Summer Days

Well, it's summer in other parts of the world but it's our cold time here in Tanzania. Still, we can't help but refer to June, July and August as "summer."

So what's up these days for the Wild Hope family?

Val James arrived in early May and has earned the name Val the Valiant Visitor. She is volunteering with us for the "summer" and has proven to be a hard-working, multi-talented relief person for our over-worked Tammy Russell. Val's particular passion is kids and she has stepped in to cover the end of the home school year for the Russell twins and provide a lot of neat extra activities from kick-boxing to sewing class for the twins plus Heather Borden. Taking this major work-load off of Tammy for the final six weeks of the school year freed Tammy to concentrate on many other growing projects.

The development of Wild Hope's property has begun. It may not sound like a lot but we have started the process of fencing the acreage and we're excited to see little trees making a start now that they are protected from goats and cows.

We have a lot of visitors coming and going. Making guest beds and welcoming people into our homes is a weekly thing right now. We are currently 10 at the table in the Borden house and it's fun, (if a little loud and messy.)

We're working to expand the Artisan Project and this means experimenting with new products and doing test runs with new women. It's a pleasure to see traditional Maasai art done so beautifully as we look at ideas for new product lines.

The friendship and support between local pastors in the Matale area of Maasai north of Arusha has been neat to see developing. Peter and some of his close Maasai friends have been instrumental in encouraging this gathering for growth and mutual encouragement.

On the family front our kids are happy that the school year is over and we are all pumped for Skyler Russell who has done a good job on his SAT and is now beginning that whole college application stage of life. The Borden and Russell boys (and Jonny Pollard) are leaving today on a long trek to cover some major ground along the Kenya/Tanzania border. We expect them home on the 4th of July. Those of us who remain behind are preparing for a quick trip to Zanzibar (how fun is that??) to share in the wedding ceremony of Kendra Woods and Jeremy Stephenson. The Woods were our teammates during our years in Kenya and the Stephensons have been good friends to Wild Hope in these first few years here. We delighted to share in this special time.

As I look at these weeks we're in, I'm struck that while we might be piling on the jackets and cranking up the fires, our summer is probably still pretty similar to yours. We have friends and visitors and work and play and days out of school and weddings and trips and barbeques and camp-outs, (though you may not be expecting elephants around your camp!)

Fullness and joy seem to be the order of the day :-)

(Photo by Jesse Borden)

Artisans Make Designs on Christmas

The artisans of our Wild Hope Artisan Project have been working hard on new products to release for Christmas 2008. Gathering for a design seminar is always a great event. Some of the women travel for 2 days just to get to Arusha! During our recent days together, the artisan leaders worked with Tammy Russell and Byron Borden to perfect new ideas. It was 3 days of beads, beads and more beads, not to mention inspiration, fun and friendship.

There are now 65+ Maasai women earning a fair trade through our project. It is always wonderful to hear the stories of the difference their income is making for their children, extended families and the communities they live in.

The photographs below capture some of the collaborative effort of the Artisan team.

Tournament Joys

At a recent small tournament, Wild Hope's Nyota FC took first place for both the U17 and U12 teams. We were very proud of them! The photo above shows the U12 team (in blue) waiting to collect their trophy :-)

The longer we know these young men, the more we learn about their lives. The more we learn about their lives, the more we want to see them succeed in both football AND life. Their community is a challenging place in which to find joy and hope, but we know it's not impossible.

Please join us in prayers of blessings for these guys, and for our efforts to do increasingly more than sports alone for them.

The crowd of impressionable young ones looks on.


The goals we made for the pitch come apart and get carried home so that they don't get stolen.


The team enjoys a little post-game chat.

Let's Do Lunch (AKA We Have the Neighbors In)

Saturday the 8th of March was a fun day for the team at Wild Hope. With no kitchen or permanent structure of any kind out at the new property, we managed to throw a lunch party and serve about 150 neighbors a big, hot meal of pilau rice and stew. We took the opportunity to buy a nice fat ox and make it into the main dish.



Under the shade of our tented pavilion, we told the neighbors how happy we were to be among them and we shared a little about who we are and what we do. Later, when a heavy afternoon shower broke over our heads, we squeezed together under the tented roof and danced and sang.

It was a lovely day, made extra special by the fact that Peter's sister, Alice, and her husband, Mark, were with us from the U.S.



We could not have pulled it off without Philemon and his crew of willing and able volunteers. They gathered all the utensils we needed and did the cooking over open fire pits on site. It was tremendous.



Celebrate with us the joy of building relationship with our new neighbors!

Proud Graduates :-)

Education is such a luxury! In developed nations we hardly ever realize the privilege it is to have easy access to learning.

The team here at Wild Hope is extra proud of our adult-learners who have been gathering faithfully to study in Torosei, Kenya. In the photo above you see the 7 recent graduates of the first phase certificate level of the International School of Ministry. These men, leaders in local churches, have worked hard because they know how important it is to be trained in solid foundations if they are going to encourage others in their growing faith.

To set the scene, imagine that you live hours from a power line, a paved road, a bookstore or a library. Imagine that donkeys had to carry large solar batteries out to your location in order to get the one solar powered VCR and television set in the area up and running so that you could watch classes taught in your 3rd language, English. Imagine that the motivation to learn, to keep up with the reading and to take the tests, was to know that you were better prepared to serve others in your remote church community.

