2 Things I Love About America & 1 Thing I Love/Hate

What I Love

Driving through the redwoods

1. Driving
I must love driving if I've put my family through over 3,500 miles of road trips in the past two months: 2,500 miles down the California coast to San Diego and back up the freeway, then later to Central Oregon and up to Eastern Washington.  The well-maintained roads, cheap gas prices, drive thru food and coffee and free audio books from the library have made nearly every day of our road trips a pleasure.  Our kids are fantastic travelers, even in their car seats, so there’s been very little crying.  We have two more small overnight trips: one to Astoria and one to Hood River.

2.  Collaboration

Acting casual during a Lahash staff meeting

I haven’t spent a lot of time in the Lahash office, but those days are full of meetings.  I totally understand that many people find meetings dull and counterproductive, but as one who works from a home which is more than 10,000 miles away from my coworkers, I so appreciate the opportunity to exchange ideas and brainstorm with my Lahash colleagues.  Also super valuable are the phone conferences with our Mama Maisha co-founders, the Grahams.  Being able to talk freely on a good connection without signals dropping or awkward pauses makes it so easy to compare ideas and make decisions.

What I Love/Hate

Convenience food

First, a confession: I am eating and feeding my family convenience food.  My boys have probably eaten their weight in chicken nuggets in the past two months.  It’s a little bit of a chicken-and-egg thing; convenience food enables me to GoGoGo! all day long and feed my kids within minutes of arriving back at my parents’ house.  (God knows how many days I’ve reached home in Shirati after a whole day on a bus willing to pay dearly for a bag of frozen chicken nuggets.)  On the other hand, if I know that it will take at least 90 minutes to make dinner for myself and my family, I am far more likely to wrap up a meeting or a project to get home in plenty of time.  If I only used a drive-thru or a bag of frozen processed something on those rare occasions that really required it, I could have a love-love relationship with convenience food.  Unfortunately I allow those conveniences to override my best judgment of what my family and I should eat.  Ironically, most of the time I’m in Africa I am dreaming about the amazing food I will cook when I reach America...ugh….  Another example of not giving my best intentions the energy and resources they need to succeed.

Eating garbage (not the diaper)

Let me close with an epiphany I had a few days ago.  I've often felt sorry for myself because *sob*I don’t have many good friends in Shirati.  I've often asked people to pray for me in this respect, but I just realized that many of the women who are praying for me to find a good community of friends never really get time to hang out with their own community of friends!  Everyone is so busy, especially moms of little kids, and super especially moms of little kids who also work or home school.  If you have a mom of little kids in your life (or in your home!), push her out of the house to go get coffee or happy hour with a friend.  Ladies, let yourself be pushed out of your house, sans kids, to get a little community, a little time to just be you in an honest, healthy way.  Laugh a lot, cry a little and be blessed!

Remember the Otienos!

We're quickly drawing to the end of the year, and many of you will be thinking about your year-end giving.  No doubt you're getting emails and Facebook and snail mail reminders from every cause you've ever supported asking for your check or online donation as 2014 closes.  Well, here's my pitch for why your year-end giving should support the Otienos:

1.  We're involved with really important work which is impacting lives.

We work with Lahash International, facilitating holistic care for vulnerable children.  We work with the Tanzania Mennonite Church, doing all kinds of things like building housing for widows, installing rainwater cisterns for palliative care clients and supporting illiterate pastors in caring for their congregations.  We work on Mama Maisha, a project we started earlier this year with our good friends, the Grahams.  This is a project which is literally saving lives.  Here is the photo of baby Grace, who was born just last week in Shirati Hospital after her mother had complications in delivery.  Six months ago, before Mama Maisha's Maternal Health Advocates started their educational outreach, the mother and baby probably would have died like so many others before them.

