1 February 2011

I (Bill) have been marveling at the apparent flexibility of prices here in Nairobi. For example, if I drive my car to downtown Nairobi from our home, the going rate for SIM ministry-owned cars is $0.50/km, which comes out to $10 per trip one way. If I take a taxi I might pay as much as 1000 Kenya shillings, or $12.50 per trip. If, however, I ride in one of those notorious matatus or buses, the cost plummets to 55 Kenya shillings, or about $0.68. Or take lunch, for example. I was downtown running errands today and was craving a cheeseburger with fries/chips, and topped it off with a piece of apple pie. This set me back about 1040 KSh, or $13. But yesterday, when I popped over to one of my favorite Kenyan food restaurants and filled up on githeri and kale, it set me back only 100 KSh or $1.25. I noticed that men’s shirts were selling for about 2400 KSh ($30) in a ‘discount’ shop at the mall where I had the cheeseburger. But I know that I can get a similar shirt from the vast warren of stalls called ‘Toi Market’ in Kibera for 200 KSh ($2.50) or less.

This raises all sorts of interesting questions, such as what is the real cost, or legitimate cost of whatever it is we are considering? Or why am I willing to pay an outrageous price for one thing without complaint but then get angry when I feel I’ve been overcharged for something else? Or how much does my need for status inform my willingness to forgo cheaper versions of the same thing? For those of us whose affluence affords us the ability to make choices, the answers to these or similar questions can be quite revealing: Why this neighborhood and not that one? Why this school and not that one? Why this car/computer/phone/meal plan for the week? Why this church and not that one? Occasionally our motives are obvious even to ourselves. But usually, it’s complicated. I know this in my own life as I have recently made significant changes in my own church affiliation and have been attempting to explain why to those who know me. And, as with most things, it’s complicated. I’ll get to my story and attempt the explanation in a moment, but first I need to update you on what has been an extraordinary couple of months for the Black family, several happenings that we are excited about and another for which we are grieving.

First, we are thrilled that our daughter Linnea is now engaged to marry William Walker, a 4^th year Virginia Military Institute cadet from Richmond, VA. It looks like the wedding will be July 10 in Charlottesville, VA, after Linnea’s graduation from the University of Virginia in May.

 

William arriving at the Nairobi airport

Both of our daughters Linnea and Caroline traveled to be with us for Christmas. William also came a few days after Christmas, ostensibly to better understand what Linnea’s life as an MK (missionary kid) in Africa was like. He, however, came with an additional agenda item. On the morning after his arrival, William was helping me check out some camping gear we had borrowed when he got right to the point and asked my permission to marry my daughter. I said yes. Having prayed for this for more than 22 years, it was stunning to see God’s provision right there in front of me. The next night Linnea knocked on our door in tears of joy with the good news that she had said ‘Yes’ and that they were now engaged.

Having both girls home with us for the first time in two years, and knowing that William had never been out of the US before, we planned a lot of ‘experience-Kenya-but-as-inexpensively-as-possible’ events. 

 

Caroline with Giraffe Centre friend

This included a couple of overnight trips to places like Lake Naivasha, where we climbed the nearby Rift Valley volcano Longonot and hiked the gorge in Hell’s Gate National Park. 

Circumnavigating the Longonot crater with Caroline, William and Linnea

We also went to Kenya’s magnificent Amboseli National Park at the foot of Kilimanjaro. 

We felt particularly pleased with ourselves because rather than pay 15,000 KSh per person per night at one of the standard lodges, we spent 500 KSh per person per night for camping. This, of course, meant that the Black family went camping. I must say that everyone, especially Stephanie, did brilliantly. It also helps (a lot) to have a former Eagle Scout and engineer-to-be along to help out with the non-Greek and non-theology bits of camping (thanks, William!). Plus it gave William a chance to experience our family as we really are. Camping will do that. Maybe that’s why people go to lodges. 

Um, the poles actually go like this…

Except for the attack of the troop of vervet monkeys through the pop-top of our rented safari van (which I had never thought to close—my bad), who spent an unspecified amount of time joyfully flinging our lunch and their poop all over the back seats, we had a great time together! But you can read Caroline’s take on it at http://words-of-whimsy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-go-on-safari-on-budget.html.

