Merry Christmas!

Here are the pictures I promised from our Thanksgiving lunch with friends and our "Turkey bowl" flag football game! Hope you enjoy!!

 

This is our gathering for the Thanksgiving feast!

Us in our "Turkey Bowl" shirts!  :)

The Gentlemen! 

The Ladies!!

This is the group of Turkey bowlers! Most played, some were spectators. We had a blast!

On to the present: We are officially out of school for 3 weeks on Christmas break! Our first semester at Rosslyn went very well. It wasn't without stress or frustration, but that was to be expected with all of the newness we experienced. Ed is settled into his job quite nicely and I feel like I am getting the hang of mine. Being here in Nairobi is becoming more and more normal to us. We are realizing that Christmas time is a hard time to be so far away from family. Please keep us in your prayers that our homesickness during this time will be a minimum. We are blessed to be able to spend Christmas dinner with some friends and their parents who came over. I will fill you in on all of those details after Christmas. I pray that you all have a wonderful Christmas celebrating the birth of our Savior! God bless!!

 

~Ed and Tricia

 

Blessed Thanksgiving

Greetings and Happy Belated Thanksgiving!! I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings with family and friends. This year was our first year to not be able to spend the holiday with our family. As much as we would have loved being with our family, I think we definitely  had the next best thing! We were surrounded by friends and actually got to have 2 awesome Thanksgiving meals!

On Thursday evening we had dinner at the Conways. The Conways are a family that my younger brother and sister-in-law got to know last summer when they were here on a mission trip. They are such a sweet family and have been so welcoming to us. Hollye set up her dining room with all fall things: leaves, a fall table cloth, candles... It was so homey feeling and really just made us feel like we were having a "normal" Thanksgiving. We are so thankful to them for allowing us to be a part of their Thanksgiving dinner. :)

On Friday we got together with some Rosslyn folks to have a Thanksgiving lunch. There were about 19 adults and 6 kiddos and we had it in a finished basement of a Rosslyn rented house. The kids had made place mats and name tags for all of us which was really cute. We had an assortment of holiday foods and enjoyed some great fellowship. Afterwards. (a couple hours afterwards...gotta let the food settle!!) about 14 of us went out and had the 1st Annual Turkey Bowl! Sounds fun, huh?! We played flag-football for an hour and a half straight. It was so much fun! We had gotten together earlier in the week and made some Turkey Bowl t-shirts. I didn't have my camera, but am supposed to be getting emails of some pics. I'll post some on here when I get the. Anyway, we had a great time and a wonderful holiday weekend! We are very blessed with the friends God has provided. :)

Again, I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving! Love and miss!

~Ed and Tricia

National Holiday

Hello all! Well to start with the first part of my title, we got a day off of school when Obama won the Presidential Election. So, how many days did ya'll get off in the states?? :) Yeah, I know, it was a crazy week! The President of Kenya called a National Holiday on Wednesday when the vote was final. We found out that holidays can be called without a moments notice! Definitely different than what we are used to! We had an inservice that Monday and then had Thursday off as well. The students only had school 3 days that week! We also weren't the only country in Africa to have a day off. One country got 2 days while another got a whole 5 days!! Yep, can you say "Craziness!!!!"

 

Anyway, we are doing well. Still staying busy. Ed is done with basketball while this will be my last week. Our Varsity girls won a tournament this last Saturday which was a lot of fun. Tomorrow (Wed.) we play in the League Semi-Final game to determine whether we will have the opportunity to play for the championship. It has been fun and I have really enjoyed the girls.

Ed sends his regards. :) We love and miss you all! May God be with you and bless you!

~Ed and Tricia

Catching up

Us!

This is Ed and one of his 8th grade students next to the different animal bones and skulls.

Sweetwater has a santuary set up for chimps because they have become endangered. They started with a couple that were rescued and now have dozens in their care.

Zebras!

Family of Rhino's. The baby was cute! :)

Hello all! So I just remembered that the time change in the states took place last night. Now there is a 9 hour difference between us and our beloved Texas. :) And yes, that is very confusing! We are doing well. Staying busy at the school. It is hard to believe it is already November! A month and a half and we will be on Christmas break and finished with our first semester at Rosslyn. Above are some pictures of the middle school CFS trip. Part of that trip was going on a short safari with our group of students. The pictures are from that event. Hope you enjoy them! We love and miss you all so much! Thank you for your continued prayers. 

Love,

Ed and Tricia

Mt. Longonot Pictures

Finally! Here are some pictures from our adventure on Mt. Longonot. I kind of put them in here backwards, sorry about that! The first picture is from the highest peak on the mountain. You have to climb up and then climb around more to finally make it to the peak. The view was gorgeous as you can see here!