2.  We're dependent on your support.

All of the projects we work on, from Mama Maisha to Lahash International to gender-based violence are dependent upon the generosity of donors like you.  100% of our financial support comes from donations, either directly to our personal support fund through Lahash International or through donations to the projects we work on.  God has called us to a ministry and a life which requires us to raise money almost constantly.  Many times this feels burdensome and unpleasant (asking friends and family for money is often uncomfortable and nearly always awkward!), but in order to do the work that we are called to, we need your support in prayer, fellowship and funding.

3.  We love you and want you to be part of our work.

We love what we do and we want to share the satisfaction and joy that we receive from showing God's love and care for people in vulnerable situations.  We want you to share that satisfaction, to feel ownership for work which is dramatically impacting the lives of the poor and suffering in rural Tanzania.

How can you be part of our ministry?

Give to support our family's personal and travel expenses.

Give to support the organizations we work with.
(Click the photo to give to that project.  Mama Maisha funds are raised through Village Life Outreach Project, a non-profit that we have a great relationship with.  Just be sure to mention Mama Maisha when you give or send me an email to let me know about your gift so that we can make sure it's credited to Mama Maisha's account.)

     

Attend our presentation on January 9th to find out more and ask questions.

Thank you for your love and care.  Happy New Year!

Some Amazing Ladies...Brief and Exciting News from Mama Maisha

These ladies are all members of the brand new Mama Maisha village groups!  I cannot tell you how excited all the Mama Maisha staff and founders are to see more than 100 women getting involved within the first month of the Maternal Health Advocates starting up.  These groups are a place for women to be educated and discuss matters about healthy pregnancy, safe delivery and family planning.  My favorite thing is how many pregnant bellies and tiny babies are in these photos.  As nice as it is to be in the States right now, I'm itching to get back to Tanzania and meet them in person!

The Amazing America

We're having a great time in America, but, sadly, the crazy pace of standard American life has caused me to neglect the blog.  Here's a brief update:

Fred's work - Mostly on hold until we get back.  The end of the year is usually the end of the budget cycle for his projects, and December is often a month when everyone takes leave.  Sadly, we've heard that some of the people Fred has been working with are being laid off because their projects aren't re-funding.  Please pray especially for Stephen, who I mentioned in our last email, because he doesn't have the formal education to get a similar job at another organization, so he'll being going back to volunteering and farming.

Leisha's work - Mama Maisha has had a little pause while both our coordinator and I have been traveling and while our quarterly funds have been pretty tight because of the expensive training in October.  Grace, our coordinator, is back in Shirati and getting things back on track.  We just got word that we didn't get a grant we were hoping for that would have provided safe delivery kits for moms and traditional birth attendants, but we're talking to a lot of people about Mama Maisha and hope to get some sustainable, grassroots funding in place.

The kiddos - The kids are loving America, especially the family and many, many friends we've met.  The last ten days we've been driving through California and southern Oregon, meeting up with so many friends, nearly all of whom have kids the same age range as our kids.  Inno's writing journal is full of city names followed by the names of the new friends he's met and cool things he's done. It basically looks like this, but in barely legible grade schooler handwriting.
              Brookings, OR - Blake, lighthouses
              Santa Rosa, CA - Nick and Jaclyn, redwoods, drove through tree
              San Francisco, CA - Scott, playground
              Pasadena, CA - Baby Gideon and Sofia
              San Diego, CA - Jasmine and Hannah, beach, church play
              Modesto, CA - Bear
              Medford, OR - Grant, ice skating, church
              Albany, OR - Reagan

We're home again now, transitioning into Christmas celebrations and a series of dinners with friends.  Hopefully our kids will keep up their excellent behavior and pretty good health and patient acceptance of so many new things.  Thanks to all of you for reading, for praying, and for inviting us into your homes and churches.  We're really enjoying this time of fellowship and fun as a family and the opportunity to share our work with all of you!
   
             

Bummed Out and Burnt Out

I haven't been updating this blog very often since we started our monthly emails (you can sign up on the form at the top right of this website to get them), because a lot of my updates, photos and (limited) creativity have been going into those emails.  Now, however, I find myself mid-month and a little bit desperate.

