“It’s a sad day for Kenya,” said Michael E. Ranneberger, the American ambassador to Kenya. “My biggest worry now is violence, which, let’s be honest, will be along tribal lines.” (Full NYT article here)


(Photo NYT)

We have been in a state of "lock-down" on our compound today, in the heart of Nairobi. Black smoke is billowing above the treetops just a block or two away. The crack of gunfire ocassionally breaks the errie silence of a city come to a standstill. Kenyans went to the polls on Thursday last week for their presidential elections, and things have not progressed well over the weekend. Here is a link to a current New York Times report about the chaos we are witnessing, and with a little browsing online you can probably come to your own conclusions about the election. I'll keep my opinion to myself. But as you pray for us, perhaps you can pray for this country too. That's what we're doing tonight.

It's Christmas eve here in Kenya, and the kids are getting ready for bed... on that night above all other nights when kids can't wait to get to bed. It's fun to re-live the anticipation of Christmas morning through the eyes of our children. We talked about anticipation at dinner tonight. Imagining how Mary must have felt. Wondering what the wise men talked about on their long journey chasing the star. We have the ceramic nativity scene set up as we have every year, and I find that I can still get lost in it. I remembered a short devotional I wrote a few years back about just that. I don't think I have ever posted it, so I've copied it below. And I still count myself among the shepherds...

"Baby Jesus lost an arm this Christmas. I heard the telltale sound of ceramic and fireplace brick colliding at our mantle downstairs. A speedy investigation caught the culprits red-handed – our four-year-old clutching the bed of hay (minus the baby) and his little neighbor friend with a helpless little lamb in his grip. They looked up at me speechless for a moment, and then proceeded to blame each other for the mishap. I gave my son a swift reprimand for disobeying mom's orders not to touch the manger scene, and his friend was sent home. I then got out the super glue and easily fixed the babe's little arm, and set him back in place under the tender gaze of Mary. I paused a moment and looked at the familiar scene of our Christmas tradition. On the one side three wise men stood bearing gifts, themselves adorned in rich clothing. Even their camels were ornate. In the middle were the tired couple and the baby, and one angel to represent a multitude of heavenly hosts presumably. And on the other side, was the riff-raff: Two shepherds in rags trailing smelly animals. Standing there and pondering the arrangement, it occurred to me how much theology was wrapped up in that scene. Kings to pay homage to the King of Kings. Angels bow down. God using the simple things to shame the wise – a teenage girl, a stable, and Immanuel lying in hay. And the shepherds. What else could they be there for except to show that everyone was welcome? Looking at the array above our fireplace, I wondered where I would be standing if I could enter the scene. Of course, I would be with them. We all would. In fact, on closer examination, it becomes apparent that even the wise men are “dressed in rags” as they kneel before the child. This ceramic rendition of the greatest story ever told has always had a central spot in our home each December. Now I remember why it also has the centerpiece of our hearts. Because what I saw in the guilty eyes of my young son as he blamed his friend, is what I see in my own broken nature, and what I imagine it looked like in the garden some time back when Adam pointed a finger at Eve. We are a hopeless mess. But hope, it seems, came unexpectedly and wrapped in swaddling clothes. And since then, Christmas can be summed up in three words far too profound for my little head… God. With. Us.

Makes Ho-Ho-Ho seem a little empty huh?"

(From our December 07 newsletter)

November 11, 1997... November 11, 2007
Renee and I marked ten years today. We flew off to Africa for the first time exactly a decade ago – young, broke, bright eyed, and ready to change the world. It seems like a lifetime already, and like yesterday.

While we don't count ourselves "old" just yet, we have surely grown. Looking back over the past ten years, the first thing that comes to mind is how thankful we are to have something to look back on. There was a time when we thought this adventure would be short-lived.