Another bit of very good news and a huge answer to prayer – Stephanie’s parents’ house in Virginia Beach finally sold in December. This closes an unhappy chapter that began when Stephanie’s dad died in April 2007 and included the dissolution of Stephanie’s brother into alcoholism and his death in 2009, all of which coincided with the worst housing market in our lifetime. We are grateful for God’s provision along the way, and for the many individuals who worked and prayed us through, particularly Stephanie’s real estate agent Rosemarie, without whose help we could not have managed. We are now hoping to buy a small house in Charlottesville, VA, and to that end, Stephanie will be traveling there in March to begin that process and move our stuff from a storage facility in Virginia Beach. We haven’t had a home in the US since we left in 1996, so this is a big deal for us.

On a different note, my mother has been in declining health for a number of years and is presently gravely ill and in hospice care at her home in Watkinsville, GA.

  

My mom, Donna Wheeler, with my sister Marsha, in happier times

My older sister (above right) lives in the same community, and another sister several hours away in SC. A third sister is in Cleveland, OH. Having been told by her doctor that she might not have much time left, Stephanie and I decided that I should travel there to see her. So earlier this month I spent about 9 days with my mom. Though she has wasted away and is very weak, I was encouraged that we could have some good conversations. I also made sure that I read the Bible with her and prayed for her. But when the time to go back to Kenya came, I wept with her in prayer, knowing that I will likely not see her again in this world. She continues to cling to life, but every time I check the email or hear the phone, I wonder if this is it.

Lastly, on Saturday, January 8, I became a member of the (Eastern) Orthodox Church in Kenya.

Archbishop Makarios administering Orthodox baptism

This was not the result of a hasty decision, nor was it made in isolation without consultation. I have been wrestling with the implications of Orthodox theology and especially the Orthodox understanding of the church and salvation since 1997 when I became friends with a Russian Orthodox priest and his wife in Cambridge. At first I was embarrassed because there I was, studying for a PhD in church history in Cambridge, and like most Americans I knew next to nothing about the Orthodox Church. I just thought they were like the Roman Catholics. I was wrong. The subsequent fourteen years have been a time of discovery – I acquainted myself with what was for this Western Christian a totally different perspective on Christianity. I talked with and debated issues with Orthodox and non-Orthodox people alike. Stephanie, in particular, though she herself desires to remain Presbyterian, was extraordinarily helpful to me, asking hard questions and helping me uncover what my real motives in all this were. For years, my interest in Orthodoxy was something like a theological hobby. I felt enriched by what I was learning but was too enmeshed in my life as a Protestant pastor, missionary and teacher to think seriously of taking what seemed such a radical step.

Me preaching at IEC in Addis Ababa

And then my world began to unwind. I first began to experience symptoms of disorientation and depression during our first summer in Ethiopia. At the time, I had been taking an antimalarial medication that had warned of a number of possible side effects including depression. My doctor immediately took me off that medication, and within a couple of weeks, I was feeling much better. Eighteen months later, however, I began experiencing the same symptoms, only this time there was no antimalarial to blame. I ignored the symptoms and tried to gut it through, but my mood began affecting my relationship with Stephanie and my ability to focus, and I finally had to admit that something was wrong and get some help. We happened to be in the US at the time, and I went to a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with depression. He put me on an anti-depressant, and again within a week or two the darkness had lifted and I felt like myself again.

After a year with no symptoms, I was given the go-ahead to go off my antidepressant. But six months later, I remember driving somewhere when suddenly I felt as if the world went dark and I was falling through a hole in the ground. It was the same sensation I had had several times before. This time I didn’t wait, but got help immediately and went back on medication. At the time I was the senior pastor of the International Evangelical Church (IEC) in Addis Ababa. Because I have always felt called to a ministry of leadership and discipleship through vulnerability, I shared with my team of elders the nature of my illness and how it was being treated and I asked them to pray for me, hoping this would facilitate genuine community among us. Several weeks later, a delegation of three elders came to my office and said nicely that I was not fit to serve as pastor and that I should take a ‘long vacation’. I asked them if they knew what depression was or how it was treated, and they admitted they didn’t know. I told them that I was being treated and that the medication was effective and that I felt normal and was certainly not impaired in my ability to be a pastor. I heard that the same trio called a(n unconstitutional) meeting of the elder board without me and argued into the night that I should be sacked. Their efforts did not succeed, but I still had to work with them. One of them was the board chairman.

