I just love about Kenya especially is just the people. That is the thing. You melt when you get in the presence and you're having a meal together and you start hearing stories and you start telling stories and everyone's just sharing. It's just this beautiful thing of smiling and eating and laughing and just having a good time together. Well, hello again, and welcome to the Trim the Wick podcast. I'm, Dan.
And I'm Becky.
And we are with you again this week. We are looking to have a fun time today. How you doing, babe?
I'm all right.
Yeah. Well, you know what?
There's been some heaviness going on.
Yeah. But today we want to share with you guys. So because of the. The month we had October 1 being on the Tuesday. Normally we have our Kenya episodes on the first Tuesday of the month. And this month we, we'll have.
It on the second Tuesday.
We kind of messed that up. Yeah. So we're just going to do it this month on the second Tuesday. So we kind of got it reversed. But, you know, it's close enough.
Listen, we're not into, like, rigid schedules, are we?
No. Yeah, but, you know, it's. It's close enough. So if you were listening, you know, and you were like, my goodness, they're not doing the Kenya episode this week. Well, guess what? Now we are. So here we go.
Our focus is still Kenya. We do still love Kenya. And we've got all kinds of fun stuff to tell.
Yes. So, what we want to do is we're going to just kind of talk about some really cool things. Because you know what? When we go to Kenya, number one, it's a production. It's a major thing. Because anytime you travel to the other side of the world, it's not like, the easiest thing on the planet. I mean, it's easier than it was 100 years ago.
Yes. There's no two week long transatlantic oceanic crossing.
So it is easier because you do get in a plane and you fly and you're there. But, it takes two days to get there.
Right.
I remember our first time going. So this was our first time ever traveling transatlantic. And we flew in and we had all these things because we had an eight hour layover.
Right.
And I was like, I had done the research and I was like, you know what? We have an eight hour layover in Amsterdam. So they have the whole thing set up to where you can store your luggage and store your stuff and then jump on the train and go into the city. And, we had it all together.
We weren't gonna miss that opportunity.
No, we weren't gonna miss that opportunity. So we did all that. We jumped on the train, took the train into the city, walked around, saw some really cool things. Got to find this little hole in the wall restaurant that was just a blast.
And, you know, it was a great restaurant because the interior had the same brick as the exterior, and they had a restaurant cat. So, I mean.
Yes, well, and they had. What are those things where they make the food, like in the basement, and they bring it up?
A dumbwaiter.
They had a dumb waiter, which I thought was so cool. It was like, I've never been in a place that's done this, you know? Cause we live in florida. Cause if you have.
Dig down. If you have a basement in florida, it's, you know, it's a swimming pool. Unintentionally, you're only.
You're eating raw clams. That's raw oysters. That's the only dumb waiter you'll get in florida. But, so this was really cool, you know. And, we got to walk around. We got on our flight, and then we got to fly again for another 8 hours, and we landed in kenya. And there were just so many cool, interesting things that we saw on those first trips. And really, on all of our trips.
Yeah, every trip is a blast, you know? there's new facets to the people that we connect with that we get to find out about, you know, even though we go back to similar places. Like, we're always in Kaiole when we go there, we are always in Coragocho. We're always out in el Dorad. Most times we've made it up onto mount Elgon. so we're in the same areas, but it's never exactly the same. We find new facets to the cities. We find new places to eat. New places to really never go to again. To eat.
Yeah, yeah. Some places better not to go back to.
Yeah. It's always kind of new, even though we're in similar places and with some of the same core people.
Right. So in our first trip there, we were going into the corgocho slum for the very first time, and we turned the corner, and there was something that I just did not expect. You know, it's like, okay, we're going to Africa. You know, you think lions and I, you know, tigers and elephants and stuff like that, but we turn the corner, and there's this guy riding a camel right in front of us.
well, and what was wild about the whole situation is when you think camels. Maybe not when you think camels, but when I think camels, being the Florida girl that I am, the only camels I've ever seen are either in the zoo or in a movie.
Right.
And in the movies, camels are in the desert. Right. Camels are out in the desert in these long, picturesque wide shots on the film, you know, and they're camel training across with the nomadic tribes and whatever. That was not this camel. No, it was not part of a camel train. There was not a group of camel. It was. It was a camel.
Yes.
With a rider in a downtown city street in Nairobi with vehicle traffic around it and people walking and market sellers on the side of the. It was just not what I expected.
Yeah. You know, you just go get your mind kind of set up. Okay? This is kind of what it's going to look like. This is what it's going to be. And we turn that corner and there it was. And this just kind of blows your mind. It makes me think about every time we go on a trip and we go overseas, we go to Kenya, you see just different things than you think you're going to see. You know, you see different things than you, you know, you got your mind set up. Okay. It's going to be like this.