I remember a year or so into our first term, when Renee cried a little too regularly and I retreated to the work. Stressed and somewhat downtrodden, we hid away the credit cards lest we buy a ticket home on impulse and go, Jonah like, in the exact opposite direction of God's gentle, leading hand. We looked for reasons to stay, and looked for a vision of ourselves five or ten years into it – one where we could see the point of what seemed like such a great sacrifice. But despite the clearly awesome ministry before us, we couldn't see it. Wiser missionaries told us to stick it out. And they were right.

For a new missionary, youth and a US passport are an insurance policy. In them are the knowledge that you can always go back and make a new start if things don't work out quite right. We held on to these, for a long time unknowingly, as an "exit strategy" of sorts in our endeavor. And as the years moved on, we sometimes struggled to see our youth slip away. Ten years later, it seems much less important. Thirty-six years old now, still relatively broke, the passports represent less of an exit and more of an entry into other possible ministries in other lands somewhere down the road. And our security is not wrapped up in job-potential anymore, but in a faithful God with a history of meeting our needs. This has been a priceless lesson, and really just a footnote to the broader lessons and insights of a decade of ministry.

I have flown actively, and safely, as a mission pilot for four terms. I've logged three to four thousand hours over Africa - the individual hours representing distances that would otherwise be measured in days or weeks of travel without an airplane. I don't know exactly how to measure the impact of all that flying on Christ's Kingdom, but I am not unaware that it is probably very large. These skills have sustained ministries, rescued people in distress, brought hope to hopeless places, and encouragement to other missionaries contemplating their own exit strategies.

The mission airplane simply plays a supporting role in the wondrous drama of God at work at the ends of the earth. It is a backdrop to churches planted, lives transformed, and such ordinary things as hospitals built, wells dug, and people cared for. In Africa, wherever redemption and remoteness meet, there you will find airplanes and pilots. Being counted among them, in my muddied boots and tattered flight shirt, to save the day or simply be humbled again, has been an awesome privilege.

For Renee, the privilege is yet one more step removed as she graciously assumes a supporting role to my supporting role. Time has not changed the difficult reality of this second-hand blessing – the life of a pilot's wife. But time has revealed the importance of her contribution. Renee is my anchor. As I go out from day to day to wrestle thunderstorms and evil men, as I grit my teeth and face the chaos with a courage easily mistaken as my own, the truth is that I only have the nerve for this work because I have Renee behind me.

I have learned to appreciate her like I never could, I don't think, carving out a life of comfort in America. With an unfettered view of Africa's awful dark corners, I have had my naivety shocked by the reality of humanity's inhumanity, stirring me closer to my precious wife and kids. Renee has slept through many nights without me. And she's slept through as many with me awake at her side, meditating on life's fragility, knowing that every day has been a gift. These years have been stressful for our marriage. And they have been like glue.

This valuable perspective has not only brought about an unexpected closeness in our family, but it has also challenged my presumptions about God. Part of me came here, I think, to see what God looked like in Africa – if the idea of God made any sense here. What I have found is a God less predictable, but more real, than I ever knew. His hidden ways are like a metaphysical mountain sometimes, especially when confronting the misery that defines Africa. But His ways seem more and more right as I grow older. More simply, God has grown very big to me whilst serving here. And I appreciate more and more the feeling of being small.

The enormity of Africa's problems contribute to that feeling of smallness. They are saddening, and there's not much we can do about them on a human scale. The depth of human sin, impervious to the world's programs and projects, yields only to the life-changing power of God. Changed hearts are the only hope for Africa, but this is true anywhere in the world. As a missionary sent to this particular place, our task is not to save the world. Our task is simple obedience to the Master who, in His way and in His time, will do the saving. Understanding our "calling" to this work as obedience to God has helped us to see the reasons for sticking it out. We are not striving toward some puny human goal, but instead resting in a God who works in us and around us, and remarkably, through us.

