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