I rarely talk about money here, but money has been consuming my waking hours of late.  Fred gets a salary from his projects which covers most of our monthly expenses, but I have to raise 100% of my salary and expenses for working for Lahash.  Over the past five and a half years that I've been raising support, I've always seen God provide for our needs, albeit on God's timing, not mine.  This is always stretching, but not particularly welcome.

Last week we found out that we need a letter from the Children's Court of the High Court of Kenya to prove that we have the permission of the court to travel out of the country with Innocent.  This is one of those government policies which I understand the purpose behind (to prevent child trafficking), but which make our life much harder.  Fred had to rush up to Nairobi yesterday to meet with a lawyer about this letter, and found out that it will cost us roughly $1,600 for lawyer fees, plus more for travel and hotel and food.  We emptied our accounts to pay the lawyer so that we can move forward, but it means that we have no money to pay for our family to travel to Nairobi next week for Fred and Innocent's visa appointments and Gretchen's passport appointment.

I don't know where the money will come from.  I feel like my faith for when/where money will come from is stretched to capacity, because we have this small, immediate need plus our airfare, which is coming in slowly but surely, and then money for travel and expenses once we reach the States.  I confess a little bitterness in my heart from stories of other friends living overseas who have had their total airfare raised by friends without their even asking or whose organization pays for their travel.  I'm so happy for those very deserving families to get to visit home, but I'm also pretty envious.  Sometimes raising money is just so hard, and I don't know what to do except come here, express a need, and ask for help.  I hate to feel like all I'm doing is begging for help, but we'd really like to come back to visit America for some much-needed rest and time with family and friends.

If you pray, please lift us up.  We need prayer for our finances, our continuing trust in God the Provider, and all the work that we're trying to wrap up in the next seven weeks before we are scheduled to fly out.

If you can give, please give.  You can visit our new fundraising page for these travel expenses, http://org.grouprev.com/otieno-trip, to give and to promote this cause.

This week, as Fred is in court on Innocent's behalf and I'm out in the villages for Mama Maisha, money is the last thing we want to be stressed about, so we just have to take a deep breath and cast our concerns on the One who cares for us.

We're Coming to America!

WHEW!!  After a crazy month of hosting a team of medical students and other visitors to Shirati, launching Mama Maisha, visiting multiple villages for various projects, preparing for and attending the Lahash East Africa Conference, traveling to Lahash project sites with Lahash staff members and much, much more.  I got home on Monday evening, spent Tuesday catching up on emails, and finally, today, got around to something I've been needing to do for months: asking for your help.

Every two years we try to get back to the States for Christmas to visit family and friends, check in at the Lahash office, and do presentations to expose people to the work we're part of in East Africa.  This year we are super excited about coming with our whole family; Innocent and Gretchen for their very first visit and Wesley for the first visit he might possibly remember bits of.  We found a fabulous deal on airfare for mid-November, so that immediately after Innocent closes school for the year, we will dash off to Nairobi and fly into JFK in New York City.  A week-long visit to a Mennonite church near Toronto will start off our trip, then Thanksgiving in Oregon, then a two week road trip through southern Oregon and all the way down to San Diego and back again.  In January we'll go up to central and eastern Washington, then leave at the end of January to get Innocent back into school only a few weeks late.  In order to do all that, we need to raise $8,000.  Can you help? 

You can write a check to Lahash International for the Otieno Travel Fund or go to our secure online giving.  We're hoping to be able to purchase airfare in the next month, so please don't wait.  So many people read this blog and get our letters and emails, so if everyone could contribute something, we can do it in no time!

Please also pray that Fred and Innocent will get their American and Canadian visas.  They're going in for those interviews in a few weeks, and it would be so disappointing if they didn't get their visas.

Thank you all for reading this, for caring about us, and (in advance) for contributing to our travel expenses.

Photos from the Past Month

Delivering furniture to village Vulnerable Children Councils

Wesley with driver Kennedy

Wesley sharing his soda with some new friends

Wesley's favorite food: Fish and ugali

Mexican Feast