Home!

Merry Christmas friends.

We arrived home safely on xmas afternoon, had a lovely dinner with my folks and flew down to Nelson on boxing morn where we'll be spending 2 weeks.

We're both grateful that you've been traveling along with us in blog form, as well as a little embarrassed about how poor our blogging has been. We knew that there would be challenges but we had no idea about how slow the internet would be and how little blogging time we'd have. So thanks for putting up with our little experiment, we'll be better at it next time i promise! :-)

We had an amazing week in Addis. I spent a very memorable 5 months there in 2005, so I was super keen to show Rosey around. We had a bunch of friends to catch up with, a handful of projects that we were dying to see, as well as eat our way through a week's worth of delicious Ethiopian cuisine.

Ethiopia is a beautiful country in so many ways: beautiful people, culture, land. Heres' a few photos of what we got up to...




Traditional music

Rosey gettin' down!


Injera and wot- Ethiopian food. YUM!















































Visiting the fistula hospital was an amazing experience. Our friend Yasin drinking a macceato. I was working on a cup of Shai (sweet cinnamon tea).


Ethiopian taxi's










The other reason we wanted to spend some time in Addis was to size up future work prospects and see if we could sense whether God was calling us to come back for a decent length of time. We definitely feel like God has been speaking although not in the ways we were expecting. We'd love to go back to Ethiopia sometime in the future, but for now there's plenty to be done at home.

Thanks for following our adventures. Lots of love
Nathan and Rosey.

Safari pics

good bye kenya

I'm sitting in the Nairobi airport waiting for our flight to Addis Ababa. It has been quite an emotional morning saying goodbye to our new friends here in Kenya. we have seen and experienced so much... time has gone far to quickly!
The past two days we have been really spoilt. On Thursday we took a 4 hour bus trip to Amboseli National park for a safari. We arrived midday at the lodge we were staying out to this incredible buffet lunch. It is amazing how nice some familiar food was. I didn't realize that i was missing western food. The lodge was amazing... totally not missionary roughing it. It was a mix of colonial English fare with touches of Masai decoration. All of the rooms had a view to the park and you could see elephants on the horizon!!! That afternoon at 4 we went out for two hours and saw lots of elephants with wee babies, wart hogs, gazelle, giraffes, hippo and lots of bird life. We didn't see any lions or cheetahs, but were told in the early morning safari the chances were higher, as the heat of the day was keeping them in the shade. That evening we had a group of Masai preform a couple of dances and Nathan was invited with one of the guys in our group to jump with them! Apparently the higher you can jump the more woman you will attract! Masai have no problem with polygamy! Thankfully Nathan couldn't jump as high as them, so I was safe! The night sky out there was so clear, and after the busy, noisy and polluted Nairobi the air was so good.
A few months ago Nathan and I went to Auckland zoo and i was so struck by how amazing the animals were and moved by the complexity of our Creator... but to see them in the wild really was something else. A very special experience. We went out again the next morning at 6.30 for 2 hours. This time we were very fortunate to see a pride of lions. After watching them for about 15minutes they started to walk toward the vans and walked right in front of them... so we had a very good view. we also had a clear view of the shy lady - Mt Kilimanjaro. It was magic!
There is much more to say, but i am running out of time again. we are looking forward to having some time by ourselves in Ethiopia and seeing some of the work being done there.
sending love. Rosey

finally an update

apologies again for the length between updates. we have run away from the YMCA internet into the city, which is about a ten minute walk to find something a little faster.
last week our team ran a children's programme for about 150 kids. It was a lot of fun, and a great relief to find just 150 children, instead of the 300 that we were expecting. We have a couple in our group that are employed full time as children's workers, so they had put together an amazing programme with loads of great songs, fun ideas for memory verses, games, stories etc. It was a great chance for us to work as a team as well and get to know each other better.
This week we are working at the church army sanding and painting three of their classrooms... its hot and dusty work!
On sunday Nathan and I went back to Kibera with a friend Jordan to help out with two church services. The first one in english and the second in swahali. The english service was quite small with a congregation of about 50 and it went for about an hour and half. The second, which followed almost immediately after was a lot bigger with maybe 100, and was a lot longer. It was hard work looking engaged as the corrugated iron building slowly heated up, and the smell of the long drop outside whiffed through the building. we had a translator for the service which was also an interesting experience.
After the service we went and visit a friend that lives in Kibera, just a few minutes away from the church. It was hard going back to Kibera this time. I think it knocked me a lot more than last time. I wanted to be there and see the reality of the place, but at the same time wanted to get the hell away from the stink and the business and the vulnerability that I felt. I still don't really know how to process the poverty i have seen there.
have had to head back to the hostel now for dinner, but will try to write again soon. sending love xox rosey

Nairobi skyline. More skyscrapers than you'd think aye!


























Rosey about to use some Rosy!!!

just a few comments from rosey

Hi friends,

as Nathan has written it has been a very busy week, and we have seen and experienced a lot. It has been really great having people from Nairobi guiding us around, as we have heard about their up and coming elections in three weeks, and all about the economic structure of the country. Also our guide that showed us around some of Kibera lived in the area, so we got to visit some of his friends living there. It would blow your mind seeing the tiny one bedroom homes most families live in, and families consist of at least 4-5 children! Coming away from seeing such poverty is quite strange. I though i would have a really emotional reaction to seeing some of the things we saw, but i didn't. I just feel like i really don't know how to start processing things.

The hospitality of people here is amazing. I have eaten a lot of ugali (which is like a firm porridge made from maize) which is a staple here and eaten with most meals with a beef stew which is very tasty. For breakfast every morning i eat mandazi, which is like a slightly sweet donut (Carrie... its so good!!!! )

we have to fly as one of our hosts who brought us to the cafe is ready to go home, and it is threatening to rain.

much love xox

finally, a new post!

Hi there friends!

It's Saturday about midday in Nairobi, which means that we have been away for almost a week.
We arrived safely, but tired on monday arvo local time. Its been a very busy, but great (almost) week. Apologies for taken this long to make a post we've been super busy and we've had some probs trying to get into the blog- the internet at the YMCA where we're staying is unbelievable freakin slow- it took me 10 minutes to log into gmail yesterday!

On Tuesday we were taken on a tour of the city and did some cultural training, Wednesday we visited some women's weaving and craft projects, Thursday we got to hang out with some women making recycled paper cards and then spent a few hours walking through Kibera, Friday we ran a program for a bunch of young people, and then got billeted to stay with locals for the weekend.

The family we're staying with are really cool. Livingstone is a director at Church Army, the agency that is hosting us and his wife is a doctor. They, and a bunch of their relatives live in quite a big house (in local terms) on the outskirts of the city. It rained all night and most of the morning so we spent the morning hanging out the kids and have just ventured out through the mud to find and internet cafe.

This week has been so full of experiences that i could write about. On our tour of the city we saw the contrasts of this place- mansions that would be extravagant back home, five minutes walk away from the mind-numbing poverty of the slums. It would be easy to come away with an experience of Nairobi like the blind men from the story of the blind men and the elephant story (one touches the trunk, another the tusks, etc and each claim to know what an elephant is).