The following two years are a blur in my mind. I will spare you the details, but it did not end well. In October 2007 I resigned as senior pastor. Two days later I was barred by the chairman from addressing the congregation. I have not seen them since. It was reported to me that at a number of meetings the chairman said that the action was taken because the pastor was mentally ill.

I was in shock for the next month and then became increasingly angry through 2008. Except for a few close friends, I felt abandoned and betrayed by my church leadership and colleagues. I couldn’t pray. Church was the last place I wanted to be. To my great relief, we moved to Nairobi that summer to begin a new life and ministry at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST). I set up our house while Stephanie helped Caroline start at UVA. Our teaching went well, but with the new year I became less and less functional. I felt myself sinking into a hole from which I could not climb out. I stared at walls, was easily angered, slept a lot, and alarmingly, began to rehearse ways I could end it all.

Afraid of what I might do, I got help. A Christian psychiatrist diagnosed my depression as a medical issue as opposed to a psychological issue and we have since found a medication that works. But she also helped me to see that my ways of coping with my depression and conflict were themselves destructive and making matters worse. Her insight and help has proven immensely helpful. I feel as though I’ve been led away from the abyss, I feel I am in the process of changing some of these destructive patterns and being healed, and I am profoundly grateful.

Now what has the Orthodox Church to do with all this? In both Cambridge and Addis Ababa, I had been increasingly attracted to Orthodox spirituality. In particular, Orthodox prayers and the lives and sayings of the early desert Fathers and Mothers were particularly compelling. I began making use of some of these prayers in my own private devotions. In the aftermath of the international church debacle, when thinking of God and prayer made me just moan, it was the Orthodox prayers that I had memorized that came back first. When I could say nothing else, I could at least repeat these ancient prayers. The same after my severe bout of depression here in Nairobi. But I began to realize that I couldn’t just pick and choose as if spirituality was flower garden. Rather there was a whole world view, a whole theology—a whole Church—behind those prayers, and the more I began to understand, the more compelling not just the prayers but Orthodoxy itself became.

Here in Nairobi I began attending Orthodox services. And once I understood what was going on, I felt this is where I need to be, no, this is where I must be. The Orthodox Church is what I call a community of the Eucharist, as opposed to the communities of the Word or the communities of the Spirit that Evangelicals and Pentecostals are. In the Orthodox Church, the life of the church and of the individual Christian revolves around the Eucharist. It’s there we become one with Christ and one with each other. It’s through Christ’s body broken and blood shed that our relationship with the Holy Trinity is reestablished, and that every obstacle in our relationships with one another is overcome. Moreover, it is through our participation in the Eucharist that Christ works his healing – we are freed from the consequences and power of sin in our lives, freed to become increasingly what the Spirit is remaking us to be in Christ.

Father Innocentios giving the Eucharist at the church I attend

I am profoundly challenged by Orthodox theology, and am compelled by the facts of Orthodox history. And I find Orthodox worship to be bracingly biblical. But what has really drawn me into Orthodoxy is my desperate need for healing. I tell my students that churches are either museums of the holy or hospitals for the sinful. I’ve found the hospital that I need, and so I’ve decided to check myself in.

Becoming Orthodox could be the most costly decision I’ve ever made. I was afraid that I might lose my job at NEGST, or that I might lose my position with SIM. Most seriously, I was afraid that my choice might make Stephanie lose her job at NEGST and SIM, and that we would be forced to leave the place and work she loves so much, all because of me. Then I was also afraid that our supporting churches would abandon us, and that our individual donors would take offense and leave.

This past fall I consulted with my supervisors at NEGST/AIU and SIM about my desire to become Orthodox. In particular, I explained that as an Orthodox Christian, I can happily sign an Evangelical statement of faith. Based on this, both institutions made the decision that I can carry on my ministry as before, as a full member. I also wrote to all of our sponsoring churches, explaining my decision and asking them to continue their support, as our affiliation and ministry remains unchanged, and especially as Stephanie remains a Presbyterian clergyperson. Most of our supporting churches have indicated that they are still supporting us, though one has indicated that they will end their support after a year. Similarly with our individual donors, most have reaffirmed their support and partnership with us, though a few are no longer willing to continue with us.

