Archives for May 2012

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

Most of us have agreed that going west across time zones requires minimal adjustment. Coming home, however, flying east, is a whole different matter. I have come to the conclusion that it is just going to be a full two weeks before am I really back.

The first night at home after 21 days in Africa, I kept waking up thinking I was still moving through the streets of Nairobi. In a few days, I began to catch seven to eight hours of sleep. Five days home, I didn’t need an afternoon nap, but I was still not wanting to be around ANYONE but my family. There was a displacement of my inner time zones; morning hours took forever to live through. It felt like two in the afternoon, as though I had been awake that long since morning, when it was still only 10:00 A.M.

How comforting to know that God is a God who is above all time zones and not limited by any of them. I wrote out in my prayer journal:

I praise you God of all Time Zones:

• that you neither slumber nor sleep
• that you are never jet-lagged
• that you are always here and always there
• that you are present in all the longitudes and latitudes
• that your love stretches from the North Pole to the South Pole; and that your grace tracks through the equator and the meridians.

You are my Place before all others.

This is a solace for the jet-lagged travelers.

I spy God!

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Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

For years, since we started the initial phases of the Global Bag Project in 2008, I’ve heard the name Barbara Harrison, a business gal from Canada who had trained some of the HIV/AIDS widows in Kibera Slums how to put a business plan together (selling swaths of fabric, dried fish—small enterprises). Through the years since, I’ve heard Barbara this, Barbara that; you know, the Barbara from Canada.

This time David and I got to meet Barbara Harrison, in the flesh. Barbara had actually given the money for the first two sewing machines before the Global Bag Project was even started. We invited her to come sit in our room and get acquainted. A midlife working woman, single, one of ten children herself (number eight), Barbara filled the room with her energy—truly she was one people dub “a force-of-nature”.

She’d bought eight acres of land outside of Nairobi and helped a local pastor start an orphanage for 30 children. They employ 10 workers and she had just built a hen house for laying hens, teaching the helpers to lay bricks.

“Well, how did you learn to lay bricks?” I wanted to know.

Turns out that Barbara is a steel worker and worked in the steel foundry driving a forklift for the early part of her career. “Aw I did that stuff all the time. Got so hot in there, we’d have to tear a wall down and build it again.”

Barbara uses her vacation time to come to Africa, bringing in $15,000 (Canadian I’m supposing) from a recent fund-raiser. “Yeah, I helped put up that greenhouse.” She pointed to the white canvas frame sitting beside the garden path. We could see it outside our window; it had appeared during my visit two years ago.

Determined that the orphanage would become self-sustaining, a garden and a greenhouse not to mention the hen house had gone up there as well. A contract had been obtained from the government to knit school sweaters and two looms had been constructed to fulfill that obligation. (I could hardly write fast enough to capture all this amazing women mentioned in our brief conversation.)

As far as Barbara was concerned, there was no braggadocio in all this; she was simply recounting facts in answer to my questions. A phrase kept coming up, however, one she mentioned scornfully time and again: “There’s money in poverty, you know.”

This is true. For instance, big banks that once wouldn’t consider giving a $75 loan to an impoverished signee for a micro-enterprise startup have discovered that since there are so many poor people (millions), even with small loans and small interest rates, they can make money. Lots of people make big money on the backs of the wretched of the earth.

 “Oh, yes, and I’ve gone into the movie business!” Barbara continued. She has been a longtime collector of antique garments. The basement, I gather, is filled with stuff. A movie company’s costume supplier fell through and someone said, “Talk with Barbara Harrison.” Sure enough. Barbara made $4,000 (Canadian again) renting her collection out to the filmmakers.

When I meet people like this—a steelworker from Sault Ste. Marie—I’m often forced to consider: What makes people do what they do? Why does a woman like this go plunging into the needy hotspots of the world, shamelessly go home and raise funds from people who would never take such a dive? And why do so many people do next to nothing with their lives? What, apart from a rare combination of indeterminate genes, makes the difference?