Like, one of the things that blew me away was I was expecting it to be super hot.
Yes. Because again, I. What had we been exposed to of Africa, right. What's on the movies? And it's always, you know, it's always a thousand degrees and in the desert, right?
Yep. So again, these are some of those things that, you know, you get in your mindset because of television, of movies, and you don't realize that, you know, Africa is pretty big. Africa is really, really big. And I, and we were going to.
One small, little country, right.
The only parts that we see on tv and movies and stuff like that are the areas like Morocco, Egypt, or the Sahara desert. I mean, that's really what you think of when you think of Africa, is what's been portrayed for years and years and years. So I'm expecting it to be, like, ridiculously hot. Kenya, Nairobi is, like, right on the equator, so you're thinking it's going to be hot. And we got there and it was, like, freezing cold.
For a Floridian, it was freezing cold.
It was in the sixties. In the sixties, you know, and then during the day, it got up into the seventies and eighties. But it was like in the sixties when we landed and got off the plane.
Well, in that first time, it was the rainy season, too, so it was. It was very, very wet, and. And so it never quite warmed up. So, yeah, so we're just kind of going down memory lane a little bit. And we were talking about how fun it would be to maybe share some of the discoveries
we've made with you guys. Cause, you know, we had done our, like you were saying, we had done our research on the, you know, the going and seeing Amsterdam on our way out to Kenya, but we had also done a lot of research on what the climate was that we should be expecting, what the. What the lay of the land was going to be when we got there. And so
we had an idea. But even if you have an idea of what the reality is, you still have this overwhelming input, ah, of what you've been exposed to through media over your life. And so it's hard to really wrap your mind around it until you're actually there. You know,
that, one of the things that we. It's one of my favorite parts when we go over there is when you land and you go out to a degree in Nairobi, but more so out in western Kenya, when you get kind of out of the city a little bit, and up into the Mount Elgon region, the green is so green, I don't even know how to describe it. It's this almost like when you'd picture in the creation story, when the mist hung over the earth and everything was just well watered and lush and beautiful and
verdant. That's what it is out there.
Yeah.
And it's gorgeous.
And when you land in Nairobi, it is a little more that sandy, kind of muted, a little bit there is green. But when you get outside the city, I mean, we have green and we've been, you know, you go out into the forest here, or you go out even in different parts of the United States and western United States and stuff, even seeing the forests and the big trees and stuff like that, it doesn't compare to the green, lush color and just. It's amazing just how vibrant the
greenery is and the other colors. And, you look at it and you go, wow. It makes sense why Africans love vibrant colors.
And they really live among it in their nature.
Exactly. Because that's really what they see. Clay is super bright. The rock, I mean, there's lots of yellows, the flowers are super bright. It's really neat because it's not what you, expected at all. It's not what I expected because we were expecting Africa sand, adobe, type.
Right. But it's not, and it's not just this, gorgeous, rich, beautiful. And it is one of the things that we have talked to the people that we work with, and they go, yeah, it's one of the reasons that we have to protect ourselves so very carefully, because there is a wealth, in our natural resources here, and you see it in everything that grows. It's just beautiful. and it's because the soil is so rich, and it's why we've dealt with colonizers over the years, because there is
a desire for exploitation of all that wealth. But we just get to go and, and enjoy it when we're there and walk among it. and we are not nearly as suited to walking through it as the people that grew up there are. We found that out this last trip. we went out into the mount Algon region, and we're hiking in, we've been out there hiking before, but, we went hiking in some new areas that were even a little less developed than, than areas we've been to previously, and, man, we couldn't keep up.
Yeah, well, it was funny. We were trying to go see some waterfalls, right? And, here we are, and we're wearing tennis shoes and stuff, walking, and everyone else is wearing dress shoes or sandals or slippers. And it's like, and we're running to try to keep up with everybody in the group. And we're like, everybody needs to slow down. M and they're carrying, you know, some of the women were carrying babies and stuff like that, and they were just leaving us in the dirt.
Yep. They were laughing at us. They were like, well, you know, you need to come out here. This is the exercise program.
Yep. But, yeah, the things of the scenery, the, the waterfalls, and there's just so many things. It's just so beautiful. We got a chance to go and, explore some of the caves and.
You know, got to see monkeys actually out there where they live.
Yeah. That's one of, I guess, one of the, the struggles and one of the negatives of if you only focus on, you know, a small thing of what you see on tv or what you, you know, not even reading the books, I bet, if you probably open national geographics and stuff, you would see it more. But, I mean, if you just stay with what the quote unquote media tells you or what movies tell you, you don't see it for what it really is. And, you know, I think that's another great reason to travel.