So what does this all mean for Stephanie and me and our theological education ministries in Kenya? It means, first of all, having gotten the medical, spiritual and relational help I need, that I haven’t crashed out (or worse) and that I can carry on with the work that brought us to Africa in the first place. It means that I continue to be a full-time faculty member at NEGST; in fact, I’m presently serving as the acting Head of the Theological Studies Department. It means that I continue as a full member of SIM, with the mission’s blessing on our ongoing ministry. It means that Stephanie continues as an ordained Presbyterian minister, as well as her identities as SIM missionary, NEGST faculty member and ACTEA accreditation officer. What changes is that I am no longer an ordained Presbyterian minister, but a layperson, a member of the local Orthodox Church.

I have on purpose not dealt here with any of the theological issues exploring Orthodoxy has entailed. I have, however, written in detail on some of the common misunderstandings many Evangelicals have about the Orthodox Church and would be glad to send you what I’ve written. Just let me know.

So there is a lot going on in the Black family. Here are some things to pray for:

• Pray for our teaching at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), and for Stephanie’s ongoing role as continental accreditation officer for the Accrediting Council for Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA). She just returned from a week’s travel to Angola and is currently planning workshops in Ethiopia and Kenya in March.
• Pray that God would raise up new individuals and even new churches to become partners with us in our ministry to replace those who feel they can no longer contribute to our support.
• Praise God for Linnea and William’s engagement! Pray for the plans they’re making for a wedding this summer, but more importantly that God blesses their relationship and prepares them to be the husband and wife he is calling them to be.
• Pray for Bill’s mom, Donna, that God would give her the strength for these last days, and would raise up the help, encouragement and comfort she needs.
• Pray for Caroline, who is co-leading a bible study at UVA and taking on a leadership role in the weekly all-campus Agape (Campus Crusade) meeting.
• Praise God that Stephanie’s parents’ house sold. Pray that Stephanie would find just the right house to be a home for the Blacks in Charlottesville.

Thank you so much for your willingness to stand with us in prayer. None of this would be possible without you!

By grace,

Bill

(for Stephanie, Linnea and Caroline Black)

Engagement celebration on William’s last night in Kenya—our family has expanded!

27 November 2010

Believe it or not, lately I (Stephanie) have been thinking nostalgically about electric garage door openers. The sort where you go out of your kitchen directly into the garage, get in the car, hit the little button clipped to the sun visor and the door goes up, you back out, you hit the button again and the door goes down as you cruise smoothly down the street. The stuff of dreams. That’s because to do the same task here at our house in Nairobi involves the following steps: (1) slam the iron security grate that covers the front door and lean into it to throw the bolt; (2) lock the padlock on the security grate; (3) walk across the garden and prop open the gate, hoping the dogs don’t run out; (4) walk back to the detached shed, reach in through the slot in the door—again leaning into it to get the right alignment—and unlock the padlock by feel (the lock’s inside so that thieves can’t come at night and use a hacksaw to remove it); (5) pull open the wide metal doors and prop them open with a rock; (6) drive the car out of the garage and make a tight curve through the gate onto the gravel driveway; (7) stop the car, get out, close the gate; (8) get back in the car, go. Then come home and do the whole thing in reverse. Full disclosure: actually, Bill usually does this for me. (Thank you, Bill!) And normally I walk the ten minutes along a dirt road it takes to get to my office, so it’s not like I have to do it every day. Just often enough to dream of little buttons on the sun visor.