Frankly, I don’t know. But I’m glad I met Barbara Harrison—Barbara this and Barbara that, Barbara from Canada. I’m thinking of taking a trip up to the locks, of visiting nearby Macintosh Island. But the biggest attraction, really, is visiting Barbara Harrison.

I spy God!

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Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

The most amazing people pass through Guest Houses where expatriates stay when they are doing business in country or when they are waiting to get their visas to go to South Sudan.

Ryan and Taylor hauled into Global Bag Project Sewing Room:
Guests You Meet Along the Way

 While in Africa we met two young men in the Kijiji Dining Room. Valerie and Steve Bell, my sister and brother-in-law, had flown in a few days early to visit the Global Bag Project before they joined the Compassion International team for the rest of their visit. The two young men, with Campus Crusade, had applied for a visa to Sudan where they were working on the Jesus Film Project. Their assignment was to set up a sound studio where nationals, voice actors, could record the film script in their language or dialect, then Ryan and Taylor (the young men) would dub the voices into the film. Just like Hollywood—right?

Not really. We joked about the conditions under which they would be recording—mattresses (if they were lucky) set up to block out ambient sound. It would be several days before their Visas were ready. We struck up conversations over breakfast and dinner and finally just invited them to hang out with us. We had a driver. Steve and Valerie had never been to Karen outside Nairobi before, so one afternoon we did all the tourist visits—the Karen Blixen museum, lunch in the Karen Blixen tea gardens, a tour in the Global Bag Project Sewing Room—whatever we had been planning to do. It was like hauling some of our kids with us; except these fellows were a good ten years younger than the youngest of our kids, who are all thirty and above.

Finally, their visas came through. That morning the news had carried reports of Northern Sudan military units bombing the border between itself and South Sudan. We said our farewells. We prayed for their safety, laying hands on them. The next week we received an e-mail thanking us for hauling them along, and after I returned home, I received another. Here’s a little from the second e-mail. Perhaps it will give you insight into the interesting people you can meet in Guest Houses around the world.

“It would be hard to recount how our time in Muni went. It was definitely a life-changing experience. It was by far the simplest living I’ve ever partaken in. The church we were at and recorded in was a mud hut with a grass roof. We slept outside in our bug tents, watching the stars and feeling the cool air as we drifted into sleep. We bathed in the river that was about 200 yards away from the church. We lived at their pace, waking up to the sun, enjoying morning tea and crackers, working through the day as God permitted, and eventually laying down to sleep usually around 9:30 or 10:00.

“The recording went incredibly well! They were well prepared and whenever they weren’t recording they would gather around practice scripts, reading each other’s parts. The biggest hiccough we had was with our narrator. We were more than halfway done with him when he went missing. We were told he left for Juba because something had happened to his mother. So we were left without a narrator. Praise the Lord for how He worked things out—a man was supposed to play Medium Man One, but was sick, so another man played his part. But the sick man got better and when we next needed the narrator actor he was there and had no part anymore. It was definitely a provision from God.

“We finished recording in nearly five days! The whole time we were worried we would run out of fuel. Both Sundays are in a critical fuel shortage currently because of the war, making it extremely hard to acquire any fuel. God multiplied our fuel, or at least the amount of time it lasted, because we were able to run the generator for a week and a half on only about 50 liters.

“Last night we had the privilege of showing the film to probably about 300 people from the immediate village are! What an awesome time to have all those involved to see the fruits of their labor as soon as we finished! It was a great blessing and treat for Taylor and myself.”

Since only 20% of Americans have U.S. passports and most of those who do travel stay in tourist accommodations, I thought it might be nice to expose you to some of the interesting people we meet in missionary Guest Houses.

I spy God!