Absolutely.
And to actually put your eyes on things, you know, God has created this amazing planet and to just kind of like, say, oh, you know, I just want to focus on this part of it, or I just want to see, there is so much out there that God has created. And, it's been such a joy to go to Africa and just see things that I didn't expect, see things I didn't realize that even existed and just be able to soak it in and give God praise for that.
Yeah, well, and that's it. You get to see facets of his character there that you don't necessarily see here when you're looking for it. And it's been fun, too, to talk with our kenyan partners about what we see in the richness around them, because a lot of them have been trained by missionaries that come to look at european or american, ways of life and ways of dress and patterns in how they do business and things, and go, well, that's what
a good life looks like. And yet when we go, we see that God has enriched their area, their culture, with their resources. And it's not about, hey, we're coming to show you how to do it the way we do it in the US, because, honestly, there are some things that we absolutely don't want you to copy from us because it's a mess. But in us having wide eyed awe, about the beauty around them, it allows them to see it for themselves and for us to go, oh, my goodness, there's all this beauty in your
geography. There's all this beauty in your culture. There's all this beauty in your people that God has placed here for your purposes here in. In the place where he's put you. Instead of going over and teaching people to covet what we do or how we live, going, wow, there is richness and beauty in how and where you live.
yeah, I think it's funny because as we've been there, one of the most interesting, things, I'll put it this way, is the buses. And when you go around, especially in Nairobi, everyone personalizes their buses or all the buses. There's about five or six different companies. I don't think there's an actual city bus type thing. There might be, but there's all these different companies, and every company personalize their buses.
Right. There are beautiful descriptive paint jobs on everything.
Yep. And I mean, they just from photo, you know, that they, What's it called? With a airbrush, where they. Airbrush. And majority of the time, it is very interesting. It is american faces and actors and musicians. It's sports teams, american sports teams. Or it's Mickey Mouse and american cartoons and stuff like that. I mean, it's so funny.
There's nothing more wild than going into a slum community, seeing their preschool shack decorated with Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. It is so incongruous. It's not even fun.
Oh, yeah. Ah, they'll have the big mural on the side, just like we do here. They'll have a big mural on the side, and there'll be Mickey Mouse and Don. Now, granted, there's, trust me, no copyright laws being taken, and there is artistic.
License being taken, for sure, when you see these.
But, you know, you get to experience that. But it's been wonderful for us because we get to sit there and we talk to our friends and we tell them, listen, you know, there's a lot of cool things that we have in the states, but, man, what you guys have is amazing. What you guys have is there's some real pure things that you have that really need to be celebrated and really need to be encouraged. And that's one of the things I.
Feel like to be valued.
Yeah, I think that's one of the things that we've, had, the pleasure of, is just kind of encouraging them by saying, listen, this is good. What you have is good. And, don't always be thinking that the grass is greener on the other side or that there's the brass ring that the Americas have for you. Be where God has called you right there and do what is good right there, you know? And, that's been an interesting thing.
He has placed resources at your fingertips, and he has placed you in your place, in your culture, and it's. God wants to meet you where you are.
Yeah.
And has provided for you where you are. And it looks different than what he's provided for us. That's okay.
Yeah.
That's a good thing.
It is good thing, you know, because it does reach. It reaches to who you are that needs to be celebrated.
It does.
One of the other things that I was thinking about this is that when we travel over there, we, we fly from Nairobi to Eldoret. But when we get to Eldoret, especially out there in the west, we drive everywhere we go, we drive around. So it's. Even if it's a four hour drive or a six hour drive, once we land in El Dorado, it's all driving and the road system there, and it's gotten so much better, than when we were there the first time,
like eight years ago. But one of the things that I gotta just mention here, and this was such a shock to us, was speed bumps. Because in the US, you know, when you come up on something and they'll put like the little ribs on the road, you know, kind of. It's just that, you know, reminder that you need to slow down. Yeah. You know, or when you're in like a residential neighborhood, you know, you'll have a speed bumper, too.
Let me tell you something. Every town you go through, and this is on the major highways, you are going to cross over speed bumps that if you do not slow down and take sideways.
Yeah. You kind of go at an angle.
Yeah. You can't take them straight on. You have to turn and take them sideways, because if you hit them straight on, you will just scrape the bottom of your car and you have to take.
You might leave an axle behind.
Yeah. And, you better stop. You better slow down. And I mean, you're on a major road, like, there's like tractor trailers and everything zipping by you, and then all of a sudden it is slam on the brakes because you're gonna hit the speed bump and it's. It's gonna destroy your car.
It's an amusement, isn't it?
