27 April 2013

Greetings from Kenya… I think! After two months in Ethiopia, now ten days at home in Kenya, then ten days in the UK starting next week, then planning to arrive in the US in mid-May, I (Stephanie) am finding it a bit hard to keep track. First a report on my Ethiopia trip, then Bill’s update, and then I’ll tell you about our plans for the rest of 2013.  

I finished up my Term 2 courses at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST, part of Africa International University) a bit early at the end of February and headed to Ethiopia on 1 March. This was my first time back to teach at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology (EGST) since we moved from Addis Ababa in 2008. So many new impressions – how dramatically Addis Ababa has changed with new roads and new high-rise buildings everywhere, how much EGST has grown both in student numbers and in facilities, how many familiar missionary faces have moved away and new ones have come. But lots still the same – that great taste of Ethiopian food and fresh juice drinks from tiny storefront cafés, speaking my stumbling Amharic, old friends I hadn’t seen in years, and the vivid reminder that as one of the least developed countries in Africa, logistics in Ethiopia (accommodations, phone, internet access, transport) can be challenging. By comparison we call super-globalized Nairobi ‘Africa lite’ or ‘Africa with training wheels’, and I sometimes feel that my life here looks like a typical suburbanite’s anywhere. At least in Addis Ababa I felt like a real missionary again.  

Three highlights from my two months in Ethiopia: First, the 24 students in my Advanced Hermeneutics class at EGST were fantastic, one of the best groups I’ve taught in years. I was energized by their enthusiasm, their academic capacity (including more ability in English than I remember from five years ago), and by having a small handful of very capable women in the class, several of whom are in EGST’s Female Faculty Development Program. So exciting to have the opportunity to speak into their lives at this point in their professional growth. And a big difference from the years when I was the only woman in Ethiopia with a PhD in a biblical or theological subject, and would normally have only one or two women students in each class – or often, none. Secondly, I had the chance to travel to the remote north of Ethiopia to facilitate a weekend women’s retreat for ten missionary women who rarely get a break or a ‘top-up’ in their ministries. So lovely to be with these dear friends and committed servants for rest, Bible study and fun. And thirdly, during Bill’s short trip to Ethiopia over Easter weekend we were able to visit the new pastor and many of Bill’s former staff members at the International Evangelical Church where Bill was senior pastor for four years. After a painful ending to Bill’s ministry at the church (not related to any of these people), the opportunity to sit down together for coffee and great memories was such a gift. A very healing event.  

While I’ve been in Ethiopia, Bill’s been beavering away at St Paul’s University, teaching undergraduate courses in Church History and Systematic Theology, and post-graduate courses in the History of Eastern Christianity, The History of Monasticism and Research Methodology. He’s also produced proposals for St. Paul’s new PhD programs in Christian History and in Systematic Theology, and otherwise tried to keep his head above water. He preaches monthly at the Orthodox cathedral in Nairobi and has preached at several rural parishes as well. And he’s been busy writing, or at least trying to get things he has written published. Some good news: his article “Offended Christians, Anti-Mission Churches and Colonial Politics: One Man’s Story of the Messy Birth of the African Orthodox Church in Kenya” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Religion in Africa. Bill’s still searching for someone to publish the book he’s written on varying approaches to spiritual authority among Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox, so please pray that someone might want to pick that up.  

Now I have one more week in Kenya to organize my life (hah!) before leaving for the UK and a longer than usual stay in the US. Bill will finish his term at St Paul’s and we’ll meet up in Virginia in mid-May. I’ll be in Cambridge from 5-12 May, looking forward to seeing UK friends and supporters there. It’s been four years since I’ve visited, so lots of catching up to do. Then to Virginia until December 2013. This will be the first time since 2003 that we’ve had a ‘home assignment’ of longer than 2-3 months. Ten years! The first big event will be Caroline’s graduation from the University of Virginia on Sunday, May 19th. Following that we’re looking forward to some extended time for reflection and counseling at this point in our life and ministry, asking God to show us the way forward personally and professionally. It’s ‘home assignment’ not vacation, so it does involve work: Bill will be raising support for his new ministry relationship with The Antioch Partners, and I’ll have plenty to do on my MA in Teaching English for Academic Purposes, including volunteering in UVA’s summer English program for incoming international students for the month of July, and will continue to supervise NEGST PhD students by email and Skype. We’re also looking forward to visiting all of you who give so generously to make our part in theological education in Africa possible, but fortunately this time we get to do that at a more leisurely pace. And as you can imagine, I’m very excited about having nearly eight months in our cozy little house near Charlottesville, VA. My first autumn in the Blue Ridge mountains in ten years. Fall leaves. Apples. Farmers’ markets. And best of all, our kids nearby. Bliss.

