Learning from History

This was my third time visiting the different historical sites of Mombassa. With each time I go I pick up new information that didn't stick the last time. I found myself wondering what it must of been like for the first missionaries coming. How much different it was for them, than it has been for me. They had to start from square one not knowing what to expect with the climate, their bodies exposed to the new sicknesses, having to make their own homes etc. I admire them so much and am challenged by them. One of the missionaries named John Robert Kraft got malaria when he arrived which made him delirious. His wife ended up dying from child-birth and the baby just a few days later. Kraft never even knew that they died because he was in the delirious state. I can't imagine going through that loss. I am sure he wrote letters back home and got responses back saying things like "Why are you staying there, you should come home, do you want to end up like your wife and baby?" All of this communication is transferred by letters that were sent on ships and could have taken many months in between. That is how these missionaries traveled to Africa in the first place. I just cannot imagine myself going through what they went.

Dates of Fort Jesus

Listening to the tour guide in Fort Jesus

Daddy holding Charis and Nevaeh


script over door in Arabic


looking over a canon


Inscriptions


looking at the coral wall


First Church of east Africa


After learning from pictures and reading stories in the museums I step outside with Charis. The school children are on break and coming running up to the fence to see us. Charis goes right up and stands in front of them to look back at them. We (mostly me) sang I got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy, down in my heart- sometimes Charis says where. When I look at these children an intense love is rushed in my heart that I know comes from God. These children and their parents and neighbors are the reason the first missionaries came. One of the first things the missionaries did was end the slavery that was so prevalent in Kenya. In a different part of Kenya, the first missionaries were able to end Female Genital Mutilation in that village and it is still gone to this day. Where we are located it still takes place. My prayer always is what would God have for me to do while I am here.
Charis with students