————————————————————————————–

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

While at home last week and jet-lagging, I turned on the Turner Classic Movie channel and watched an old movie starring Joel McCrea as a Hollywood director who tires of producing wildly successful fluff comedies such as “Ants in Your Plants.” Directed by Preston Sturges and co-staring a very young Veronica Lake, it is a little gem of self-satire on the pretensions of privilege. As filmmaker John L. Sullivan, McCrea is filled with a burning desire to make films with serious social statements—this is the Depression era, after all. He conceives of an upcoming project, “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”

When challenged by Hollywood bigwigs with the fact that he knows nothing about the average itinerant homeless bum, Sullivan disguises himself as one and sets out across America with next-to-no money in his pocket to become an eye-witness to human suffering.

Sullivan’s studio, however, transforms his odyssey into a publicity stunt, providing the would-be nomad with a luxury van, complete with butler. Consequently, the ironies abound. Advised by his servants that the poor resent having the rich intrude upon them, Sullivan escapes his retinue and continues his travels incognito. Filled with bleeding-heart fervor, and now accompanied by a down-and-out failed actress, Sullivan begins to experience something of the hardtack existence of actual hobos.

The difference between him and the men he seeks to encounter is that he can leave them when he chooses and go back to his comfortable upper-class existence. Back in Hollywood, he arranges for a screen test for the would-be ingénue then heads toward the rail yards. This time his pockets are stuffed with $10,000 in five dollar bills. Sullivan is blindsided by a tramp, who not only steals Sullivan’s money, but his shoes, coat and identification. When the tramp is run over by a speeding train, the world at large is convinced that the great John L. Sullivan is dead.

Meanwhile, Sullivan, dazed and dressed like a bum with no identification on his person, is arrested for assaulting a belligerent police officer and put to work on a brutal Southern chain gang. At this point, reality begins to sink in. What is it like to be trapped in a life-demeaning environment with no chance of escape and no one who believes that you are not who you say you are not? At this point, the filmmaker, having only visited the edges of inhuman conditions, becomes someone who is actually living in depressed squalor, chained to his fellow prisoners.

The film moves us through almost Shakespearean motifs—comedy, poignancy, farce and tragedy. One of the most touching scenes in the film is set in a black church in the South where a movie night has been scheduled. The black pastor informs his congregation that they will be having visitors and that the visitors are no better or worse than anyone sitting in the pews. “We are not going to look down on them with any kind of sign or movement or gesture.” At that point the chain gain shuffles in and takes their seats.

The movie chosen for that night is a light-hearted Disney cartoon at which the downtrodden men begin to laugh. Sullivan begins to laugh. For a brief shining moment, the chains and degradation drop away, and the filmmaker begins to understand the healing power of joyful comedy. Critics consider this film to be Sturges’ masterpiece and “one of the finest movies about movies ever made.”

It’s amazing that a Depression-era film could have so much currency in today’s economic conditions. I have often dragged through the slums of this world and am appalled by the condition of the wretched of the earth. But like the fictional filmmaker, John Sullivan, I can leave (though not in a limousine).

Christ, however, came unto his own and lived among us. He took on the pain and degradation of humanity in his redemptive work on the Cross—he joined the chain-gang as it were. Few believed in the identity he proclaimed. This is the mystery of incarnational reality—God walking among us; God dying for us—a comedy in a sense that it brings so much joy and laughter. A tragedy in that so few understand or accept it,

All this in one jet-lagging afternoon while watching the TCM channel. I am often surprised at finding truth where I find it.

I spy God!

————————————————————————————–

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

The name of our driver for the two weeks we are in Kenya is Farage (I believe it is Faragi but Kenyans often give you a name they think Westerners can understand and pronounce).

“I am your driver, Farage,” he says. “I am here for you.” This saying was repeated many times, gaining more meaning with each repetition.

This is a relief. Getting across town in Nairobi traffic (in the rainy season) during peak driving hours is a nightmare. The crush of traffic, pedestrians, the backed-up roundabouts, not constructed to absorb the volume of cars is daunting even to think about by the driver used to more of an orderly system (or perhaps one used to his/her own disorderly traffic system). I do not want to be driving on these roads; it is not like in England.

