i know, it's past due...

I realize I haven’t posted on this thing in awhile, and for that I’m sorry, but I hope to make up for it by writing the best blog-entry ever! So here goes…

My last entry was kind of a bummer, mostly cause I was pretty bummed¬. Seeing my friends leave was a difficult transition for me, but God is faithful and He’s continuing to teach me through that experience. Since then I’ve lived at three different homes, with three different families, which has been interesting and good, usually starting out as interesting, with a slow move to good. All that to say, I’ve ended up truly enjoying all three of the places I’ve stayed at, and absolutely loved the people I’ve stayed with. Currently I’m staying with Mary and Wallace Kamau (the Kenyan couple that started the Hope Center where I’ve been serving) and each day I’m there I become more and more aware of just how amazing this couple is. However, my time at their house started out on a bit of a bad note. Unfortunately a few hours before I moved into their home I ate some very questionable chicken and paid the price for it later that night, with flue-like symptoms, which was my first real experience of being sick in a foreign country. Since then though, my time at their house has only gotten better. Almost every night we spend at least an hour, if not more talking about life and ministry and culture and pretty much any and everything else. Those times with them been have more encouraging and challenging than I could ever explain with words.

Around the same time I moved in to Mary and Wallace’s home I started driving here, which has been a very interesting experience, to say the least. It reminds me a lot of driving in Tijuana, if you’ve ever driven there. It can be a little scary at times, but it’s also kind of cool, being able to say I drove in Nairobi, Kenya; not to mention me driving has been extremely helpful.

Aside from driving and being sick, I’ve been spending most of my time working on a special project. Since coming here and seeing the monumental need for income, I’ve been burdened to help provide employment for these people. I found myself thinking, there has to be away I can help these people get sustainable jobs and, hopefully through that, live better lives. So, a few up-dates ago I requested that you all pray for me as I considered trying to start some sort of business where clothes are produced here in Kenyan and sold in the U.S. When I first thought about this idea, I didn’t like it. With all the negative hype surrounding the garment industry, especially as it relates to overseas employment, I felt attempting something like this would just be asking for trouble. However, the idea seemed to come up again and again and God seemed to be opening doors, which made this clothing idea appear to be a possibility. So, since then, through God’s strength and direction, I, along with a few others, have been working on making that possibility a reality and God has been opening doors in a way that only He can.

To further explain, the whole idea behind the shirts is to provide lasting and empowering jobs for the people of Mathare Valley, while exposing those who buy the clothes to the needs in and around the community of that valley. At this point we are getting close to making our first samples and I’m extremely excited about it! I’m hoping to have our first official product, which would be a screen-printed t-shirt, within a month. Now, I’ve hesitated to write much about this because I’m not one who likes to put the, “car before the horse,” but I felt I needed to share this with you all because this thing is not mine by any means, it’s completely God’s and by not telling you, I feel that I would be hoarding something that isn’t mine to hoard. So, I need you all to continue to be in prayer over this work. Pray that God would continue to open doors and continue to give me and everyone involved wisdom and direction on how to best help these people through this opportunity.


Thank you for all your prayers and support!
I love you all very much,
Tim

p.s. if you’d like to know a little more or if you are interested in helping out in some way, just let me.

p.s.s. in the picture are a few of my roomies

adjusting

Well, all my friends from Eastside are now gone.  If you don't know about Eastside, it's my home church from Fullerton, CA.  They came here to Nairobi to work at the Hope Center (where I've been working).  It was totally amazing having them here, so much more than I was expecting.  Don't get me wrong, I was definitely excited for the chance to be with them, but I didn't realize how much I would appreciate their company.  But now their gone and I'm feeling the effects of it.  And on top of Eastside being gone the interns (the group I've been traveling, working, and living with) left as well, and I had made some really great friends from that group.  So, I kinda feel like the only American left in Kenya.  It's been good though because God has been giving me strength,  but if I'm honest, the last few days have been stretching for me.  The lack of being part of big group has definitely brought a different dynamic.  It's a bitter-sweet feeling really.  Bitter cause I miss all of them and sweet cause now I'm a lot more free, which is gonna allow me to get a lot more accomplished.  So, as far as the big picture is concerned it's good.  You can be praying that I would cling to God in this time though.  Pray that he would give me strength to stay focused and enjoy what little time I have here.  Pray for wisdom, direction and open doors.

I love you all very much,

tim

-Day in the life-

for this blog entry I’d like to take you through an average day for me here.  Bare with me though, cause I got a little carried away when I was writing this.

