.jpg)
Greetings from Obama-land! At least, that’s what Kenya feels like these days, thanks to the US election. One of the major Kenyan TV stations suspended their programming on election day to run hours and hours of CNN coverage, so Bill and I (Stephanie) got to watch US election returns in real time for the first time since I can’t remember when. Of course we had to stay up all night to do it, because of the time difference, but it was worth it. Then the Kenyan president declared a national holiday to celebrate Obama’s victory, and we had a day off from classes. Our Kenyan friends were amazed when we told them that people in the US don’t get a day off work to vote, and didn’t get a day off to celebrate the election. But watching this election from the vantage point of Africa, it’s not hard to understand why it captured the imagination of people around the world.
We’ve also been watching the US financial markets since that has a global impact as well a personal one. But it, too, looks a little different from here. In my work with the Accrediting Council for Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA) I have a colleague who’s a white Zimbabwean. He and I happened to be sitting next to each other at a conference in South Africa last month checking the internet on our laptops. I was looking at our rapidly diminishing retirement investment account and made some comment about it to him. “Yeah,” he said, “my wife and I used my entire pension savings to pay the electric bill one month, back when the hyperinflation was just beginning.” Sort of puts things in perspective. He’s the development and finance director at a theological college in Zimbabwe, and he said that in light of the global economic crisis he and the rest of the college leadership had a meeting recently to consider what the implications might be for their school. He said that after a short discussion they all just threw up their hands and laughed, saying “What further difference can this possibly make?!”
Compared to those international headlines, our life here at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST) has seemed fairly serene for the past month or so. For various reasons I missed sending our supporting partners an update in October—my apologies!—and several of you have emailed to ask how we are, since you hadn’t heard any news. But part of it was that there wasn’t much to tell. As they say about writing, ‘no conflict, no story’, and actually, we’re enjoying being here so much I couldn’t think of anything interesting to put in a newsletter. You may have to wait until we’ve been here long enough to develop some juicy problems before the newsletters get more entertaining! God has been really good to us to bring us to this point in our lives, and we’re grateful. We recently informed our NEGST and SIM supervisors that we’d like to stay on through the 2009-2010 academic year, so please do pray that the Lord continues to provide all the financial resources needed for us to do that—in a year when we know many of our individual donors and supporting churches may be struggling financially.
NEGST is on trimesters, so we’ve just finished our first 10-week teaching term and the students are preparing for exams. At the moment they’re all completely stressed, but we faculty members are enjoying the break from classes. This term Bill’s been teaching Systematic Theology I to the second-year MA’s and MDiv’s, plus Old Testament Survey to a small group of undergraduate extension students. He has also been busy helping his Ghanaian department head get the fledgling African Society for Evangelical Theology (ASET) off the ground. Bill is serving on a couple of ASET committees and has been overseeing the writing of the constitution. I have half of the first-year MDiv’s and MA’s for Hermeneutics, and a very keen group of second years for Intermediate Greek—which is quite a tough course, sort of like Greek ‘boot camp’ (military basic training), so it’s a bonding experience for all of us! Actually, most of my energy goes into trying to teach my hermeneutics students how to think logically and write clearly. I’m constantly intrigued by how many very bright African students we have whose poor educational background means that they can’t put a coherent thought together and write it down. When I push-push-push them, at first they’re surprised, and then eventually they rise to the challenge and start producing some decent work. But it’s a process… We’ve just received our teaching assignments for next term, starting in January: Bill will continue with Systematic Theology II, and also take the MDiv’s for The Ministry and Mission of the Church, while I continue with my Greek students in Greek Exegesis (Narrative Books). I’m only teaching one class next term because I have a lot of ACTEA work and travel scheduled for January through March.
In fact, that’s probably my biggest challenge at the moment—keeping up with the ACTEA work. Besides the backlog from the two months I was away this summer in the US, I’ve inherited about a year’s worth of undone projects from a staff colleague who’s just gone on study leave. In my mind’s eye it’s a towering pile of tasks that’s going to topple over and bury me. But it’s interesting work. Right now I’m organizing an on-site assessment to accredit a large Baptist seminary in Nigeria (will travel there with an ACTEA team in February), and workshops in Kenya and Ethiopia in March to train instructors from theological colleges in educational goals and methods (faculty from Trinity and Columbia seminaries in the US coming to lead those). And in January I’ll go to Zambia for an ACTEA staff meeting, so all that will keep me on the road.