One evening, not knowing exactly when we would be returning, we decided not to order dinner in the Kijiji dining room. Arriving home before dark, we attended to a quick business meeting, then realized we had sent Farage along and had no way to get to the nearby restaurant down the road. “Oh, we’ll just walk,” we said to Mary Ogalo, our GBP Coordinator. “No! No! No! That’s too dangerous. Just take my car to drive the little way down the road and back.” It was now night.

So David got into the right-sided driver’s seat, took the bumpy lane to the security gate, turned right—across the highway—and suddenly discovered what Mary had meant when she said, “No! No! No! That’s too dangerous.” We were in utter blackness, with cars approaching on our left side with their high beams on due to the fact that there were no streetlights, no white lines on either edge of the road, no dividing yellow line, and people walking on both sides of the street who could not be seen until you were almost upon them. David eased the car down the road, with the other three of us peering in hopes of seeing the Rusty Nail Restaurant sign. Finally, right upon us, there it was. No lights marking the location or the driveway; David turned into a farther drive, the wrong drive, had to back out, missed the huge stone none of us saw, made it into the right drive, but we could hardly see where to go once the guard opened the gates to let us in.

“I’ll drive back,” I said to David after dinner. My night sight is a little better than his—the passenger in the front left seat, helped me steer down the road when high beams coming at me blinded me. I flipped on the turn signal, only to have the windshield wipers swish on. My passenger figured how to turn them off (several times). The road was wet; pedestrians were still walking on the sides, and I totally missed the turnoff to the entrance to Africa International University. No lights again.

“I think I’ve gone too far. Watch for the entrance.” Turning the car around, I aimed it in the pitch-black night down the left side of the road, twisting the steering wheel that was on the right side of the car.

Finally, greatly relieved, we turned into AIU. “Don’t ever loan your car to Americans!” we warned Mary the next morning. “We are, most of us, incompetent on your highways.”

I kept thinking of Farage’s words: “I am here for you.”

We changed driving plans daily. “Change of plans, Farage. Bet we didn’t surprise you with that, did we?” He would bob his head slightly, smile and forgive us our vagaries, “I am here for you.”

He took awful drives across town to the Kenyatta International airport—in heavy stalled traffic, in lanes fouled by downpours with water rushing across the roads—and delivered or picked up all assigned to him without incident.“I am here for you.”

He waited interminably when we didn’t get out of meetings at the time estimated. “So sorry, Farage…” I am here for you.”

Farage is a devout Muslim and one afternoon he wasn’t present. “Another driver will drive this afternoon.” No one said, “Farage is at Friday prayers. He is at the mosque with other observant Muslims.” Perhaps they thought we would be offended. We weren’t offended; we would have understood absolutely.

We were concerned about something and Farage said, “I will pray for you.” We had interesting conversations about the meaning of our faiths. David said, “You see, Farage, when we are friends, like you and I are friends” (this after driving for hours together for almost two weeks), “we can talk about what we believe without arguing about it.”

I suspect Farage understands, as deeply as I, about the power of his words. These are the same words God speaks to us when we are driving on the wrong side of the road, lost, with dangers on every side, with the windshield wipers going on when we needed the turn signal. “I am here for you.” Overcome with night-blindness, late from our appointments, stalled in unbelievable traffic with the torrents of rains making our vehicle hydroplane across the road, confused—these words are a deep comfort, a source of solidarity, a kindness, a profound reminder.

And if you are in a place in your life when you can’t hear these words, I know this driver in Kenya, a Muslim man with a baby daughter whose photos he proudly showed us one afternoon. He says the words frequently, easily, with meaning because he is always there when you need him, on time and waiting (except for Fridays during prayers). He’ll get you thinking. He’ll get you started. Perhaps listening to him you’ll be able to hear the same words spoken on a deeper listening level—I AM here for you.

I spy God!

