Goodness gracious there are only 4 weeks left until I will be back in the good ole US of A. Today is also the one year mark since I embarked on the journey of living overseas. Wow! What a year! It started in Romania with my friend, Mary, helping out missionaries Gheorghe and Mia Cormos with their youth camp. We had an awesome time working alongside of these missionaries and seeing the work in Romania.
Then as soon as I got to Kenya, we put on a basketball camp in the village of Singwaya, and we got the opportunity to teach the Bible lesson to all of the students and many were saved! Praise God!
Then we transformed the school room and prepared to start school in August.
We had a wonderful school year! The kids accomplished so much!
My pastor came on a mission trip to teach at the Bible Institute and witness first hand the work that is being accomplished through East Kenya Missions.
We traveled to Israel to the International Missionaries Retreat!
We celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and many birthdays!
We've worked and fellowshipped with many visitors!
Missionaries Lauren Wilson, Holly Couch, and I celebrated New Year in France and Spain!
We spent time in the villages teaching and investing in the churches!
We attended the World Missions Seminar!
The kids performed at the Louisiana Destination Imagination State Tournament!
I became Auntie Ashley to the most beautiful niece in the whole world!!
We finished school with the first East Kenya Missions Field Day!
We've also seen our fair share of animals!
Which leads me to my title. Mom, Dad, you can stop reading now. Especially mom. No, I'm serious. Stop reading this. You don't want to know what comes next.
Mom, seriously, don't read the rest. Exit out of the window.
Earlier this week I grabbed my phone charger off of my bed quickly and when I did, something caught my eye and it was like I had brushed something onto the floor. When I looked down I saw a tail of some sort going under my bed. I told Kenya about it and we reasoned that it was probably a lizard. I pulled out all of the suitcases that are stored under my bed just to see if I could see anything, but I never found anything. The next day I came in my room and saw my friendly lizard running down the wall. This was strange because when I come in the room he usually runs up the wall and into the window. So, I went to the window and drew back the curtains because that usually gets him to go back out the window through a little crack. As I was tying the curtains back I saw something hanging over the tie between the two panels. It was green and hanging about 5 inches or so. I yelled for Kenya to ask her if she thought it was what I thought it was. It was. A green snake was in my room! We yelled for James and Clayton. They strategically took care of getting it out of my room (yes we killed it because it's hard to tell if it's a green mamba or not and we definitely didn't want to take a chance). After much research, it was a nonvenomous green snake. That's what I saw going under my bed the day before!! I can't believe it was in my room the whole time! I slept in that room all night! AND there's no telling how long it had been in there!! As we were talking about it, I tried to say that since my air conditioner was on all night that it was too cold to move, but everyone else said that since I was the warmest thing in the room, it probably snuggled next to me and slept in my bed... No, I didn't get any pictures of that because I didn't want to have a pictorial reminder of the day I was traumatized forever....
This week I fixed another drum! The one at the church in Malindi was ripped, so we went ahead and replaced the drum head on that one. We've been doing a lot of preparations for the 516 group and our departure. I get a little sick to my stomach thinking about how close it is! I know we still have several things to do here, but transition is always a little nerve-racking. We have been packing things up and trying to work on presentations to show the churches about what is being done through East Kenya Missions. I plan to visit churches to give a report of the last year. If you would like for me to come speak at your church, ladies' meeting, children's church, small group, or association meeting, please email me at ashleyjteacher@gmail.com. I am so excited to share all that has happened this year face to face with those who have been supporting me! I also want to pump people up to get involved with missions around the world.
Please continue to pray for all of us as we are in this transition phase.
Thank you, God, for the last year and letting me be a part of East Kenya Missions as a missionary helper.
One whole year. Wow. God is good.
In Christ,
Ashley
Then as soon as I got to Kenya, we put on a basketball camp in the village of Singwaya, and we got the opportunity to teach the Bible lesson to all of the students and many were saved! Praise God!
We had a wonderful school year! The kids accomplished so much!
We traveled to Israel to the International Missionaries Retreat!
We celebrated Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and many birthdays!
We've worked and fellowshipped with many visitors!
Missionaries Lauren Wilson, Holly Couch, and I celebrated New Year in France and Spain!
We spent time in the villages teaching and investing in the churches!
We attended the World Missions Seminar!
The kids performed at the Louisiana Destination Imagination State Tournament!
I became Auntie Ashley to the most beautiful niece in the whole world!!
We finished school with the first East Kenya Missions Field Day!
We've also seen our fair share of animals!
Which leads me to my title. Mom, Dad, you can stop reading now. Especially mom. No, I'm serious. Stop reading this. You don't want to know what comes next.
Mom, seriously, don't read the rest. Exit out of the window.
Earlier this week I grabbed my phone charger off of my bed quickly and when I did, something caught my eye and it was like I had brushed something onto the floor. When I looked down I saw a tail of some sort going under my bed. I told Kenya about it and we reasoned that it was probably a lizard. I pulled out all of the suitcases that are stored under my bed just to see if I could see anything, but I never found anything. The next day I came in my room and saw my friendly lizard running down the wall. This was strange because when I come in the room he usually runs up the wall and into the window. So, I went to the window and drew back the curtains because that usually gets him to go back out the window through a little crack. As I was tying the curtains back I saw something hanging over the tie between the two panels. It was green and hanging about 5 inches or so. I yelled for Kenya to ask her if she thought it was what I thought it was. It was. A green snake was in my room! We yelled for James and Clayton. They strategically took care of getting it out of my room (yes we killed it because it's hard to tell if it's a green mamba or not and we definitely didn't want to take a chance). After much research, it was a nonvenomous green snake. That's what I saw going under my bed the day before!! I can't believe it was in my room the whole time! I slept in that room all night! AND there's no telling how long it had been in there!! As we were talking about it, I tried to say that since my air conditioner was on all night that it was too cold to move, but everyone else said that since I was the warmest thing in the room, it probably snuggled next to me and slept in my bed... No, I didn't get any pictures of that because I didn't want to have a pictorial reminder of the day I was traumatized forever....
This week I fixed another drum! The one at the church in Malindi was ripped, so we went ahead and replaced the drum head on that one. We've been doing a lot of preparations for the 516 group and our departure. I get a little sick to my stomach thinking about how close it is! I know we still have several things to do here, but transition is always a little nerve-racking. We have been packing things up and trying to work on presentations to show the churches about what is being done through East Kenya Missions. I plan to visit churches to give a report of the last year. If you would like for me to come speak at your church, ladies' meeting, children's church, small group, or association meeting, please email me at ashleyjteacher@gmail.com. I am so excited to share all that has happened this year face to face with those who have been supporting me! I also want to pump people up to get involved with missions around the world.
Please continue to pray for all of us as we are in this transition phase.
Thank you, God, for the last year and letting me be a part of East Kenya Missions as a missionary helper.
One whole year. Wow. God is good.
In Christ,
Ashley
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