Selfies with Raylin: Hope Cafe

Hi everyone, I am Raylin Uirab and this is my first selfie!

This is me at Monday night’s Hope Cafe. Community members from our Thrive group meet here to use the provided internet to do college homework, research, assignment and projects. We also just come here to enjoy time together and the refreshments that are sold.

Raylin

Note from the Echols:

Internet is not always as easy to come by in Namibia as it is in other parts of the world. We noticed a need for internet access in Katutura especially among our college and university students. Internet tends to be very expensive and is usually charged on a per mb basis. In most cases the only internet access available to them is free from midnight to 5 AM, leaving our students often having to wait until then to begin their studies. Hope Cafe was our answer to this problem. It has been a big success, allowing students a chance to use internet and providing a safe and fun place for community members to socialize.

If you’re ever in Namibia, feel free to drop by Hope Cafe, so far we’re open every Monday and Thursday evening.

Introducing: “Selfies with Raylin”

Hey everyone, we’re going to do a new series on the blog over the next several weeks. Raylin, our first official staff member at 3 Measures, is making sure that everything keeps going while we’re gone (in case you missed it we’re in the States until Feb 3rd). Each week he’s going to take a selfie at one of our events and write a short blog post to tell you what’s happening. We’re calling it, “Selfies with Raylin.”

But first, let us formally introduce him…

Raylin was a part of Hope Club, our Saturday night program for young adults, from the beginning. Since then we’ve changed Hope Club into Thrive Group. On Sundays we meet together to study the Bible, worship our God and enjoy time together as a community. Rayin was baptized back in May this year and joined our staff in August. He is a passionate Christian and has been such a blessing to us. Hope you enjoy getting to know him more over the next couple of months!

Stay tuned, Raylin’s first selfie will be posted on Saturday.

Three measures in 10 years.

“The kingdom of God is like yeast that a women used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast into three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”
Matt 13:33

In 2002 David and I met on the YWAM base here in Namibia. He was in the middle of a church plant in the North, and after the DTS school we both attended I went up to the North with him to help establish that ministry. It was during that time that I felt called to missions in Africa, and that David and I fell in love and realized we had the same goals. In 2005 we finally made it to Bible college to prepare ourselves better for a life in ministry, specifically cross cultural ministry. We graduated with top honors in 2009.
In 2010 we finally made it back to Namibia to begin the work we had felt called to do in 2002. But they don’t just hand out visas for anyone who wants to come and work in Namibia. So we agreed to spend two years (those two years will be coming to an end at the end of April) working with John and Suzanne at Community Hope School while getting a new ministry in the works and in return they would let us use CHS for visa purposes.
 The last two years have been fun, exciting, trying, exhausting, and a million other things. I think that perhaps we felt at times that the two years were dragging by as we were chomping at the bit to begin the ministry we had been working towards. But as I look back now I know that these last two years have been invaluable. We have grown and learned more than I could put down here. God has used these last two years as a time to refine us as people, and as a family. We have had some very rough and sad times, but we have also celebrated great victories, including new births!
 He has also used this time to bring the plan and work He has for us here into focus. And above all we have had two years immersed in the community that we will be reaching out to, under the covering of another ministry. This has given us an opportunity to get to know the people, make mistakes, learn, and make relationships without having our names on the line. Does that make sense? If we had just jumped in with our own thing without this knowledge and relationships we would have fallen flat on our faces 🙂

So now in 2012, exactly ten years after we met and felt the call, we are ready to announce and start a new ministry here in Namibia.It is an amazing feeling to be at the point we have been working towards!
 Brian and Pam Kinghorn, the directors of YWAM Namibia, have welcomed us with open arms. So we will be working under the covering of YWAM. YWAM currently has two main ministries in Namibia. CHS and Beautiful kids (BK). CHS you know about, Beautiful kids is an outreach to preschool aged kids primarily, but they also have youth programs, after school programs, teacher training, classes on how to be a good parent, and they have a sewing project that is creating jobs for women in the community. Our ministry will come along side these two and complement what they are doing. Our ministry will have two parts.

Bear with me, I know this post is getting long…

The first part of the ministry will be focused in Katutura, for now we will be working out of the BK offices.
Our ministry is based on the verse at the start of this post. We believe that if the Kingdom of God is present in a community it’s reach is unlimited. It should not only transform a part of that community. But it reaches into every aspect of the community, the physical, the social and the spiritual. We are calling those three parts of society the three measure, and that will also be the name of our ministry! Three measures will exist to bring change to the physical, social, and spiritual lives of people in Katutura Namibia. We will begin with cell groups in people’s homes, skills training so people can get jobs, and activities for the men of the community especially. You can read more about the specifics in the ministry tab on the left hand side.