————————————————————————————–

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

The rooms at Kijiji Guest House where I am staying on the campus of Africa International University are a little odd. The shape of the two buildings, constructed of native stone in an octagonal shape, mean that none of the inside rooms are square. A courtyard inside each building is open to the sky; I can hear the rainfall that becomes torrential on the inside of the building before I can hear it on the outside. When referring to these lovely spaces, the locals on campus, the missionary community and professors, say the Guest Houses were built by volunteer teams simply dubbed “the Scots guys.”

I’m getting the idea that things disappear at Kijiji. One of my friends, whose husband is a professor here, stitched up beautiful quilts for all the rooms—what an undertaking. Can you imagine the impression they must have made on the guests who dragged in weary from travel. Returning from a Stateside visit herself, she discovered that new management had taken over and the quilts had all been sold! Yesterday, while talking with another manager (the quilt-selling managerial team did not work out), we wondered if it would be of help to her if our seamstresses from the Global Bag Project (who rent the domestic arts room just beyond Kijiji and through the garden) stitched up laundry bags with the appropriate room number on each.

Linette is a gracious lady and manages all the complicated comings and goings here with seeming ease. “Oh yes,” she said softly. “That would be very helpful. We used to have laundry bags, but I don’t know where they have gone.”

We are trying to create a synergy with the Kijiji Guest Houses: we’ll help them with some of their sewing needs if they will allow us to advertise Global Bag Project products in the rooms. Many tourists already drop past the sewing room and buy bags. We have just worked on setting Africa prices by inviting customers to answer, “What do you think is a fair price?” Their responses more than doubled the price our Project Coordinator had been charging.

However, we’ll have to remember to make it clear that it is not appropriate to pack away items from the guest rooms and to take them home and that our goal for the Global Bag Project women is to pay them a fair wage. So I am keeping it in mind that I, a Westerner from the United States, can come up with all sorts of ideas, but unless the idea originates on the ground here, not much is invested in the concept, which I may think is really great! Nor should I attempt to impose Western thinking and ways on systems that are working quite fine, thank you. The African is polite and has heard much of it all before. They smile, nod their heads and tell you, often, what it is they think you want to hear. This is a cultural nicety; it is politeness, not deceit. However, sometimes they do need advisement, such as the prices for the Global Bag Project products in the sewing room.

“What do you think is a fair price for this?” is not altogether a bad idea for many of our cross-cultural exchanges. Translated another way, we might ask, “What do you think? How would you do this? Why does this happen this way?”

I am ever a learner, for the most part, in another culture. Living in another culture is like the octagonal stone Guest Houses at Kijiji. None of the rooms are really square. Things disappear. I may be hearing only what I want to hear when people tell me what they think I want to know. I am tired of saying, “Pardon me, could you repeat that again?” My mind is weary with learning and interpreting. But I am only a learner here. Please, God, help me not to forget.

I spy God!

————————————————————————————–

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

It was April in Kenya, the season of the long rains; rain is falling all over the country, ending a severe suffering of dryness. It runs along the road in torrents (where does it all go?). My working trip extended to 18 days and water fell in drizzles and mists and deluges every single day. But the Kenyans do not complain. “We need the rain,” they say. “It is raining all over the country.” Drought brings incalculable suffering. The Maasai have brought their herds of cows into town; they are grazing by the roadsides and nudging the mounds of garbage in the slums seeking out edibles.

I once wrote about this in my book The Fragile Curtain:

“The great dog drought will stretch out upon Massailand. He will roll down upon the pampas of the Great Rift Valley, which incises Africa nearly west to east. He will rub his huge back on the concave floor that slopes up to the mountains: Kilimanjaro, Kenya, Meru, and Lengai.

“Then he will trot to the precious watering holes and lap them dry; he will drink and empty the seasonal rivers. His ribbed belly will plop upon the land, suffocating the vegetation. He will pant hot breath over Kenya and Tanzania, the historic grazing territory of the Maasai. Then he will sleep, a slumber not to be disturbed. He will not be wakened.

“Old dog drought is sleeping now in the East Horn of Africa.”

