Nothing clever to put here.

Note: Take a virtual tour of AMCC on Nick's blog! www.nicknkenya.blogspot.com

Awwwwwwww yeah! Yo Yo Yo! This is Mark Dawson, releasing a deep lunged holler from deep in the Kenyan hill country! I'm sending out a call to all the friends and the lonely, the posers and true, and all who are drawn to mammon as the end of our problems- be free!
Okay, that was pretty ridiculous. :-) It's just that listening to Switchfoot puts me in this awesome and grand mood. Since I hear music of my choice for about an hour each week it makes it pretty special. So please excuse my excitement, but this is my blog, so I get to do that...
This week I finally felt like not much craziness of note happened! It could also just be that I'm getting used to the constant stream of craziness. Rent for us was due last Sunday and we haven't paid a shilling of it. John said that our landlord consented to give us 5 days to get stuff together, but we won't be able to call a meeting with the Board until later than that because of the Easter holiday. Nick and I are learning how to be patient and in many ways, feel very right about this situation. We're here to go through this tension with them, not bail them out every time because us bailing them out is not a long-term solution.
Today was a pretty encouraging time for Nick and I about our approach here. We're not here to give lots of money, and we're both refreshed and energized to pursue our real tasks here wholeheartedly (form relationship with John and Nancy, help with day to day tasks). We've been reminded recently by some wise friends to let go of the tension to "do something" or make sure that we see results for what we're doing here. God has called us to be here to speak love with our hands and our presence, whether anything changes or not. Nick and I feel renewed in our call being here, and are just stoked that the Lord will do as He wills.
Lately I've been really impressed (or scared) by the story of the beginning of Saul's reign over Israel. Basically, Samuel tells Saul to organize sacrifices to God and then wait for Samuel to come before he does anything. Saul waits the number of days that Samuel told him to, and when Samuel doesn't show up all of the Israelites begin leaving him. So he does what seems to make sense, he offers sacrifices to God as the Philistines loom nearby in large number. Bad move. Two quotes stick out to me from this and are very pertinent to me here,
"Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, of obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams."- 1 Sam. 15:22
"Saul said to Samuel, 'I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice." - 1 Sam 15:24
I'm hoping that's kind of self-explanatory, cause this isn't a sermon blog. But those ideas have been really big for me lately. And honestly, they're pretty freeing.
In other news, we're stoked because there will be a fund-raiser hosted here, at AMCC, by AMCC, in just over two weeks (April 26th!). We got some snazzy lookin cards printed up and have been stoked by cool happenings with them.
1. The print shop made a mistake and printed way too many of the cards. Since it was their mistake though, they just gave us all of the extras for free.
2. When we went to Bidco Oil's company headquarters they asked for 50 cards, which is 20 more than we were planning on giving them!
3. We're already given out over 120 cards! And by we, I mean John and Nancy. We've got a schedule now, and they have been on "office" duty so far this week. It's part of being in the office to do stuff like that, and they've done wonderfully.
In a related-yet-unrelated note, while John was visiting some of the guardians of kids at AMCC yesterday to hand out cards he was in a region where they grow pineapples... and found them selling for less than a quarter each! He picked up 11 of them for $2.50! CRAZY.
John also wrote an official letter to the District Officer yesterday requesting the gov't to give us some food (like 1,500 lbs of it) and seems pretty hopeful that we might actually get something out of it! I took it to the Chief this morning, who stamped it, and Nick will deliver it to the D.O. tomorrow morning. I don't know why we haven't done this at all in the last two years, but I'm pretty glad that we're pursuing it now! We're praying for this and want you to also.
MY GIRLFRIEND IS COMING TO VISIT ME IN THREE WEEKS!!! This has actually been an incredible thing, because I'm pretty nuts about her but I haven't been going crazy missing her since we've been separated (again). I can't give a nonsupernatural answer about the reason for that, but my culture makes it difficult and cliche to explicitly say Why I think that is (that God helps us in some subjective and unquantifiable way). She and I are both pretty involved in our different locations (Zambia and Kenya, respectively) and yet aren't feeling like something is just being lost in our relationship either. It's one of the first times in my life that I've been so confident that God wants me to do something that I'd just rather not. Yet I'm just so okay with it because I know that even if we were together right now it wouldn't be right... so it makes me even more excited for her to come visit for a short time because I do sense that God thinks it's good and it's a blending of two of my greatest affections in life. Hopefully she's not blushing like mad at me posting this on the internet (hey Karen!).
