Comin' home

This will be our last full post from Kenya. We have loved our time here and are saddened to leave. We have made many great friends and been involved in so many wonderful ministries. Thank you to everyone who have supported financially and through prayers. Here is just a sampling of the ways your gifts have been used:
1. Feeding, clothing and providing basic needs to orphans and widows
2. Purchasing land for a widowed Rwandan refugee with 6 children
3. Purchasing Bibles for a ladies Bible study that disciples over 3,000 women in the community
4. Purchasing Bibles for a local church
5. Providing medication for widows and the needy
6. Providing school fees and supplies for orphans
7. Supplying fertilizer & seed for planting
8. Much More!
We had several goodbye parties this past week. It made our leaving very special and even more difficult. The surgery department held a party during chai time for John where several people spoke about his influence in the department. John also spoke at Community Health to encourage them in their good work. The ladies Bible study had a special time of prayer and chai for us. They presented John with a Maasai sword (he was WAY excited) and AnneMarie with a Maasai dress. They gave me 2 handmade necklaces and a scarf. We were so touched by every “goodbye” party that we had. Saturday, we had over 20 Kipsigis come to our house to say good bye. We will miss this community and the relationships so much. We are anticipating our return here whenever John finishes residency.
We would like to encourage any doctors or dentists who are interested in missions of any length to contact us or World Medical Missions (see link in the side bar). We have had a wonderful experience and have seen a great need for doctors not only at Tenwek, but at other hospitals in Kenya and the rest of the underserved world.
Here are some of our highlights of the last 9+ months:
1. Reconnecting with the friends we made at Tenwek in 2005
2. Safaris! Including the wildebeest migration, lion kills and baby animals
3. Seeing the peace of the Holy Spirit present in the lives of patients with terminal cancer who know Christ
4. AnneMarie changing from a baby to a talkative toddler
5. Listening to people pray in their language
6. Our families coming to Kenya to experience our life and to better understand what we do
7. Learning to speak (John) and sing (Krista & AnneMarie) in Kipsigis and Kiswahili
Things we can’t wait to do in the good ole’ USA:
1. Drink Dr Pepper
2. Drive on the right side of the road….the non-bumpy, non-dusty road
3. Air conditioning
4. Have a dishwasher & dryer
5. Drink water out of the faucet (without boiling and filtering)
Things we will not miss about Kenya:
1. Bumpy, dusty, rutted, diverted, non-existent roads
2. Beef/mystery meat stew (consist mainly of bones and gristle)
3. Poor internet…grrrrr
4. The dry season
Although I am not looking to flying for 18 hours pregnant and with a toddler, we can’t wait to get home to our families and friends. Thank you for your support, prayers and encouragement. We hope that next time we return to Kenya, some of you may come to serve with us or just to visit!

P.S. I just realized as I was posting this that we hadn’t announced that we are having another girl!

3+1

Well, we sent out an e-mail a few weeks ago, but realized, we should blog about this. We are expecting baby Fitzwater #2 in June! We have been fortunate to have an OB who does ultrasounds in the comfort of my own home! Everything is looking good!

Merry Christmas!

I just finished reading Knowing God (J.I. Packer) this Fall. The following passage, from the chapter entitled "God Incarnate," was a stern reminder to me about celebrating Christmas. Just as Christ emptied himself for our salvation, we are to imitate Christ, and humbly serve those around us (Philippians 2:4-11). It's a poignant message year-round, but particularly so at this time of remembering Christ's birth. I hope this passage will be an encouragement to you. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

John

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We see now what it meant for the Son of God to empty himself and become poor. It meant a laying aside of glory; a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice, and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony -- spiritual even more than physical -- that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely human beings, that they through his poverty might become rich. The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity -- hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory -- because at the Father's will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.

We talk glibly of the "Christmas spirit," rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But what we have said makes it clear that the phrase should carry a tremendous weight of meaning. It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas. And the Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all the year round.

It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians -- I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians -- go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord's parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians-alas, they are many-whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor -- spending and being spent -- to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others -- and not just their own friends -- in whatever way there seems need.

There are not as many who show this spirit as there should be. If God in mercy revives us, one of the things he will do will be to work more of this spirit in our hearts and lives. If we desire spiritual quickening for ourselves individually, one step we should take is to seek to cultivate this spirit.

"You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich" (2 Cor 8:9).

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5).