Some of the Westerners have been complaining about the days of rain (interspersed with bright cleansed blue skies and warming sun). The mud is everywhere; our shoes are caked; the slums with only dirt paths are miserable. But I am old enough at 69 and enough of a gardener to know that the torrents are a blessing. So I thank God, along with my Kenyan brothers and sisters, for this damp grace.

The drivers we hire clean their cars inside and out every day, but when we clamber into the back seat, we muddy the mats. It is impossible to keep shoes clean when walking on muddy red-clay paths. Several days ago we got caught in a squall running to the van. I was talking on a borrowed cell phone, ducking the puddles and trying to find firm footing as we left Heshima Ministries, which offers physical therapy to 16 severely disabled children and provides work for their mothers through Dignity Designs, a jewelry-making enterprise. It was impossible to stay dry; too much rain, too much red-clay mud, too many potholes. I finally gave up trying to be cautious and just trampled like a naughty child through the puddles. My shoes were soaked.

I accosted an African man on the path outside the dining room in the Kijiji Guest House area where we stay when in Kenya, “How do you keep the mud off your shoes? Yours are so clean and mine are so muddy.”

“Oh,” he said (the Africans are so accommodating to rude and obtrusive Americans). “We wipe our shoes like this.” Instead of wiping his feet from front to back on the grass he twisted his shoe side to side. Then he hit the back of the heel on the grass. “But the mud on your shoe is dry. It has to be wet mud.”

So I have been twisting my muddy shoes on the grass. They are almost as clean in this rainy seasons as those of my Kenyan friends.

But this muddy-shoe discussion did give me an idea. What if most Westerners, used to paved walks and roadways, are as clueless as I? What if Kijiji offered a shoe-cleaning service? Leave your muddy shoes outside the door at night, like some of the higher-end hotels, and charge something like 100 Kenyan shillings ($1.25 at today’s exchange). That’s not much for one pair of shoes, but in the rainy season, with a full guest house, it could add up as part of the never-ending search for multiple income streams. The shoes would appear by the door in the morning.

Linette, the Kijiji guest-room manager, thought this was a good idea. You see, the Kenyans have noticed the muddy shoes of the Westerner.

I spy God!

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Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

Yesterday, sitting in the sewing room, listening to the sounds of the sewing machine, my back to the women and my face toward the windows, (where from time to time I catch spotty Wi-Fi connections), I took my notebook and jotted down the fact that my grandmother, Nellie Branham, had been the top Singer Sewing Machine saleswoman in the whole Chicago area decades ago. I didn’t want to forget this in the hurly-burly of the unending cross-cultural work of translation. Even when people from different cultures are speaking the same language, English, the words are pronounced and accented differently and carry slightly different meaning. Pardon me, what did you say again? I must have asked this question a hundred times yesterday.

NOTE to MYSELF: Gram a seamstress. My beautifully made clothes. Flannel nightgowns for the entire family on Christmas. Then the thought: What would Gram have thought about me working with the seamstresses of the Global Bag Project?

I began making notes; the ideas flowed. Suddenly, I realized I was writing down the outline of a book. In fact, I had already been writing it in bits and pieces since the beginning of initial inquiries into the Bag Project idea in 2008. Now, the growing book ideas inside were notifying me that they were ready for my attention.

Back in the States, my sister, Valerie, and I had one of those phone conversations:

“You’re going to Kenya! We’re going to Kenya!” So she and my brother-in-law, Steve, arrived three days early before their commitments to Compassion International kicked in. We realized the sewing room needed a new ironing board and another iron. So David and Steve and Valerie headed off to the Nakumat (think “big-box store”) and returned home with a board and two bright-pink steam-irons. One of my favorite memories going forward will always be the joy and laughter in the Sewing Room as Valerie taught the women (one who works at home with a heavy charcoal iron) how to press using steam!

