Spring Break and Counting Down!

Ed and I standing over the Nile. Where we stayed was literally right above the Nile. Behind us a ways is actually one of the rapids we went over. The Nile was absolutely beautiful. 

Here is our crew right after getting off of the bus in Uganda. It was a long day and we were all a bit worn out, but happy to have finally made it! :)

We are now back at school and counting down the weeks until summer! 5 to be precise! Three weeks ago was our Spring Break, and we were blessed to be able to got to Uganda for a couple of days. We didn't see much of Uganda other than  some of the landscape, but we were able to experience the AWESOME Nile River.

Ed and I have both been river rafting some in the states, but nothing can compare to rafting the Nile. It was absolutely amazing. The group we went with was made up of us and Rosslyn high school students. Since neither of us work in the high school, we really didn't know the students very well. But they were a blast and we had a great time getting to know them and really enjoyed their company. Quite a few of them were seniors so it was cool to be able to talk with them about going to college (most will be transitioning back to the states for college) and what their plans are. It was a quick few days with an all day bus ride to Uganda, a full day of rafting, and then a full day bus ride back. But it was completely worth it and is a trip we will remember for years to come. :)

The last few weeks have gone by fast. With the end of school winding down everyone is working on closing out things for this year and we are also busy working on schedules and agendas for next year already. Please pray that through this busy time we will have a blessed ending to our first year here. Please keep the staff who will be ending their time here in Kenya in your prayers as they focus on the next step God is leading them in. Also for the students. With projects due and finals coming up, this is a stressful time for students. Please pray that they will have a calmness and a peace and be able to enjoy the end of another school year.

Update

Sorry it has taken me so long to write an update on Ed. He has been out of the hospital since Friday afternoon. His meds have been adjusted and hopefully will work well with his body. We are still looking at getting his previous meds from the states, but have some hoops to jump through before we will know if that can happen or not. He is feeling well. I think he is glad to be back to a normal schedule this week. As am I. We were able to rest and take it easy this weekend which both of us needed. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. We appreciate you all. God bless.

~Tricia

Update on life

Hello All. Unfortunately I am writing this blog from a hospital room this morning. Don't worry, we are okay. Yesterday morning Ed had 2 seizure episodes in our home. For those of you who don't know, Ed has had Epilepsy for about 15 years now. It has recently been under control and he went 4 years without a seizure until yesterday. Three months ago we had to switch Ed's medication because he can not get his previous kind here. We believe that is the cause of the seizures and therefore are looking at the dosage of his medicine. We are also looking at the possibility of trying to get his previous medication brought to us. Please pray that we have wisdom in deciding what to do about his medicine. Ed is doing well today. He is pretty sore from the seizures, but other than that is fine. We got to the hospital yesterday around 11:30am after the second seizure. Yesterday the doctors took blood to run tests for his blood levels. We are still awaiting those results. This morning he has an EEG test scheduled for 9:30am. Please keep us in your prayers as we make decisions.  We have no doubt that God has been watching over us. Ed has been taken care of well and I have survived my first seizure episode with him. We have been very blessed to have our Rosslyn family here for us. They have been such an encouragement. We know we have had a crowd of believers lifting us up. Thank you in advance for your thoughts and prayers. We'll keep you updated.

~Tricia

Flying by!

Hello family and friends!! It has been awhile since we have posted, and I am sorry about that. Time has definitely gotten away from us this semester! One of my fears (Tricia) going into this semester was that it would drag on since we don't have a holiday until the beginning of April. I am seeing now, that, thankfully, my fear will not come true. We have already been in school for 6 weeks and it has been such a blur. Everyone here told us that the Spring semester flew by, but we couldn't understand how that would happen. I can't say anything really major has been going on, it has just been busy. My job has really picked up and I am enjoying staying busy each day. Ed also has seen how this semester is going by so quickly and has been enjoying teaching. 

Next week for the Elementary school here we have Spiritual Emphasis Week (SEW). For those of you who have been reading our blog, you might remember me blogging last semester about the Middle School and High School SEW. Now it is the Elementary schoolers turn. Each afternoon next week is set aside for SEW. From what I have been told this will look a lot like a VBS in the states. The kids will go to craft stations, watch dramas, sing songs, etc. This is a really neat thing that the school does considering the churches here do not do anything like VBS. Plus, the students we have that do not come from a Christian family get immersed with the gospel all week. It is definitely a prime time to witness to these students and hopefully their families as well. Please be in prayer for this time, that the students will really grasp what it is to be a child of God and that their ears and hearts will be open. I will fill you in about how it goes.