 

Everyday I try waking up around 6:30, which usually happens.  Once awake, I hop in the shower, which, thanks be to God, my room has a well working shower with almost too much hot water at times.  After the shower I get ready and head down for breakfast.  Breakfast almost always consists of an egg over medium, a piece of wheat bread (not toasted), and a link of sausage, which is unlike any sausage I've ever had in the US, but it’s definitely not bad.  Usually with these three items on my plate I throw one on top of the other and partake.  After breakfast, lately I've been heading down to an internet cafe in the "City Center," as the middle of town is called.  After a good 45min. or so of internet time I walk to the, "Posta," which is one of the post office locations in town.  The reason I go there is to find some authentic public transportation.  And by authentic public transportation I can only mean the most outrageously crazy car ride on earth.  We travel in what the Kenyans call a Matatu.  There are two different kinds.  One being a small 15 passenger Nissan mini-van and the other is a 24 (or so) passenger mini-bus.  But not like most mini-vans and buses back at home these ones are off-roading machines, even though not one of them has even a single piece of actual off-road gear.  The Matatus don't hesitate to drive up on curbs, over islands and even drive on the sidewalk, which always sends pedestrians running.  It's a guarantee for a good time, to say the least.  After the ever eventful Matatu ride, I end up arriving at the Hope Center somewhere between 9 and 9:30.  Once at the center I generally have a good half hour to an hour of down time, cause we must take tea... everyday.  Tea usually comes around 10, but rest assured that this time is not waisted.  I usually use it to update my journal or spend time reading the, "Good Book."  After tea, which includes Chai and these little doughnut-whole-like delights, we head out to the slums.  We generally do around 3 home visits in the morning.  In our home visits we ask a series of questions about the individual we are meeting with.  The questions generally have to do with their status (HIV/AIDS).  Then towards the end of each meeting we always ask if they go to church and if they are saved.  This is the part of our visits that I've really come to enjoy the most.  Since most of the people on the team are going into to some kind medical work I feel that the spiritual needs of the people is the area I need to be concerned with most.  After our visits in the morning we usually head back to the center for lunch which generally consists of Ugali (image really dry cream of wheat), goat/beef stew, and something that kinda looks like spinach, but I'm not sure anyone knows what it really is.  When we're done with lunch we head back out to the slums to do more home visits.  My day at the center usually ends around 4.  So, between 4 and 5 I head back to town, generally with a large group of white people, which is always a site for the locals.  I've fallen into the habit of buying peanut butter, honey, wheat bread, a banana and a carton of mixed fruit juice for dinner.  So, once I get to town, I almost always go to the market.  You may be surprised, but I actually completely love eating this for dinner and I do, whenever I get a chance.  Once I've stocked up on my supplies I take it back to the guest house, to indulge in my new favorite meal.  For some reason my room mate and I's room has turned into the place to hang out, cause almost every night people just seem to make their way to our room just to chill, which is usually a lot of fun.  By the time everyone leaves it's usually around 9:30-10ish and by then I'm ready for bed.  That's a day in the life with me here in Nairobi.  Hope you enjoyed it.

for those in need,

tim

p.s. please be in pray as the possibility of starting a clothing company to provide jobs for these has come up.  Pray for wisdom for myself and everyone involved.  I'll post more details as the come about.

Sorry it's been so long!

Greetings my family!

I must start by apologizing for the lack of up-dates that I've produced. We have been going, going, going, but thank God, it's been good. I write to you encouraged and burdened at the same time, which seems to be turning into a way of life for me here.

I've continued in my home visitation with the HIV/AIDS team and God has blessed our work. A total of 6 people have claimed Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior through our efforts, and many others, who were already believers, have received encouragement in their faith, including myself.

Along with the goodness of lives being saved/encouraged has come the burden of hearing that 9/10 of them don't have jobs, and most of them are several months behind on their rent and lacking in money and resources to buy food and meet their essential needs. This burden has got me thinking a great deal about how to help these people. I've been thinking, "isn't there some kind of company that I can help start that would provide jobs for these people?" Unfortunately I haven't come up with anything concrete yet, but I am dreaming and praying and I need you to dream and pray with me.

Outside of ministry things are going pretty well. The dynamic of the team is going good, but pray that it would continue in a positive direction and that we would spur each other on towards love and good deeds.