What would my grandmother, Nellie Branham, the top Singer Sewing Machine saleswoman, have thought about that? Wasn’t it she who taught me how to press a man’s shirt?—button panels first, then the collar inside and out, the yoke across the top next, the sleeve collars, the sleeves themselves, then the rest of the shirt.

It was a lovely morning in the sewing room where the Global Bag Project seamstresses in the suburb of Karen, Kenya, outside Nairobi, down the garden path from the Kijiji Guest House, were doing their work, and I sitting at a sewing counter, my personal computer in front of me and my notebook in hand, was doing mine.

I think Gram Branham would have been pleased.

I spy God!

————————————————————————————–

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

Sitting in the Global Bag Project sewing room in Kenya, I can hear the click-click-click of the treadle sewing machines. It is the rainy season; last night we conducted a Global Bag Project Kenya board meeting in the dark. The people here are used to these interruptions. Last night, I woke, flipped on the light to check the time, and realized that the generators to the Kijiji Guest House had been turned off.

The rain has been heavy—two days ago, after visiting a project for severely disabled children, I splashed through red-clay water puddles in the Logolo Slum. The rushing muddy ground flow covered my walking shoes, and the rain water soaked my hair. The deluge flooded little one-room shanties, making a nearly unbearable existence for many even more unbearable.

The machines in the sewing room have a different sound; the eight that have been recently purchased have a bass sound—chul-chul-chul—and the older machines, donated to the Project earlier, tap out a mechanistic alto—click-click-click. Again, as I take notes (the power just flashed off, flashed on) the seamstresses—those who work with the Global Bag Project and those who are being trained—keep on with their sewing, pumping their treadle machines, which were bought with power shortages in mind.

One of Hannah’s children is here in her school uniform—the girl is one of six siblings, which includes two sets of twins. Hannah, for obvious reasons, is a hard and steady worker. The Global Bag Project seeks to serve vulnerable women raising children without a man in the home. Because of GBP income, Hannah has been able to quit her salt-hauling job. Looking at Hannah’s little girl, bright-eyed and neat in her school uniform, I feel this spreading warmth beneath my breastbone. A gladness is in me that through selling bags, we have been able to help.

Two other children are here: a three-year old with a very runny nose, and his sister, who is perhaps six. Their mother is learning to sew. The little ones have been inordinately well-behaved, sitting patiently at the cutting table, heads resting on their hands and arms, but they now are growing restless. We obviously need a basket of toys, coloring books, sketching tablets; perhaps soft toys made from scraps for the children who come with mothers learning to sew with the hopes that they will be able to make income enough to feed their families, pay their rents, buy school uniforms and books to send their children to school.

The woman who is the sewing trainer and the women being trained talk softly; a low mumble of voices speaking Swahili floats in the room and the children have begun to run around the large cutting table (the power has just flashed off and on again). One of the sewers is humming under her breath. Every now and then, a joke is told (in Swahili) and the women giggle together.

A swooping rush of reality floods me; I am filled with a deep appreciation for the incarnational implications of the Gospel. Christ came among us; His flesh was handled, He heard and was heard, saw and was seen. It is one thing to know about the desperation of the world. It is another thing to walk among it, to get your shoes wet and muddy, to hear the stories, to look into the bright eyes of the children whose mothers are willing to grab at any small chance to do something, to make something of themselves.

We can’t see Him, but I know Christ is present. He is here among us as we work to create something—sewing projects—that give dignity and skills to women like Hannah.

When I walk through the slums, I feel such love. When we talk with our driver, Faragi, who is a Muslim, that love is in my heart. When I sit in the sewing room, with the sewing women click-clicking on their machines (or chul-chuling) this loveliness fills my being; this is a love that has been given to me. I know it is a gift coming from outside of my own emotional capabilities.

It is the rainy season in Kenya—but even when there is drought, the power comes and goes. The sewers are unfazed because they have treadle sewing machines, and I am experiencing love originating in a Source of Life that does not come and go. Christ is here. He is here.

I spy God!

————————————————————————————–

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article