Ethiopia Missionary Redux
Unfortunately I’ve lost my camera, so I can’t show you all the great photos I took. But here are a few highlights I managed to pull together…

First Sunday back – Lunch with missionary friends (me at back right) 

 

My Ethiopian driver’s license has expired, so I spent a lot of time in those blue-and-white taxis

 

Me in my classroom at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology (EGST)

 

Love these students! 

 

 

Tuesdays, 12:30 pm: EGST faculty lunch. That’s EGST Director, Dr. Desta Heliso, in the center 

And me enjoying the faculty lunch (do you notice a food theme?!) 

To remote northern Ethiopia for a women’s retreat – this is pretty much what it looks like up there 

View from the car: you drive through a few little towns… 

…and lots and lots of countryside 

We made it! Gheralta Lodge – those eco-friendly stone buildings on the left are our bedrooms 

Studying together about resurrection and the new earth and what it means for us today… 

 

 …plus lots of down time for missionary women needing a break – Kristi’s found her happy place on the veranda!

The view from my window at 6:30 a.m. God’s beautiful creation 

1 February 2013

Whatever the new normal is for the Blacks, I (Stephanie) think we’ve settled into it. After two years of upheaval and transition since Bill’s conversion to Orthodoxy in January 2011, including his move to a new ministry setting (St Paul’s University) and a new mission agency (The Antioch Partners), I think we’ve finally arrived. We’re at that happy place where a schedule of our classes at two different institutions plus ministry commitments at two different churches is posted on the refrigerator so that each day we can figure out who’s going, who’s coming and whose turn it is to cook! We’re also thrilled to have a new-to-us car so that Bill can get back and forth to St Paul’s – a wonderful gift from First Presbyterian Church in Reading, PA. OK. Stop for a moment. Collect myself. Breathe.

Which is good, because the rest of 2013 represents a certain amount of upheaval of a different sort – lots of travel. I’ll wind up this term’s classes at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology a bit early at the end of February, then spend March and April in Ethiopia teaching Advanced Hermeneutics at our former school, the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology. It’s been five years (!) since we lived and worked in Addis Ababa, with only very brief visits back since. I’m grateful for this more extended opportunity to reconnect with people and ministry in Ethiopia. And after that it will be time for our biannual ‘home assignment’ (furlough) from May till early August. I’ll be in Cambridge, UK, the first week or so in May, then Bill and I will meet up in the US in time for Caroline’s graduation from the University of Virginia. Looking forward to seeing many of you along the way!

But first we have lots of teaching to do. I have my usual two masters-level courses this term, along with supervising two PhD theses and the usual committee work. Last year’s low student intake is showing up in small sizes in the upper-level courses I teach. I only have two students in Exegesis of Greek Narrative and seven in my 1 Corinthians class. Fortunately they’re all quite good students, so at least we can keep some lively interaction going in the classroom. (Keeps the teacher interested as well as the students!) And with fewer students I can focus more on the specific needs of individual students in a multi-national, multi-ethnic classroom. In Greek class one of my two is a woman from DR Congo who speaks Swahili as her mother tongue, plus French. The other is an Ethiopian man who speaks Amharic and struggles in English. So I’ve found that I can have them translate from Greek into their mother tongues and if they speak ve-e-ery slowly I can check to see if they’ve understood the passage correctly and get the translation basically right, even though I can’t always hear the details. We’re enjoying our Greek-English-Swahili-French-Amharic lessons and I think all three of us are learning something.