I realize I haven't done a very good job of posting prayer requests on our blog, and I am going to try to do a better job about that. Here are some prayer requests we have right now:

• Our marriage: Please pray that God will continue to strengthen our marriage and that we will grow closer to one another while serving here in Kenya.
  
• Our quiet times: that we will be diligent in spending time with the Lord and open to his guiding.
• Work: that we will see every opportunity God gives us to show his love to these children.
• That we will remember whole-heartedly why we are here in Kenya and not get pulled away by worldly things.
• Please keep Ed's mom, Nancy, in your prayers as she continues to battle cancer. We are praying for God's healing touch on her body.

Thank you for sharing in our adventures with us here in Kenya. We are blessed with a wonderful group of family and friends. We pray that God blesses you wherever you are in your life and walk with him. 

Ed wants to say "hi" to all of the students of CJHS and CHS!! :)

In Him,

Tricia

Lake Naivasha and Mombasa

Hello all! We hope you are having a wonderful beginning to the new year! We wanted to share some pictures with you from our camping trip and our trip to the coast. We went camping a couple of nights, including New Year's Eve, a week and a half ago. There were 6 of us total from Rosslyn that went. We went to a sight that borders Lake Naivasha. One neat thing about the site is hippo's will come up during the night to the shore to eat. We were lucky one night to see one. We also went to Crater Lake, which was just about an hour from where we were camping, to hike. We also ended up doing a night game drive which was a  really neat experience. Here are a couple pictures from that trip:

One other cool thing about the site is there is a large group of monkeys that live nearby and often stroll through the campgrounds. They are cute, but we know enough to keep our distance.

This is the top view of Crater Lake and it's surroundings.

We had a great time on our trip to Mombasa this last week. It was full of swimming and relaxing, a perfect vacation! :) We did go snorkeling one day which was really cool. We saw a lot of different kinds of starfish and some cool fish. The resort we went to was really nice and the beach was beautiful. We had a wonderful time hanging out with our friends Kelly and Matt and getting some sun! 

Kelly, Matt, Ed and Tricia 

This is the view we had from our porch off of our room. A nice view to wake up to!

We start our 2nd semester here at Rosslyn tomorrow. Please pray that we will be positive and encouraging in all the situations we may find ourselves. Pray that our students will see the Love of the Lord shining through us each day. Thank you for your encouragement. It is almost unbelievable to think we have been here for almost 6 months. We have had our rough times, but the Lord is faithful. We hope you all are blessed abundantly!

~Ed & Tricia

Happy New Year!

I hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year! I am running a little behind on getting our photos up. Below are a few from Christmas. We were blessed to spend Christmas with Matt and Kelly's family. Matt and Kelly have become very good friends to us here and it was great being able to meet Matt's parents and sister. We also had a family and friend from the church Matt works at join us. We had a nice Christmas Feast in our backyard. It was a wonderful time of fellowship.

Katie, Matt's sister, brought a gingerbread house for little Melanie to build. I think Melanie had more fun eating the candy than anything else, but it was lots of fun to watch!

Above is Matt's mom and sister: Dena and Katie. And Emily and her 2 little ones.
Above is Ed, Matt, Matt's dad Doug, and Ken who is a friend of Matt's from church. Not in a picture is me and Kelly and Moses, Emily's husband who works with Matt.
This is our lovely Kenyan Christmas Tree!! You are able to get small trees here, but since we don't have ornaments or anything, we just decided to go with our lamp tree. It worked for a little bit of holiday cheer! :)

I hope you have all had a blessed beginning of the new year! We went camping over New Years Eve with a group from Rosslyn and had a great time! I will try to post some pictures from it next weekend. Tomorrow we are headed out to Mombasa on Kenya's coast. It should be a wonderful relaxing vacation before we start school next week. Pictures of that will be coming eventually in the future too! :)

God bless!

Ed & Tricia

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