These past ten years are full of fleeting glimpses of God's redemptive work... I hear a little girl squeal with joy at the sight of her mother. The two, reunited on the parking ramp of a war-torn old airstrip in eastern Congo, were separated in the onslaught of ethnic fighting and the girl lost to the forest. She was found months later and placed on my airplane. She runs into her mothers arms just beneath the wing of it, and I will never forget the sight. I see a Sudanese pastor hoisted upon the shoulders of a village, the whole assembly bursting into song as they celebrate his return, surrounding the plane, shaking the earth. I see a ragged portion of the Bible painstakingly translated, delivered by air, clutched to the chest – to the heart – of an old woman in a hut of sticks and thatch. I hear a sigh of relief from a weary missionary on a patch of mud flanked by thunderstorms as I unload two thousand pounds of medicines to her isolated clinic, "Thank God you got in, we ran out of supplies yesterday." I am hugged by a young Sudanese man, his mouthful of crooked teeth calling me "brother" on a neglected strip in the middle of what I consider to be nowhere. There is no such thing of course. God is everywhere. It's only that you need an airplane to see that it is true for Africa.

Through the eyes of a pilot and a plane, these years have offered a window into what God is doing here. And they have revealed His purposes in us amid the process – through the uncertain moments, the heart-stopping, the heart-wrenching, and the glorious. How do you measure the value of such a gift? And how do you say "thank you" to those who have prayed, and paid, your way?

It has been interesting to look back at ten years of ministry and come out with a singular, tremendous feeling of being blessed. One would gather that ten years would add up to some sum of what has been given or sacrificed. Yet this journey has been our gain. And now we see the future a little differently than we did when we were twenty-five.

This was a full week, even though I flew only 4 days of it. I slept soundly last night, spent.

Nine hours in the air on Sunday started it off. Up to Kenya's northern border with another pilot and then solo into Sudan flying for a small mission agency. I took five or six men back home, to one of the furthest points we fly to. It was good to fly in a straight line again. The rains have left Sudan. It's dry, and hot again. Soon the dust will churn up in layers of belligerent winds to obscure the sky. But we can still fly straight through it, even if we can't see a thing. The autopilot helped me a lot this day. I would miss it tomorrow.

Monday was a harder day. I was in one of our little planes, a Cessna 206, the one controllers at Lokichoggio affectionately call the "mosquito." It's slow, and the vast spaces of Sudan just seem too big for such a crawl. 99 knots when loaded and pointed into a light breeze. But it is economical to fly, and lots of missionaries like to use it. I went as far on Monday as I did on Sunday, but it took a lot longer. The place to which were going was a new airstrip for me. I knew nothing but a few coordinates which I hoped were right. They weren't. When we arrived overhead, there wasn't even a clearing in the scraggly trees to call a runway. A few miles to my left, however, looked promising, and so I wandered over that way. I figured this was it, but the runway still eluded my discerning eye. There was a village, and all kinds of clearings. I have a standard procedure for such questionable landing areas. I line up to land in one of the clearings, and if the passengers start yelling and making a fuss... then it's probably not the runway. I picked right on the first try and rolled out on a rough, whitened plain of dusty soil and stopped where the huts were. The guys were elated to be home and thanked me several times. I managed a smile even though my rear-end was aching from the four hour journey. So I took a walk around the plane a few times before strapping back in for the four hour trip home. It was a rough trip back, one of those times when flying looses some of its allure.

Tuesday started early with an impossible load to fit in such a small plane. It was for missionaries going "home" to their post, and I didn't want to deny them any little thing I could possibly squeeze in. So I took near an hour to pack, jam, unload and reload, rearrange and tie it all down. We were clearly underweight... but the bulk of it threatened to pop the doors open in mid-air. I wiggled in with the three passengers and blasted off for a glorious half-hour flight. Arriving at the mountain-top airstrip, I was delighted with the light winds, which would otherwise threaten my ability to take off down the valley with them on my tail. This place is possibly the roughest we go into. No matter how smoothly I roll the wheels onto the grass, it still rattles my brains, and ejects the contents of the glove compartment all over the cockpit.