One fun thing that we did as a team involved playing soccer and basketball. We challenged the Kenyan staff from the school to few a games and I'm proud to say that we dominated them in both sports. In soccer we beat them 6-3 and basketball 11-2. Because we beat them so badly in basketball we only played one game with it being US against Kenya, after that we mixed the teams up. It was a lot of fun, but I've been pretty sore for the last several days.

As I said in the beginning things are good and burdening and I need your prayers. Please pray for wisdom, creativity and direction on how to best help these people and pray that God would give me endurance. Thank you so much for your love and support

I love and miss you all so much,

tim

one day at a time

Dear Family,

I must start by thanking you all so much for your emails and prayers, I really can't express just how up-lifting they have been, so thank you and please don't hesitate to keep writing the emails.

These last several days have been good, but hard. God has been doing some amazing things, but not without opposition. In my last update it was Monday, so let me start from Tuesday.
Tuesday was a perfect example of a good, but hard day. In the morning we did home visits to people how are HIV positive, which is nearly impossible to thoroughly describe, so you'll just have to wait till I can put up some pictures. Anyways, we were doing home visit when we visited a lady who was up and moving around, but she didn't look very good and was pretty skinny. It was pretty obvious the virus had been taking a tole on her body. So we went through all our profile questions and we ask her if she was born again and she answered, "no" and so we began to share the gospel with her and after a few minutes of talking about Christ she saw her need for him and accepted him into her heart! It was so amazing and encouraging! So that was the morning. Then, in the afternoon we went down to an area of the slums called Bondeni, which is much rougher than the other areas we'd been working in. There are a lot of drunk people, street kids sniffing glue all day, pretty intense. So we're walking through and we cross a bridge and head up a hill and we're looking down on Bondeni and we come across some guys who are illegally brewing beer beside the river below. It definitely was an interesting sight, so one of the girls on my team decided it was a good time to take a picture, but the guys brewing did not like that so they started throwing rocks at us. Thankfully no one was hit, but it was a bit startling. I share this because that day God really showed me that I need to be constantly seeking him for strength and wisdom. He showed me that I need to take this one day at a time and expect each day to be completely different than the last. Since then things have been great! Yesterday I got a chance to share, "the word of God" (as they called it) at the HIV/AIDS support group that we've been working with, which was really cool. And today was awesome! We had another women accept Christ into her life. She wanted to start anew and saw that Jesus Christ was the only way to become a new creation. It was so exciting!

Well, God is good and He is doing some great things here in the midst of all the struggles. If you could please continue to pray that would be amazing. A few people have getting sick, so please be praying that God would sustain my health. Pray that he would give me the words to say when sharing the gospel and pray for spiritual protection. You all are so great and I miss you so much! Your encouragement is keeping me going.

With all my Love,

tim

nairobi

hey everyone,

Sorry I haven't contacted anyone yet, I haven't had access to email like I thought I would. Things are going great though. Our flight was good, no problems. We actually had a chance to go walk around London during our layover there, which was pretty cool. Because of the flights being at night we were all very tired when we got here though, so the first day we were pretty worthless. Yesterday we spent the day working in the slums, which was a very new and eye opening experience. I am working with the HIV/AIDS team, so yesterday we did home visits, which involved checking on people who are HIV position and making sure they were taking their medicine. We're all staying at what we would call a hostile or an inn, something like that. Today we walked around downtown, which was fun. Tomorrow we're going to church which I'm forward too. Other than that all of us are trying to learn the language as quickly as possible. All in all things are going well. I do feel a little overwhelmed by the weight of the poverty around us, but God is giving me strength. If you could be praying that God would continue to give me strength and help me to remember that only good can come through his strength. Also pray for wisdom and understanding on how I can best reach out and share the love of Christ with the people I come in contact with. Please be praying that I'm able to pick the language up quickly and pray for unity within our team, that we would be ready to serve each other, the missionaries and the people. Thank you so much for your support and prayers.

sincerely,

tim

room 311

Here is my room at the Benedict Inn, where I've been staying/training for the past five days.  Training has been great, as I mentioned in my last post, but it has now come to an end and we're getting ready to leave.  Our flight is scheduled to depart at 6:46 pm.  Everyone is super excited, myself included.  We've got about two days of travel ahead of us, so that should be pretty grueling, but yesterday we had a chance to meet and talk with Marry and Wallace, (a Kenyan couple we will be working very closely with in Nairobi) which was really exciting and made the forthcoming travel seem less daunting.  I am in great anticipation for the work that lies ahead.  Please be praying for preparedness and unity amongst the team I am apart of.  If you could also pray for safe travels that would be great!  Thank you so much for your support!

I love you all,

tim buskey