Yeah, I remember. So I've had the joy of driving a couple times over there, and let me tell you, oh, my gosh, if you're not ready for it, it will, There is no. There is no, dozing at the wheel while you're driving over.
You got to pay attention the whole time.
Another thing that I, you know, I think of is just how the people are. You know, we. We've had fun, seeing things and there's all this new stuff and all the different things. But one of the things that I just love about Kenya especially, is just the people.
That is the thing. You melt when you get in the presence and you're having a meal together and you start hearing stories and you start telling stories and everyone is just sharing, and it's just this beautiful thing of smiling and eating and laughing and just having a good time together.
Yeah, I do. I think one of the things that I love about the culture there is that their culture is okay with emotions. So when there's joy, they are joyful.
Yes.
And when there's sadness, there is obvious, tangible mourning. You know, we were present when one of the widows got news that. That one of the other widows had passed away unexpectedly.
We were in a meeting together and.
We were all just sitting there together. She took the phone call and she literally just. She was wearing an apron, and her apron went up over her face and she wailed and then she wiped her tears, told us what had happened, we prayed together, and then we ate, and there was no discomfort around that. There was no. Wow, this is awkward. And I have to really hint, I feel what I feel. I express what I feel. Let's move on. And it's like that with joy and with sorrow and
with anger and with. There's none of this. Well, I'm not quite sure where I stand with you because maybe you're just keeping up appearances and you're. No, yeah, I know. Right where I stand with you because we're smiling and we're laughing or we're frustrated and we're gonna have an argument and we're. But it's so healthy. Yes, it's so healthy because things never fester under the surface. You know, it's a, it's a. We take this day by day and we.
We trust one another with the reality of what we're feeling and thinking and doing, and it's. There's a freedom there in the relationships because you can do that.
I love the fact that, you can sit and ask questions, and I know that there is some cultural things that, when they're dealing internally, that causes some issues long term and things like that. But I know. I noticed when we're there, we can be very upfront in asking questions, and we can be very honest and they're honest back with us. And I love when we get those opportunities, when we go to different churches up, in different communities where we get to have the meal
together. And there's just that, those quiet moments where you're just kind of together and you're just laughing and you're just talking and just going through words. It's not a. It's not one of those moments where it's like, we have to be serious. It's one of those moments where we can actually be friends and family and.
And get to know one another, get.
To know each other.
I think one of my favorite ones of those moments was our. It would have been our second trip when we took our son with us. We took Reese. Yeah, Reese is a biggest. You know, he lives the country life. You know, he's. Cowboy hat and boots is his gig. and he plays guitar and he brought his guitar with him, on that trip and played and sang in some of the churches that we were in. And the people just kind of fell in love with the fact that we had brought a real american cowboy out to business.
And, all but the one day we got talking to, with, we were in Nairobi, and we got talking with Pastor Steve and Mary, his wife, and, a couple of the other pastors that were there. And we got talking about how one of our favorite family things to do when we're just being silly together is we. We pose for family pictures, but we pose as though we're doing an album cover. You know, you stare off into the middle distance and, you know, serious, like.
1980S, 1990s album covers where nobody makes.
Eye contact with the camera. You're looking off into the middle distance, never all in the same direction. You're all off in different directions and the very staged pose and everything. And so we're demonstrating this, and we ended up, at the mall that afternoon trying to do one of these silly family photos with Pastor Steve and some of the other pastors, and they just couldn't stop giggling about it.
Oh, yeah.
So there is no serious looking off into the mid distance. It's looking off into the mid distance and kind of grinning and giggling.
yeah. So.
But it was, it was fun just getting to go. You know what? We minister together and we tackle the, the very serious spiritual side of things together. But it's also family, and we get to play together and we get to be silly and we get to have fun. And it's good. Yes, it's just good.
Well, hopefully you guys have enjoyed, this little trek with us back down, some memory lane, as we've talked about this. And one of the reasons why we love sharing about Kenya, number one, it is our passion and we love supporting them. And, we encourage, if you want to be a part of that, you can go to our website and you can also participate in the feeding programs that we do and all those things that we,
support, with our partners there. But the other thing is we wanted to just kind of throw out to you this idea of missions. It's so much fun and it's so much discovery to carry the gospel and to minister to people in a far off land, you know?
And it's a journey to come to love the place and the people and to see. To see with eyes that God has for what he created there.
Exactly. And it's been just such an exciting time. And we continue to work with our friends and our partners in Kenya, and we will continue to be working with them. Hopefully, we'll see him again real soon.
Yes.
Well, thank you guys so much for hanging out with us this week. We'll love to see you again next week. Yeah, all right. Okay, well, love you. Bye. Bye.