But in a way all that awkward locking, unlocking and assuming unusual positions to get the alignment right is a bit like what it’s meant for us to live and work cross-culturally in Africa for the past decade. American Thanksgiving this week, November 25^th, happened to be the ten-year anniversary of the day Linnea, Caroline and I first arrived in Ethiopia. Bill got there about a week before us to set up our new home while the girls and I stopped in Cambridge for them to say good-bye to one phase of life before encountering an entirely new and alien one. It was such a relief, after a long intercontinental flight with a 10- and 12-year-old, and a midnight drive from the Addis Ababa airport along dark and mysterious potholed streets, to collapse into beds Bill had already made up with our own familiar sheets and comforters. Ever since then our lives have been about ‘unlocking’ many of our comfortable preconceptions and our assumptions about what’s normal or even what’s ‘Christian’ (astonishing how much of Africa culture is closer to a biblical worldview than my own American experience is), and ‘locking’ ourselves into a commitment to new communities and new perspectives. In the process it sometimes takes a little extra ‘leaning in’ and fiddling a bit with things we can’t quite see clearly in order to open the doors to new relationships. No one said it would be easy. But I wouldn’t trade a day of it. (Well OK, maybe one or two specific days I remember…) I feel so unbelievably privileged to be part of the emergence of Africa as the global center of Christianity in the 21^st century and to have been given a small role to play in it. This Thanksgiving I am very, very thankful for eight years in Ethiopia and these past two years in Kenya and all God has done during that time. I’m also very thankful for the many of you who have stood with us as partners and encouragers during those ten years. We are blessed!

And hopefully there’s more to come. Who would think that after teaching in Africa for ten years I’d still constantly be stumbling across basic cultural and worldview assumptions my students hold that are (surprise!) quite different from mine. One of the things I’ve been doing this past term at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST) is working with the new cohort of PhD candidates on critical thinking and academic writing. All these years I’ve been marking student papers and scribbling the same corrections in the margins over and over and over again, until it finally dawned on me—fairly recently, I confess—that the repeated ‘mistakes’ in the students’ writing are actually very specific cultural patterns of organizing and presenting ideas that leave an imprint on their English writing. On the internet I eventually came across what other people are saying about something called ‘contrastive rhetoric’, which looks at how patterns of communication learned in home cultures can affect international students trying to succeed at UK and US universities. So what I‘ve tried to do this term is help the PhD students become more conscious both of Western conventions of academic writing and of the ways similar communication works in their own communities (which means I’ve had to learn more about how it works), so that they can choose just how ‘Western’ or ‘African’ they want to be in any particular piece they’re writing.

Of course what would be even better is if we—really, they—can find or develop a writing style to use in their doctoral dissertations that speaks both to the international academic community and to their home cultures. One of the most enlightening things we did as a group this term was to have each PhD student write a short essay representing an example of persuasive oral ‘expert rhetoric’ in their own village or community. I asked them to be as imaginative as possible and to make up something that spoke in a way they felt particularly comfortable with. (I wanted to see what sort of styles and patterns they would use.) They came up with all sorts of great things, mostly along the lines of someone trying to convince their village to do something that would benefit the village as a whole. Lots of great stories, clever proverbs, and African ways of showing appreciation for the elders were in there, along with a less explicit and direct, more involve-the-listener way of communicating. When we read and discussed the essays in class the students kept saying things like, “This feels so comfortable.” “This is us.” “Why can’t we write like this all the time?” One quite gifted Sudanese doctoral student said, “If books were like this I could read four hundred books. But I struggle with books because it’s difficult to figure out what they’re trying to say.” They were intrigued to start putting some descriptive labels on their own styles of communicating. (One said, “I didn’t even know we had a style.”) So now our goal as a group is to try to come up with some way to do academic writing that’s scholarly and also truly African—in spite of the fact that given Africa’s primarily oral cultures there are hardly any local models of writing styles at all. If these students can find their African ‘voice’ in their own scholarly writing it might be a significant move forward for other emerging African theologians as well. Who knows, it might work. We’re just making this stuff up as we go along.

The NEGST term finished with exams this week, and while these students are having a break till January, Bill and I leave tomorrow for the town of Eldoret in western Kenya where we’ll teach a three-week module from 29 Nov - 17 Dec for NEGST’s cohort of MA extension students there. I’ll be teaching first-year Greek, while Bill does Old Testament Theology. Eldoret is a regional agricultural market center but unfortunately isn’t particularly known for anything else. I’ve been asking friends, both Kenyans and foreigners, what there is to do in Eldoret for three weeks, and the answer seems to be “not much”. I guess that means Bill and I will have plenty of time to get caught up on reading and email. Oh well.