This is the group of guys that went. We were a mixture of couples and singles.

~And here are the ladies~

This was our view when we got up the first part of the mountain. The highest peak across from this spot is the peak that the first picture is taken from. We climbed about an hour and a half to get from this point to the highest peak. It was definitely worth it! Hope you enjoy these!

Middle School CFS

Well, we made it through 3 days of camping with 8th graders! We left Tuesday morning and arrived back in Nairobi Thursday afternoon. We definitely had an eventful trip! We took 2 buses and 1 van there and Ed and I were the sponsors on one of the buses. Our bus was the lucky one to break down on the side of the road. So imagine, a bus full of 8th graders in rural Kenya. Fun, fun! We ended up being on the side of the road for about 2 hours. The other bus got to camp and dropped off those students and then had to come back to get us and our luggage which was on top of the bus. Oh, and I forgot to mention the 2-3 times we had to stop before the bus broke down because things were falling off of the top of the bus! It was definitely an interesting journey!

We camped out in tents and had a guide group that ran all of the activities. When we got there we started with 4 groups and had team-building exercises. Like the log walk and spiders web. The next 2 days we had 3 groups with 3 activities. On Wednesday our group went on a mini safari. It was fun especially since Ed and I haven't been on a Safari yet and don't plan on going anytime soon. (we figure we have plenty of time for this!) We saw zebras, giraffes, impalas, warthogs (and little babies, which were actually cute!), baboons, chimps, waterbuffalos....and probably some other things that I can't remember to mention! Anyway, it was fun. Our 2nd activity was a bush walk. We walked back into a foresty area with our guide who taught us about the different plants and the things that the bush people would use. Our students were able to try to make a fire from just wood and shope bows and arrows and threw spears. It was a neat learning experience!

On Thursday we did a community project. We went to a local school and the guys mixed cement for a walkway and the ladies painted windows. I think this is actually what our students liked the best. They did a great job and worked hard. Ed and I were able to go to the "nursery", basically the Pre-K and K section, to meet those kids. There were about 50 students in each class with just one teacher. It definitely makes you appreciate what we have here at Rosslyn and in the states. The kids were adorable! Each class sang us a song which had motions to it. Ed decided to try to teach the K class "I'm a little teapot" which they understood some of. I think they enjoyed going through the song and doing the motions with us.

Thursday afternoon we headed back here to Nairobi and thankfully had a less eventful trip! We both enjoyed it, but were glad we had Friday off of school to relax and recover. I will continue to try to post pictures. I haven't been able to get any to upload so far, but I will keep trying! God bless~!

Still here...

Hello all! Sorry we haven't written in forever! I sat down a couple of times to post, but our internet was running at a snails pace! I'll try to update you on what has been going on.

The weekend of the 13th of September we went a little outside of Nairobi and climbed Mt. Longonot. It was a tough climb, but really fun! It was above 9,000 feet in elevation and sure took your breath away!! When you get to the top you are able to see the huge crater in the center of it. Then you can walk all the way around it (about a 3 hour walk). We went with some friends from Rosslyn and had a great time. I have tried to post pictures, but we don't have enough internet speed right now. I will keep trying and will get them posted eventually!

The week after was our Spirit Week at school. Each day there was a different activity for the students to participate in. (pj day, twin day, etc) We had 2 basketball games that week, one being against a rival school. It was a crazy week, but lots of fun!

The week after Spirit week was Spiritual Emphasis Week for our MS and HS. A speaker was flown in from Canada for the week. The students had chapel everyday along with break out groups. It was an encouraging and challenging time for the students to stretch their relationship with God.

Now we are to the present. Today (Saturday) Ed and I went to try to finish our shots that we were supposed to get as soon as we got here. (yeah, we're a little late!!) It was our first time to go to the clinic and we really had no idea what to expect. I am happy to say that I was pleased by it. We got in really fast and the dr. was extremely personable. We were able to get one of our shots, but have to go back next sat. to get the second. At least now we know what to expect.

This week we have the Cultural Field Studies (CFS) for the MS. Ed and I are both sponsoring the 8th grade trip. We are going to be doing different team building activities and will be out of Nairobi from Tuesday morning until late afternoon Thursday. Ed and I are both excited about the experiences we will be able to have. I will blog more about this when we get back.

