Lord smiling, and saying, "Let me see what I can do to answer that Kenyan lady's prayer."  I told her that she is probably the reason that we are here in Kenya.

The people in the church asked us over and over to come to Nakuru to work with the Deaf in their town.  Bro. Mickey has an intense burden for the Deaf in Nakuru, even to the point of tears.  But they don’t know how to reach them.  The people in the church want to learn sign language.  We still don’t know where the Lord will take us, but there is such a great need there and everywhere.  We definitely felt our hearts squeeze being around that deaf girl, but that happens whenever we are around the Deaf.  It is just God saying in our hearts, “Those are your people.”  Those are the people that our hearts are broken for and love.  Although the Mickeys are not pushing us, we know that they are hoping and praying that God will lead us to Nakuru. 

There is such a vast need here that wherever we go, there is going to be more work than we will be able to do ourselves.  As far as we know, we are the only Baptist missionaries in the country to the Deaf.  The thought of it can be overwhelming at times!  We desperately need wisdom.  We have to know exactly where we are supposed to be because #1: We want to be in God’s perfect will.  And #2:  Once you start with Deaf, you have to finish with them.  You can’t go there for a few months and realize you missed God’s will, and up and leave them.  That will hurt them and forever close the door in their hearts to the Gospel if anyone else comes after us.  

God has opened another door of opportunity for BJ though during language school.  The Madorys, the missionaries who helped us when we got to Kenya, are going to America for a 6-month furlough.  Since we are here for language school for at least another four months, BJ has agreed to be interim pastor at their church here in Karen.  That will give him experience in leading a church.  I think God is working at preparing him for whatever and wherever He has in store for us.  It is hard to wait, not knowing.  But I know He will show us in His time.

We love you all, and we thank you so much for your prayers.  Our biggest prayer request right now is WISDOM!