The big family news this month is that it looks like we’re about to sell my parents’ house! We have a signed sales contract and the closing is tentatively planned for mid-December. I’m holding my breath, not quite able to believe this 3½-year saga may be drawing to a close. If the sale goes through it will be a huge burden lifted from my shoulders as the executor, it will relieve some of the financial pressure on us from trying to maintain the house, it will give me the chance to move on from my parents’ and brother’s deaths, and it means Bill & I can start looking for a small house to buy in the US since we currently have no permanent ‘home base’. So you can see this is a very big deal. Thank you so much to all of you who have been praying us through this long sad tale. God is faithful.

The other happy news is that Linnea (22) and Caroline (20) are coming to Nairobi for Christmas. They arrive just three days after we get back from Eldoret so I’ve been busy baking and filling the freezer in advance. Then two days after Christmas Linnea’s boyfriend William will join us for a couple of weeks, his first trip outside the US. We’re looking forward to some great family time and to showing him a bit of Kenya.

So that’s our news and here are our current prayer points:

• Praise for a good term just finished at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), and prayer as we prepare our courses for next term: Systematic Theology and Contemporary Theology for Bill; Exegesis of Greek Narrative and Exposition of Acts for Stephanie.
• Prayer for our travel to Eldoret in western Kenya from 28 Nov - 17 Dec to teach at NEGST’s extension program there: first-year Greek for Stephanie and Old Testament Theology for Bill.
• Praise for the sales contract for Stephanie’s parents’ house, and prayer that the sale will be completed in December. This has been a 3½-year ordeal and we’re excited that it may be coming to an end.
• Praise that we ended the SIM fiscal year with all the financial support we needed. And please pray God’s blessings on our wonderful and faithful supporters!
•  Prayer for safe and smooth Christmas travel from Virginia to Kenya for Linnea (22) and Caroline (20) on 20-21 Dec, and Linnea’s boyfriend William on 26-27 Dec, and for wonderful family time together.

And may God grant each of you, our friends around the globe, relaxed and worshipful holidays this month with your own friends and family, celebrating his goodness to each of us in Jesus Christ.

Christmas blessings,

Stephanie

for Bill, Linnea and Caroline Black

Recent Bits & Pieces

NEGST Ladies Fellowship

NEGST women students, wives of students, and staff women got together this month to show off our various cultures and traditions. I love this photo of women from Eritrea, Sudan, Zambia and Malawi listening to their friend from Kenya explain some favorite foods.

Showing how to pound grains and spices in DR Congo

Demonstrating how Kikuyu ‘aunties’ welcome a new bride

Then everyone got to taste the food samples (my favorite part!)

NEGST ‘Grace Group’

Every Friday morning from 10-11 we have small fellowship groups on campus with students, support staff and faculty members mixed together. Here’s our ‘Grace Group’ meeting at one of the student flats.

The snacks: ubiquitous tea (above) and steamed sweet potato and arrowroot (below).

Happy Grace Group members (wouldn’t you be if you got a hour’s break from class or your office on Friday mornings?)

Bill savoring a cup of Kenyan chai

Stephanie’s Greek Class

There’s probably not much that can be as mind-numbing as two hours of Greek syntax just after lunch every Tuesday and Thursday (who came up with this course schedule?!) so we do a lot of keep-everybody-awake-and-moving stuff like getting up and writing on the chalkboard

Here’s the whole class, mostly MA/MDiv students and a sprinkling of PhD candidates relearning their Greek. They’re an all-star group—but don’t tell them I said that!

Springtime in Kenya

While those of you in the northern hemisphere enjoy autumn leaves, we have these amazing purple jacaranda trees that burst out all over Nairobi. I took this photo on my walk home from my office.

The tree tomatoes ripening in our garden have been attracting all sorts of great birds—and monkeys, too

This one was gleefully tormenting our dogs while making sure to stay safely out of reach on the roof

And on the other side of the ocean…

Caroline (left) demonstrates her college spirit at a UVA football game

As far as I know, this was the only one she went to all year. But maybe I’m underestimating her passion for American football???

Linnea (far right) trick-or-treating with her Somali little sisters (center) in the ‘Bridging the Gap’ mentor program for immigrant families she helps direct at UVA. Evidently they wanted to be vampire cheerleaders but Linnea convinced them princesses were better.