Personally we are doing well. Staying extremely busy; especially because of coaching. It is really crazy to think we have been here for 2 months. At times it seems like we have barely been here, but at other times it seems we have always been here! Life in Kenya has in some ways became normal. There are still times when I get frustrated with the lack of control we have other things, or the lack of options, but that too, has become "normal." :) We are blessed and see that everyday. There are a lot of positive changes going on a Rosslyn and we feel blessed that we get to be here to see them take place and also be a part of them. 

I ask that you keep the school and our superintendent in your prayers as changes take place. That God will give him as well as our Leadership team wisdom. Please continue to pray for Ed and I and for our marriage. At times things are trying because of the circumstances, but overall I feel so blessed to be experiencing all of this together. Our health has been good, so that is definitely a praise. Thank you for sticking with us! I am still trying to do better about blogging more often, please bare with me! I am not that patient when it comes to the computer, so that is part of the problem! God bless you all and we will write again soon!

~Ed and Tricia 

Here they are!!

This is a pic of the front part of our place. The white doors at the bottom go into our apartment area. The top part is part of the main house. Below you will see the beautiful scene we get to see everytime we look out of our glass front!

These next pics are of our view outside of our place. Our landlady has the most beautiful backyard! She also has a garden which would be down beyond where this picture shows. The pictures show from the right side of the yard to the left.
More beauty!
This is a covered area that she has. We have been blessed in that she has opened all of her yard to us. We can have a get together back here or do whatever we want. She also allows us to get things from the garden.
This is our lovely living room. Ed caught me ironing clothes. All the furniture we have was given to us by the school, and then we had to decorate with everything else when we got here. It is starting to feel homey for us. We are blessed to have a very large living room which has been really nice when we want to have get-togethers.

This picture is of course our bedroom. Our room is at an odd angle, so it was hard to take a shot of the whole room. It is not a big room, but it works for us. We were just extremely happy that we did have a queen bed and not just a double!

This is part of our kitchen. I spend quite a bit of time here cooking. Definitely more than I did in the states! :) We just got a microwave which we are so excited about! Instead of it taking 45 minutes to heat up leftovers it only takes 2!

I know I said we would have pics up by the weekend, but as you can see it didn't happen! Here they are now, though.  There are some of our place, inside and out. I will do better at taking pics from now on! Hope you enjoy these!

Pictures

Just wanted to let you all know that I WILL be getting pictures up soon! We have our house-helper coming on Wednesday, so I will take pictures when the house is clean. I will post pictures of our place and also some of the school. I am going to do my best to have them up by this weekend, as long as our internet cooperates. Sorry it has taken me so long! Ed claims he brought me along so that I could keep up with the blog....obviously I have been failing at my job! :) Anyway, pictures will be up soon! I am going to try to do better about taking my camera with us when we go out so that you can get a better feel of how things are.

Nothing new to report. We had a pretty low key weekend. Ed was extremely sad to miss the first weekend of College Football games! He of course caught himself up with the scores last night. Work is going well for both of us. I am still trying to get into the swing of things, but its moving along. I will post more later. Thank you for all of your encouragement!

~Tricia

Marching along...

Hello All!
Well, our plan has been to blog a couple of times a week, but our internet seems to not be a fan of that! We have had trouble all week getting on the internet at home. This may be silly, but please pray it starts working! It is our only way of communication and it is so hard not to be able to reply to emails and such.

We are almost done with our third week of school here at Rosslyn. It really has flown by. I (Tricia) am starting to get a hang of what my schedule will look like. I am kind of here and there and everywhere, but its kind of fun having a different thing to do everyday. I get to meet all of the elementary school kids and love that.

I don't remember if we mentioned this before, but Ed and I are both assistant coaching for high school basketball. I am the assistant varsity coach and Ed is the assistant JV coach. That has been a lot of fun for both of us. We both stay after school so it is nice having the same schedule. Neither of us have coached before, so it is a new adventure. It has been a lot of fun, though. Ed's team has their first game this coming Monday and my team's first game is this coming Wednesday. I'm sure I will let you know how it goes. :) It has been great to be involved in a sport after so many years.

On another note, Ed drove for the first time this last Friday! Wow was that an adventure! Not only do you drive on the opposite side of the rode here and the oppsite side of the car, there are no rules to driving in Kenya!! It is absolutely crazy. Other than trying to stay on your side of the road, there are really no rules to follow. Matatu's (buses, that is) pull over (not always off of the main road!) anywhere and everywhere, so you really have to pay attention to that. Also, there aren't any lines on the road and Everyone is on it. That is cars, buses, bicycles, and even people walking! Uh, to say the least I was very exhausted when we got home. But, I do have to say Ed drove great! I'm not in any hurry to get behind the wheel here. Ed drove again Monday night and did a fantastic job. I did better about not freaking out as much.....It's been fun. We are able to check out vehicles from the school every so often, so that is nice when we need to run an errand. We have been blessed to have people take us along with they go shopping and all, so we don't have to try to get a vehicle very often.