These wonderful folks were happy to be "home." A middle-aged missionary couple, with their son back from boarding school, here to spend Christmas on the mountain. Some of that stuff I so laboriously packed in the plane was their Christmas stuff. They thanked me. They asked me to thank my wife... for supporting me as a pilot. Because without the pilot, they would have no ministry here. I made a note to encourage Renee with that, and actually did some time after I got home.

But I wasn't home yet, and even the taxi to the top of the airstrip before my takeoff roll proved to be a challenge. As I maneuvered around mounds of dirt and spots of soil that looked soft enough to sink into, I hit a little rise with the right wheel and spun around to the left, burying my right wing in the shrubbery. Stuck on a dry airstrip. The guys are going to get a laugh out of this one, I thought. I shut down the engine and got a little help pushing the plane into the clear. I hopped back in and blasted off, leaving the contents of the glove compartment, once again, all over the cabin. As I raised the flaps and gently curled the airplane around a ridge, I tuned the HF radio just in time to get a call from Nairobi.

"There's a medivac at Lokotok. They need you there immediately." And so I continued the turn, right past the heading I set for home, and direct to my new destination. "Standby for an ETA," I blared back into the radio, and leveled off. It was all downhill from here, Lokotok being a little dirt strip at the foot of another mountain nearby.

Here is a mission station where a team of young and old missionaries are starting a new work, and training in ministry at the same time. One of the young women, betrayed by her mountain bike, was there at the airstrip in a shoddily tied sling and a bit of road rash across her face. I re-tied the sling for her broken shoulder, thanks to years of boy scout training, for what Nairobi Hospital would later call a "first-rate" job.

For all the reasons missionaries look forward to the sound of an approaching airplane, injury and illness are high on the list of good ones. I got to fly the little "mosquito" all the way back to Nairobi for my battered passenger, going up high and zig-zagging around clouds to keep the flight as smooth as possible. I did a reasonably good job at it, but was most thankful for the steady tailwind that graced our trip home - 127 knots... not too shabby for the 206.

I guess I didn't get enough rest on Wednesday and Thursday because when I got up at 4:30 in the morning on Friday, I secretly wished I was a banker and not a pilot. What a silly thought. What banker gets to pierce an overcast sky at sunrise to be embraced by the warm, sunny blue expanse which is reserved for men who fly? I pointed the Caravan east. To Somalia. Americans don't go there these days, so we only fly this way for local mission agencies with Kenyan staff. Two and a half hours in, a quick drop-off, and two and a half out. At the destination, a good straight length of grass in the eastern third of the country, we are met by a man named Mohammed, naturally, and a contingent of soldiers. They are all very friendly. It's just that the country as a whole is not, and so I cannot waste any time on the ground. I make greetings and hand out a few newspapers. The folks I just dropped off are careful to remind me to pick them up again in a week. I smile a confident grin... of course we'll pick you up. It is a pretty flight home, just me and the fair-weather cumulous clouds. I have time to listen to a sermon on my iPod and feel at home there above the world for a while. Among all the things I'm thankful for at that moment, it being Friday is certainly one of them.

Yeah, I was spent last night... but in the best kind of way.

Some weeks back I spent a few days deep inside DRC Congo. During the busy time I had some moments to glean a bit about the history of the mission station we were visiting. (This is the essay I wrote for the media team, but I'm allowed to share it with you all here.) There's something beautiful about a Cessna airplane tucked back into the edge of the rain forest at the end of narrow airstrip in the middle of Congo. And I found the people there beautiful too. The station in this remote outpost has been without missionaries for many years. And despite their struggles, I found that the church was still shining brightly. It warmed my heart. Read the essay here. And you can find the pictures here.