The second part of our ministry will be in the North of Namibia. This is where David worked when he was here before in 2002. We will be going up to the rural village areas of the country to train local Christian leaders. We will spend 2-3 weeks in the area three times a year doing what we are calling “Restoration Seminars.” You can also read more about those in the 3Measures tab on the left hand side.

Our official launch date is August 2012, we will be in the USA for a furlough and support raising trip from May through July.

God is great, and He is so good to us. Join with us in prayer and celebration as we end our time with CHS and launch a brand new ministry.

Prayer!

What are some of your prayer requests? We are going to spend some time in the coming weeks in prayer for the next step in our ministry, and would love to pray for you too.

Have grace today.

I want to share a story with you. A story to illustrate what grace is.

A few weeks ago Reese was going for daily blood draws. Being that he was a brand new baby they would make a small cut on his heel and then milk it for blood. This seemed as painful as it sounds. It had gotten to the point where Reese would give a pitiful little cry when anyone would touch his little feet. He had bandaids and little cuts in different stages of healing all over his feet. It was a difficult time for us to go through. (Even now we are not done with the whole Jaundice thing. Reese had blood drawn from his neck last week to check his liver function since he is still a buttery shade of yellow, please be in prayer for that)

When he was 6 days old we were told that he was in the all clear and that he would not need another blood draw, but when we went to the dr. for out post postpartum check up the dr. decided that he was still too yellow and we would need ANOTHER blood draw.
We packed him in the car and as he sat there content and unaware of the coming pain I just felt so lost. I was still in a lot of pain from the c-section, and David and I were both exhausted from our first week with a new born. Seeing that Reese was also a preemie, we were told to not have anyone near him for at least 8 weeks because his immune system was non-existent.  This in itself caused a lot of stress. I would stay up at night to make sure that his lungs stayed open, I was terrified they would relapse and he would need to go back to the NICU and back on the CPAPP machine. I also knew that the outcome of this blood draw may mean that Reese would be admitted in the hospital again. That was my biggest fear.

When we got Pathcare a car stopped at the same time as us and an elderly couple got out. I could tell the lady was having trouble walking, she seemed to be in a lot of pain. I am not proud of this, but instead of helping them, or letting them go ahead of us, I raced to the door to be first. This is not at all how I would normally act. After we were checked in we sat down to wait and the old lady was checked in. She told the nurse in broken English that standing up from sitting was excruciating for her so they needed to let her sit in the waiting room and the person would come out to draw her blood.

When I was our turn they took Reese and started to rub his foot, I ran from the room. I ran all the way outside where I stood and cried like a fool. When I turned around this old lady was standing behind me. She followed me out. She was German, so I have no idea what she was saying but she was talking to me in German, and she embraced me. I needed that hug, that comfort on that day more than ever. She had no idea what we were going through. That I was in pain, exhausted and all that. All she knew about me wast that I was the rude person who made sure to jump in front of her. But she had grace with me. She stood up from her chair, even thought it hurt her, (and I did not deserve it!) to come and comfort me.

We know from the New Testament that grace from God  is the blessings, love and forgiveness He gives us even though we don’t deserve it. Have grace with people today, you never know what they are going through.

What we are up to.

Forgive me for not updating sooner. Mark pointed out yesterday that we have not posted pictures of any bugs in a while so before I give an update on where we are now I would like to point you to THIS post so you can remember the creepy crawlies we have here in Nam.

 Now I will give you a minute to get over the shock…

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Now what we have been up to!
I have been staying home with Reese. I never thought I would be a stay at home mother, but I am finding that being a mother is something I was born to do. I love spending time with Reese. I feel like I am still in some kind of honeymoon phase with him. Everything he does amazes me. I look at him sleeping next to me right now and I am again overwhelmed with the huge blessing that he is. I get out of the house on Sunday for church, on Tuesday for a YWAM family meeting and Wednesday nights we attend a cell group. We try to have a date night on Thursdays too. I also try to keep up with anything I can do from home to help with what goes on outside of the house 🙂

David spent the first part of January hiring new teachers and staff members for CHS. A big part of that was searching for someone to replace him. He found that person a few weeks ago and he has been spending the last two weeks training her. He also is getting things at school in order so that our transition out of there and into our own ministry will be smooth. So lots of paper work and meetings!