Bill and I made a small road trip of our own the week before last, driving several hours into the Kenyan countryside to spend the weekend with Samuel and Esther Chege Ngarachu. When Bill was a university student he spent two months living with Samuel and Esther and their three young children in their tiny rough plank home and following Samuel around the circuit of five small rural churches he pastored. Bill was the first ‘mzungu’ (white guy) they’d ever had stay with them, so it was a learning experience on both sides! That was 28 years ago. Since then Samuel and Esther have been our father and mother in Kenya, and we’ve been able to visit them a number of times and to watch their kids grow up into well-educated Kenyan professionals. Now Samuel’s 71 years old, and he and Esther have retired on a small farm. No electricity, no running water, but lots of warmth and good times at their house! We sat around and reminisced, met some of their neighbors on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning Bill preached to the little congregation of twenty people at their local church. Then they sent us home with our car loaded with produce from the farm. (Esther wanted to send a live chicken with me, but I passed on that.) A great reminder for us of what the multi-cultural family of God is all about.
Linnea (20) and Caroline (18), both at the University of Virginia, are in the last stretch of their semester, with exams looming. Now we’re counting down the days until they come to Kenya for Christmas, especially since it will have been a whole year since Bill has seen Linnea. Actually, it would’ve been cheaper (because of the dates we’re able to travel) for us to go to the States for Christmas rather than for them to come here. But when we floated that idea we got a stream of incensed emails: “We are Africans! We want to come home to Africa for Christmas! You don’t understand who we are as missionary kids and what we need!” But you don’t even know anyone here in Kenya… “It doesn’t matter. It’s Africa and we want to come!” As missionary parents Bill and I felt a certain sense of gratification in that, so now we’re looking forward to a relaxed tropical Christmas together.
That’s our news, and here’s a list of our current prayer requests:
- Praise for a good first term teaching at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), and prayer as we prepare next term’s classes: Bill teaching systematic theology and ministry of the church, and Stephanie teaching Greek exegesis.
- Prayer for Stephanie’s work with the Accrediting Council for Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA)—especially for the preparation she’s doing now for projects in Nigeria in February and in Ethiopia and Kenya in March.
- Prayer for Caroline (18) and Linnea (20) finishing the semester at the University of Virginia, and for their long-distance travel to see friends at Thanksgiving and ‘home’ to Kenya for Christmas.
- Prayer for the continuing legal conflict with Stephanie’s brother over selling their late parents’ house and resolving their father’s estate, and prayer for the family friend who’s agreed to take power of attorney over the house to help move the process along. This situation is a sad and bitter one; please pray for Stephanie’s brother’s salvation in the midst of it.
Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends! And we pray for all of you wherever you are, especially in these uncertain economic times around the world. God is good, and we’re trusting him to provide for each of us. It will be interesting to see how he does it…
blessings,
Stephanie
for Bill, Linnea and Caroline Black
Here’s me (Stephanie, second row at left) with my hermeneutics class. I told them to wave to our supporters!
One of the things we appreciate about NEGST is the diversity of the student body. In this snippet from our hermeneutics class photo there are students from Kenya, Nigeria, the Gambia, the UK, the US, and Korea.
Doing group exercises on the chalkboard in Intermediate Greek class—my attempt to make learning all that grammar interesting for the students. Njeri, George and Daniel (all from Kenya) laughing as they struggle to come up with the answers…
Soren (Denmark) writes for his group…
…while Mary (Kenya) writes for hers as Sharon (US) and David (Kenya) cheer her on.
Uchay (DR Congo) shows off the finished product.
You Anglicans and Episcopalians out there may be interested that we spent Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago at Kenya’s Anglican cathedral…
…watching one of our American NEGST colleagues being ‘made’ a deacon (first step toward ordination to the priesthood). Just one more way Anglicans in Africa are influencing the church in the US.
A completely different setting: the farm owned by our Kenyan ‘parents’…
Samuel…
…and Esther.
Me getting dressed to visit their church on Sunday morning. No electricity or running water, but there are ways around that.
Bill sitting with the elders before church, to plan the worship service.
Afterwards, the three pastors: Samuel (retired), Stephen (current pastor of this and several other congregations in the area), and Bill (guest preacher).
Back on the home front, Linnea (L) and Caroline (R) show off their university colors at a weekend retreat for their Christian fellowship group. (They claim they did not plan to wear those shirts on the same day!)