In 1 Corinthians class this week we got to chapter 7. I usually anticipate a good bit of student interest when we reach this chapter since it deals with marriage, singleness, divorce – and of course, sex. But no, they surprised me. The hot discussion topic in class was what I usually consider Paul’s ‘throw away’ comment at the very end of the chapter: “A wife is bound as long as her husband lives. But if the husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, only in the Lord.” (7:39). That’s because three of the seven students in the class come from ethnic communities where ‘wife inheritance’ (levirate marriage) is still the normal practice. As Christians they’re trying to figure out how to respect their cultural context while mitigating the worst abuses of it. So they were saying things like, “Paul seems to think marriage ends at the husband’s death. But in our culture a woman is still considered married to a particular man even if he has died. On what basis is Paul saying this?” “Is this one of Paul’s ‘commands from the Lord’ or one of Paul’s ‘opinions’? So do we have to apply it exactly as he says, or is this just his own preference?” “Traditionally we let the widow decide which of the husband’s brothers she want to marry. So in that way she’s ‘free to marry whoever she wishes’. Is that OK?” Tell me, as the teacher what would you have said in this discussion?!

Lots of other good stuff going on as well. A quick summary: Bill is teaching Systematic Theology and Church History to undergraduates and History of Monasticism and History of Eastern Christianity to masters students at the St Paul’s main campus this term, plus Research Methodology at the city-centre extension site, along with supervising several students in independent studies and thesis work. He’s pleased to have finished the first draft of plans for new PhD programmes in Church History and Theology at St Paul’s – now waiting for the next round of feedback from his colleagues. He preached last week at the Orthodox ‘cathedral’ (a small one!) in Nairobi. And he’s really enjoying the weekly rehearsal-cum-dinner-parties for the renaissance music group he sings with. For me perhaps the greatest joy is still the biweekly women’s Bible study I lead at my local church – such an amazing fellowship of women with an astounding variety of cultural backgrounds and ages. I’ve also started a new group of women at church who are reading through the Bible chronologically together in 2013. I continue to serve as ‘Ministry Head’ for the team of SIM missionaries seconded to higher-education or healthcare institutions in Kenya. And last but certainly not least in terms of time commitment, I started my online MA in Teaching English for Academic Purposes last month. I’m definitely feeling that disorientation of trying to find my way in an entirely new environment (my first online course, my first School of Education course, etc., etc. – makes me more sympathetic to our own new students!), but I’m finding the content extremely useful.

In our world this month…

Bill’s new wheels – a 1995 Toyota Rav4. It’s sort of purple. He loves it.

SIM Kenya ‘Institutional Partnerships’ Team

The Nairobi-based portion of our team gets together quarterly for lunch and a good chat – here we are on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in January

As Ministry Head for the team, I was leading the discussion. The person with the camera said, “Look animated”!

Such a great group of colleagues on this team, multiple nationalities, a wide range of ministries: theological educators, physicians, nurses, a physical therapist, psychologists, a computer programmer developing a system to digitalize patient records in Kenyan hospitals, a neuropsychology PhD who teaches and does brain research, another colleague  involved in both youth education and national politics, and more.

Bill with his undergraduate Systematic Theology class during afternoon break at St Paul’s University

Students, faculty and staff leaving last Friday’s morning chapel service at St Paul’s 

St. Paul’s Anglican chaplain speaking during chapel

Back at the NEGST/AIU campus here’s the faculty building, my office marked with a star so you can see where I (Stephanie) spend LOTS of time

Except I’m not actually there at that moment because I have rushed over to the campus café in time to grab a plate of rice and beans…

 

…to carry to the Ladies Fellowship Committee meeting where we are planning our next monthly gathering – women students, staff, faculty wives, and I’m the faculty rep

A lot of our ministry takes place outside of class, in individual mentoring and in campus groups like this

Here’s my on-campus ‘Grace Group’ (weekly spiritual formation group) visiting a member’s home earlier today to welcome a new baby in culturally appropriate ways

Cake

Chai (Kenyan tea)

Listening to words of wisdom and encouragement from the only grandmother in the group (not me – my assigned tasks were to bake the cake, pray over the baby and take photos!)

Gifts

And an opportunity for each person to have their photo taken with the baby (that’s me!)