"Lion Sightings" While on the Road

After much discussion and prayer, we, with some excitement…and perhaps an equal amount of fear…said “yes” to Connie, our co-missionary who has served here in Africa for about 20 years, and to her suggestion that we drive to Malindi, Kenya, where the once-in-every-three-year WorldVenture East African Spiritual Conference was being held. Connie is one those people who has almost unlimited stories from adventures she’s been a part of (some quite scary/dangerous and others downright funny plus everything in between), loves to drive, is fairly fluent in Swahili, and loves Africa…so with someone like that, we found courage to agree to a round trip of almost 2,500 km. (1,550 mi). We agree, it’s not particularly considered a long trip in North America on those wonderful freeways…but with the conditions here, it qualifies as an adventurous and fairly daring road-trip, especially for three ladies! But, we knew that this may be our only chance to drive that direction and see more of the countries where God has placed us, plus by driving we would have the opportunity to do some sightseeing on the way (which flying would not accommodate). We decided to take our car since it is 2 years younger (2004 as opposed to 2002) and its tires are new. Laura got the car checked over, Connie plotted out our route and made reservations at a missionary guest house in Nairobi, and Ruth checked on prices for some tourist attractions. Meanwhile we found out that the 13-year-old daughter of our Uganda friend, Beth, began her school break (she studies at a Kenyan boarding school) only one day later than we planned to be driving right by…so we adjusted our plans to pick her up and bring her home with us.

We are SO glad that we agreed to go. The roads were not nearly as bad as we expected, although still full of challenges. The border crossing into Kenya took just over 1½ hours, but only 30 minutes to get back into Uganda. Both Kenya and Uganda are quite hilly which makes for beautiful scenery. We enjoyed the agriculture as seen from the road and were intrigued that goats, sheep, donkeys, and cows were often grazing close to the road with seemingly no interest in crossing it. Once we got further south where it’s not so lush, we saw the African herders walking/staying with their animals, and that’s where we also saw our first “wild life”—zebras and baboons right beside the road! Our 3-day stay in Nairobi not only gave us a wonderful break from driving but also an opportunity to visit the Giraffe Center and feed those gentle giants, to tour the Kazuri (meaning small and beautiful) Beads factory and gift-shop (and buy some ceramic jewelry), and spend a day in the Nairobi Game Park seeing giraffe, zebra, impala, hartebeest, gazelle, eland, African buffalo, rhinoceros, and several species of exotic birds.

Our two longest days of travel were from Nairobi to Malindi (and then the return trip), which took about 10 ½ hours, much of it competing with literally hundreds of trucks. On our way home, we’re quite sure (although unconfirmed) that we saw the highest African mountain, Mt. Kilimanjaro located in Tanzania to the south. (According to the internet, it’s also the highest “free-standing” mountain in the world.) Unless our eyes were fooling us, we think we saw an ice glacier around the top of one of the three (inactive) volcanic peaks.

The reason for the trip, the WorldVenture East African Spiritual Life Conference, was as good as we were told it would be. The times in singing and in God’s Word were precious, encouraging, challenging, and probing. Opportunities to meet other East African WorldVenture missionaries from Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Madagascar plus a few from the home office in Colorado stimulated us as we learned of some of their journeys/experiences, some very painful and costly. There was also plenty of opportunity to read, sleep, pray, swim, bike, and a bunch of other activities...plus snorkel in the Indian Ocean—something we thought we may never do again after leaving the Philippines…how good God is!

As you can tell, we had many “Lion-Sightings.” Here's two pictures that Laura took of "real" lions...albeit through wire fences (we couldn't find them in the wild, despite all our looking).

These and others were orphaned as babies, rescued and brought up by people, thus unable to return to the wild. 

BUT, we certainly saw and marveled at the amazing and awesome deeds of our Lion of the Tribe of Judah, our Creator and Sustainer…in His Word, the plants, animals, birds, fish, and especially in the lives of fellow missionaries. Thank you for praying for us and praise God with us for this perhaps once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and all the blessings that came with it.