Maureen (14 yrs old) got a tetanus shot yesterday and some antibiotics to take because... she might have tetanus! I don't know the details, but my guess would be that few of the kids here have a tetanus shot. So, when one of them gets a half-inch cut on the metal trunk that they keep stuff in, and a week later their ankle and foot swell up like they've been injected with petroluem jelly, we have her walk to the closest clinic (about 2 km away, up and down 300 ft. hills) and get her some medical attention. Thankfully, medical care in Kenya is MUCH cheaper than in the states. Maureen's visit plus the shot, dressing her wound, and the meds cost $3.10. I took Mary (7 yrs) to the gov't run hospital today and the whole visit cost $1.25. She has "p-cells", which are some bacteria that I don't know but makes the skin in her face get lighter in splotches. It's such a strange thing for Nick and I to do. We go to the clinic, looking "smart" because it's culturally appro-pro, and try to act like we know what's going on. Even though everybody in these places speaks English we can't understand their accents very well, and we normally end up having someone half our age translate for us. Thank the Lord that the kids at AMCC know English really well. The girl who translated for me today, Sarah (13 yrs) wants to teach English at the University level. And I think that's cool, because she's an orphan and doesn't have many resources, but I believe her when she says that she wants to be a professor. She could be, if she's able to stay in school. Well, she needs to study a little harder too, ;-)
The rains came back on Monday-woohoo! It was the biggest rain so far and filled up our water-catch tank, which had been emptied in order to install a faucet at the bottom so that the kids don't break it by having to climb on top to get water out of it. I found out on Sunday that it's normal for the rain in this season to come for a few days, then be dry for a few days, then rain again. I'm glad! I was also glad because the guy who told me was from...
Bidco oil! That's right, Bidco stopped by again last Sunday! They AGAIN brought food with them (not as much as last time, but still a whole lot- 5 cabbages, 20 lbs of potatoes, the 4 biggest loaves of bread I've ever seen, sugar, 20 onions, 20 tomatoes, and a few other things including "Lucozade"- Kenya's version of Gatorade) and this time they also did two fantastic presentations for us: one on HIV/AIDS, and another on TB (Tuberculosis). Honestly, the guy who did them (James) was fantastic. I was amazed he was just a volunteer with this "Educate the Public" program that Bidco has going on, because he was just awesome. It was really good to hear good stats and info on both subjects (75% of HIV infections in Kenya happen from unprotected sex, TB is an epidemic in Kenya, just to give you a little taste). After they left John told me that one of them said "If you pray then we'll come on Good Friday and be able to give some more stuff". This statement is Kenyan and makes me laugh/offended. But I'm praying anyway, and will welcome Bidco no matter when they visit us next.
Speaking of Good Friday, I'd like to say something about Jesus' death here on my blog. I don't know what I could say right now that would be honest and literarily stimulating (i.e. I could list things about his death in a Creed-style format, but no one wants to read that, but doing my prose about Jesus' sacrificial death is woefully cliche). I am thankful that Jesus died. I know that although I, as a finite being, will never be able to fully appreciate His love for me, it is possible for me to appreciate it more than I did in the past. And I know that that my life gets richer the more that I believe Him when He said that He loved me and that He forgives me. As my life continues I probably won't be able to articulate anything that profound or different from what those who have preceded me in Faith have said, and I think that's actually expected. This truth of love is deep, but simple, and I think that God intended it to be like that. Being a simple thing, it can be worded in an easily cognizant form and embraced by persons of all intelligence and social classes. Being a deep thing, it is has an ineffability which requires that each person to individually discover it in order to understand it. So Good Friday to all of you, may you grow in your appropriation of His ineffable grace.