Hmmm....I think that is about it for now. Thank you for your prayers! We miss you all and pray that God is doing amazing things in your lives!! God bless!

~Ed and Tricia

God is Wonderful

It has been awhile since we have blogged, and yes we are still here, in Kenya that is. First I would like to mention some prayer requests:

 

1. Against Satan's evil schemes that try to discourage us.

2. Tricia has not been feeling well as of late. We are claiming God's healing hand to help her through this low time.

3. Adaptation to the new teaching environment for Ed.

4. We had a friend who went to the coast with one of the youth groups on a mission trip. The Kenyan schools are on break now. A boy named Stephen went missing for two days. They found him on the shore, he had drowned. Pray for his family, friends and youth group.

5. Tricia and her new job with the school. She is the elementary counselor and TA. Pray that God will give her wisdom and creativity to reach the students.

6. God will show us a church home.

7. Opportunities to share the word with those we come in contact with.

Much has happened since the last time we blogged. As you have read Tricia is now working for the school as an elementary counselor and TA. I have been teaching for two weeks and am slowly getting in the groove of things. The best part is getting to lead devotion and talk freely with my students about Jesus.  Last Sat. we experienced a meal and time with friends at a place called Diamond Plaza. The food was great. Also, last Sat. Tricia cut my hair for the very first time and did a wonderful job. Now that we have the internet at the house we will try to blog twice a week and will be putting pictures up shortly.

In Christ,

Tricia and Ed

Settling In...

Well, we have now been in Nairobi for almost a week and are starting to feel at home. We still have a lot of learning to do, but are so blessed by the people here. I haven't shared many details with you so far, so I am going to try to do some of that here. We are living outside of the school campus, less than 1 mile walk to the school. We have a landlady who has rented out the back/bottom part of her house to the school. It is a one bed/ one bath little apartment type place. It is perfect for us at this point. We have been working on getting it set up and making it more "homey." Little by little it is coming along. The walk to Rosslyn is pretty easy and is really a nice walk to make. It takes about 10ish minutes to get to the school, so not bad. The staff/faculty here have been great about offering to take us to the market to get the things we need to get settled in. Most of the shopping we do is at a place call Nakumatt. It is pretty much a small version of Walmart. You can get a lot of the same things, with just little variations. They do have some American brands from time to time. We have already been there about 4 times in just the 5 days we've been here trying to get settled in. Ed started New Teacher Orientation last Thursday and that has been going well. It is very informal and the time is used to explain how Rosslyn works and things like that. The other new staff are great. We have already made some wonderful friends. That has been such a blessing. I think that is part of the reason why Nairobi and Rosslyn are already starting to feel like home. Ed is excited about the teaching atmosphere that Rosslyn provides. Some of the things that we are still trying to adjust to are: not having hot water 24/7, having to hang dry all laundry, learning how the shillings work compared to the dollar, eating food we have never even seen before, not having the independence to go where we want when we want like we had in the states.....Those are just a few things that come to mind at the moment. I think the food adjustment has been harder for me than for Ed. I have liked about 50% of the meals the school has taken us out for so far. But I am starting to figure out what I like and what I will only be trying once. :) Some food is quite a bit more expensive here, so that is going to take some time getting used to. Meat especially is more expensive. Ed has told me he will settle for having meat for one meal a day to cut costs. (If you don't know, Ed is usually a big meat eater!) But other than those few things, we are adjusting well. Life is definitely different, but we are seeing how different can be good. If you have any questions, just let me know. It is hard to know what to cover in such a short time. I will try to write more often when we get the internet at our place. We hope and pray you all are doing well and are being blessed. We feel more and more blessed everyday. The Lord is here with us and we feel his presence daily. I will write again soon. The Lord bless you and keep you!
~Ed and Tricia

We have arrived!

Hello everyone! We arrived in Kenya last night around 8:30 pm. (12:30pm Texas time) Our flights went well and thankfully we ended up with all of our baggage! We were taken to our new home and spent some time last night and today getting settled in. We have met quite a few other teachers here at the school which has been wonderful. Tomorrow we start new teacher training which will familiarize us with how things here at the school work and also inform on how to do things in Nairobi. We are excited to be here and are ready to get started. Please pray that we adjust quickly to the time change and that our bodies adjust without any complications. Right now we don't have internet access at home, so it may be a few days until I can update you again. Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers!
~Ed and Tricia