Completing 19 trimester-long classes to earn their certificates, these men deserve to be very proud of their accomplishment. Throughout this season they have studied a wide variety of topics from surveys of the Old and New Testaments to the integrity of a leader. Drawing together to encourage each other took on a whole new level of meaning in this small group. When one classmate did not pass the final exam of the final course, the guys agreed to all repeat the course together to help ensure that this colleague finishes successfully. Now that’s school spirit!

At Wild Hope, we believe in the development of local leaders and that takes many forms. Our thanks to Christian Assembly in Eagle Rock, California, for the financial gift that secured this college level course as well as the DVD player and television set. Thanks, also, to Jeff James for accompanying Peter Russell on a wild motorcycle trip out to Torosei to get the solar power up and running again.

As the fruit of this course is felt throughout the network of churches in that region and 10 new students sign up to take the course, we are blessed to be able to facilitate training and maturation among indigenous leaders.

Photo: Peter and Tammy Russell with the graduates on location at Torosei where the Russells lived for many years during the 90’s.

"The Rain in Spain Stays Mainly in the Plain" OR English Lessons in Sokon

One of the beautiful things about Tanzania is that they have honored their own heritage and valued the local language, Swahili. This has been a blessing in many ways.

Simultaneously, one of the greatest needs in Tanzania is for children to learn English as well. With most of the wide world of the web being in English, this generation cannot afford to miss out on all the vast learning resources that the web provides.

One of the things that the Diamond Canyon team did while they were here with us was to engage the kids in Sokon in morning sessions of what we called "English Club." Those mornings were so appreciated! Kids have a wonderful capability to learn language and we were delighted that they responded so positively to the invitation to learn. Many of the kids stayed on into the afternoon to hear more from the team about their lives and faith and a great time was had by all :-)

Serah's Story (A Chance to Respond to Kenya)

"Pray for us," the text message on my phone read. "My parents and my husband's parents have lost everything and we are hosting many family members who have become refugees overnight."

I sat staring at the tiny screen on my phone trying to comprehend what was going on in Kenya. The message had come in just days after December's disputed election results were announced and the news we had been reading on the internet was not good. Breaking down along tribal/political lines, the country had pockets of shocking violence springing up which would eventually take at least 850 lives in the ensuing weeks.

My mind raced back over the years. Byron and I arrived in Kenya in 1984. (Yes, we were very young.) We spent most of that initial 2 year commitment to Kenya in the lovely little town of Nakuru where we worked with a group of high school students who were hungry to grow closer to God. One of the students that I was closest to was Serah Njeri.

When the students were on leave from the boarding school in town, Byron and I would pack up our blue Landrover and travel out to different areas of the country so that we could visit some of them in their rural homes. We stayed in their villages and experienced the hospitality of many different cultures within the culture of Kenya. What I remember so clearly about Serah's home village was the happy relationship she had with the neighbors who all shared a forested highland area of fertile land.

Ten years later, in 1994, the tension at election time took a serious toll on Serah's community. We got the shocking news that her family home had been burnt down and Serah's relatives were left with nothing.

Oddly, this loss came shortly after our own home had burnt to the ground. Generous friends in the U.S. helped us rebuild quite quickly. We also had a small (in U.S. terms) insurance payment that we received from the company through which our organization had insured our far away home. My memory is that it was a couple of thousand dollars, meant to help replace personal items, not to cover the cost of a new building.

We saw the insurance as a gift that we could share. Because of the quick generosity of donors in the U.S. we already had what we needed to build again in Loita. Blessed with the insurance money that came after we were already in the re-building process, we saw Serah's family as a perfect place to pay it forward. Our Kenyan insurance went to their re-build and all of us were blessed.

We didn't see much of Serah over the years and we eventually left East Africa. In the fall of 2007, still quite newly back to Africa, I got an email asking if this was the correct email address for Byron and Lisa who used to live in Nakuru. Serah had found us and we were so happy to re-connect.

Serah and I passed sporadic email or text notes. I was concerned when things began to fall apart after Kenya's elections because I knew that her family came from one of the main ethnic groups that was targeted by angry demonstrators.

Soon we heard about her parents and husband's parents losing their homes (again to fire) and being chased out of their long-time communities. I tried to imagine how Serah, a teacher of teachers, and her pastor husband were managing to care for the extended family that was in so much need. But I never expected to hear the news we got next.

A couple of weeks ago I heard my phone go off at 6am. Squinting with my blurry morning eyes at the message, I tried to wrap my mind around what Serah was saying. "My husband Moses has gone to be with Jesus." This was all it said.

Moses contracted a fast moving, hard pneumonia that took his life and left Serah a young widow with 3 children and a large, extended family that still needs her.

This post has been quite long but the point of it is to give you an opportunity to respond to a needy family that is deeply affected by the turbulence in Kenya. At Wild Hope, we are not equipped to do mass refugee relief, but we can follow this relational line and make a difference for an extended family with shattered lives.

If you would like to give, please hit the donate button on the right of this blog and designate your gift for Serah Mburu. 100% of your donation will be passed along to Serah.

Thanks for joining us in this.

Lisa, for the Team at Wild Hope