In other news we are busy getting everything together for my visa application so that we can visit the USA in May-July this year. We will have limited time in Colorado and Missouri, but if you would like to visit with us we would love to see you, just let us know! A huge part of our furlough this year will be raising support and spreading the news on our ministry here in Namibia. We will also be looking for potential recruits to join our team out here. Look for more info on here, and in our upcoming newsletter. If you don’t get the newsletter then you can just leave a comment on here and we will get that straightened out!

So there you have it, a vintage bug and news on us. We cannot wait to see you all in the summer!

Missions and loneliness.

I have to confess the loneliness that comes with living in a foreign country. It could be that now that I am going through something that usually bring gatherings of friends and family, I am feeling this separation more acutely. I woke up feeling sad today. Sad that we are so far away from home. Sad that I left my home country over eight years ago, and with that I have missed out on eight years of life with my parents, my brothers, my childhood friends.
Something I learned very quickly when we decided to become missionaries, is that friends and relationships are, for lack of a better word, “transitional.” We were missions majors in college so many of our class mates are scattered around the globe. People come and go. We throw ourselves into making significant relationships with people, knowing that soon we will be saying goodbye. Of course in today’s world we can skype and email. It’s not like I have to wait for a slow boat to China for news from home. But still in the day to day being without the familiarity of the smell of your mother’s hug, or the reassurance of your father’s smile, or the comfort of your best friend’s acceptance can just make you feel homesick.
When I decided to become a missionary almost ten years ago, I was in the North of Namibia staying with Peter and Ursula De Villiers, they have been working in the North for many many years. I was thinking about everything they had left behind, and I was wondering how they could do it. I was reminded of Matthew 19:2

Encouragement.

There seems to be a problem at school. The kids like to tease each other all the time.  I think perhaps it used to be fun teasing, but it has gotten to the point where kids are tearing each other down. They are quick to point out flaws and problems. This has left some of the classes in a bad place, especially the older class. It seems the kids have become experts at hurting one another. David decided to focus his discipleship classes on encouragement and love. In the first week he asked the kids what their ideal class would be like, what it would look like to love one another. The kids came up with great answers, but the challenge is to get them to take it to heart and to act out on what they are saying. He challenged them to come up with a few encouraging things to say about their class mates. There were some rules though, they were not allowed to just say “Joe is nice”  “Jane is pretty”  they had to really think about it. This was last week. He said that is went ok, but that it seemed that some kids really were getting it.
Yesterday he came home from school with a great report. When he he walked into class he asked them how their week had been, and EVERY single student in the class gushed about a single boy who had gone out of his way to encourage everyone in the class. This boy is a known trouble maker, he likes to point out thing other kids are doing wrong to get them in trouble. But the kids could not stop saying how this week he had encouraged each and every one of them. He is helping to turn this class around. David said that many of the other kids now feel like they also want to be like Roberto.
I think it is important for us as adults, and especially as Christians to hold each other up, and to go out of our way to encourage one another. It is such a simple and basic principle, but it is easy to get caught up in our own issues and to forget that there are people around us who need to be encouraged.

Not being at school has been difficult for me, but hearing things like this makes my heart happy. It is amazing to see how one child can make a difference just by pointing out the good rather than the bad. David is doing an amazing job with those kids. Please pray for him, and them. There is only four weeks left in this school year. Next year some of the kids in this class will move on to new schools. And David will not be teaching discipleship next year. This is his last few weeks to really make an impact on these boys and girls. Pray that they will catch a hold of the things that he is teaching them, and that this encouragement bug will bite all of them!

Acts 2:47

Acts 2:47 is my favorite verse. It is a non-traditional “favorite verse” in a sense. It doesn’t talk about being comforted, or being filled with joy. It is not a declaration of love or a promise for believers.

It is a simple statement that changed the course of history, the course of my life.

Paul.

Paul was a missionary.
Paul preached the gospel all over the early world.
Paul was not held back by lack of things.
If Paul did not have a camel, Paul walked. 
Paul was not stopped by threat of death,
threat of bodily harm,
threat of imprinsonmetn.
Paul was not stopped by
beatings,
verbal assaults,
threats,
jailings,
presecution,
hunger,
sickness,
exhaustion,
ship wrecks or
snake bites.
I feel challenged today.