To The Southern Hemisphere and Back Again

I suspect this is going to be a long blog post, but I really appreciate your reading it all.

Isaac and I traveled to Nakuru for the weekend, as I believe I mentioned previously. We rented a car and drove down there on Friday afternoon. Isaac has limited experience driving a manual transmission automobile so it wasn’t the smoothest ride, but we made it only behind schedule 45 minutes or so. Unfortunately, this meant we were driving in the dusk/dark for 45 minutes. Once in town, the car stalled and wouldn’t restart. Isaac is from Nakuru so he was able to call a mechanic friend, Steve, to come look at it. In the meantime, he got another vehicle to take me to the hotel where I was going to stay (his friend is one of the managers). Unfortunately, a large school group had booked all the rooms. Boniface, the hotel manager, took us to another hotel where I got a good rate and a small, but comfortable room.

Steve was able to jump the car and get it to his garage. He replaced the spark plugs and did some other small things to make it run a little more smoothly, but the car has a small battery that I believe is drained by the headlights faster than it is charged.

On Saturday, while Steve worked on the car Isaac, Sammy (a tour guide friend of Isaac’s), and I went to Lake Nakuru National Park in Sammy’s vehicle. The game drive was quite good. Pictures can be seen here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100552500626248.2954042.13750887&l=44fb9b0dc2) I enjoyed this park more than others I have been to due to the great scenery. In the afternoon, we went to Crater View, a large ridge and dormant volcano kind of thing overlooking Nakuru and the countryside. In the very late afternoon, we went to town where Sammy showed me around and I did a little bit of shopping for trinkets. The people were quite nice and I had multiple conversations with Arsenal fans due to my wearing a jersey that I bought earlier in the trip. While I know very little about the Arsenal team, I was able to maintain the conversations by getting them to do the talking. It was fun talking to them and hearing their enthusiasm.

On Sunday, Steve, Isaac, and I went to Lake Bogaria, a saline lake that with geysers, hot springs, and many flamingoes. It was a great place to relax, see some animals, and enjoy the scenery.

On the way back to Eldoret we took a scenic shortcut meaning we drove through the Kerio Valley. Basically, it was a tortuous drive up and down ridges. There were a few beautiful overlooks on the drive making it well worth the tight turns and steep grades.

The rest of this blog post will be much more personal. I’ve been balancing a large amount of stress the past week both caused by various unplanned incidents (such as the car dying) as well as a few large project hiccups that are not completely resolved. Last night it made me quite tired, but tonight it pushed me to the point of complete frustration. After taking some time to pray and taking a forced break due to the internet and then the power going out I took out my pent up frustration out on some laundry before it got completely dark. Basically, the cause of much of my personal frustration seems to be stemming from my general lack of keeping Christ as the motivation for this project. I’ve gotten caught up in collecting good data so we can have good results and conclusions such that we can get published, etc….Despite all the ways that I could list of how the project is not going to plan, we are still bettering the lives of people by providing water filters and doing so to even more people than we were anticipating.

It is at times like this that I’m reminded of the necessity of fellowship in the body of Christ (which I have been lacking) and continually spending time in Scripture (sporadic at best for the past few weeks).

After spending some more time in prayer over my laundry I was starting to feel better and refocused. I then meditated on 1 Corinthians 15:58 “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” for a while (thanks Leanne!) focusing primarily on the fact that laboring for the Lord is the prerequisite for non-vain labor. I would ask that you would join me in praying that I (and you!) would be focused on the work of the Lord (see also Colossians 3:17) and motivated to work for him rather than for selfish, temporary desires.

-Steven