I am on a media week right now. It is all new for us, and for AIM AIR, to have me steal away part of the time and help develop media for the mission. It's also quite a change of lifestyle when I do. Getting up after the sunrise, and commuting only fifty feet to our media office here on the compound. Not injuring myself in the course of the day. Not fearing for my life. I do miss the flying a little (I must admit)... the smell of Jet fuel, the mud, the heart-stopping moments... but there's plenty of it waiting for me next week. For now I get a chance to work on a few stories for future AIM magazine publications. We (our little team of three at the media office) have wrapped up a short video this week. But my current writing assignment, which is waiting for its third and hopefully final draft, has been the most interesting. It's about a single missionary in Tanzania who works with people who have AIDS, and also with the orphaned kids. I spent a day with her some weeks ago, quite accidentally, and was really struck with the devastation AIDS brings. Sometimes it seems that all the children I see in Africa are heart-wrenching. But these orphaned kids are much more so.

So the gist of the article is about how this missionary goes out on a limb to minister to those afflicted and affected. She and I talked a lot about how this type of ministry could drain a person, and possibly burn them out. This is considered a bad thing in modern missions, which in a lot of ways patterns modern culture. Self preservation is a virtue. We are clearly misguided making it too high a virtue, but is it a vice? The balance is tricky sometimes, I'll admit. What good is a burned out missionary? Then again...

I think about Jesus, and an assortment of apostles, who unwittingly (maybe) set a bad example for us. All those nights in prison. All that unnecessary interpersonal strife. Premature deaths. Imagine how many more sermons on other 'mounts' Jesus could have preached if only he had ten more years of ministry? Even five more. Even one.

We'll, I haven't finished the article yet. If you get AIMs quarterly, you may read about it sometime next year. But I doubt I'll have an answer for you, or for myself. I don't know how much to hold back in this life of faith. I've got kids to think about. I've got responsibilities... I need some kind of safety-net in case God isn't sovereign after-all, just in case providence is an empty idea... isn't that really what I'm thinking? Man, I thought the flying was going to be more challenging than the writing.

Southern Sudan is my most common destination with the airplane. We have been increasingly busy there as more missionaries move back in to minister and build after so many years of war. And as I've flow around these past six months, I have sensed a growing discontent from the southern Sudanese about the progress of peace in the country. Sometimes it looks more like they are preparing for war instead of rebuilding a country. Recent developments in Sudan confirm this observation, and are discouraging to see. Ministry in the south may soon change... again.

From the New York Times:
"While much of the recent international attention on Sudan has been focused on Darfur, in the west, tensions over the fragile peace deal in the south have been bubbling for months. American officials recently warned that South Sudan could plunge back into war."

full NYT article here

I had this terrific trip to Congo a few weeks back. There's a page of photos on the photography page here, and an essay I wrote for AIM somewhere in the works. When Renee and I arrived to Africa ten years ago, some of my first few flights were to eastern Congo. That route was soon after shut down as the region descended into yet another war. So, I have only known the place to be a mess. I have seen some of the tragic history since we've been stationed in Africa, but in small doses.

On my recent trip I went to an old AIM mission station and actually saw some of the triumph. It was enlightening to be there with an elderly brother and sister who were missionary kids in a relatively peaceful Congo many years ago. This was the first trip to Congo where I can remember not wanting to leave in such a hurry.

Yet the country remains a dark place. Just today I was reminded of that while reading this article in the New York Times. (Caution, the story will likely ruin your day.)

This bit from the article caught my attention:
"No one — doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers — can explain exactly why this is happening."

After my visit to this village not all that far away from the "freelance cruelty" portrayed in this article, I could offer an explanation. The Zande people whom I met were once shrouded in darkness, as are many in eastern Congo. But the love of God bore out in the lives of a missionary family over fifty years ago still shines. The "why" is actually simple, even if bringing about social change is not. Human sin, and its requisite heart of darkness is why this is happening. And as I saw in Zande-land a few weeks back, the light of Christ probably has a better chance of turning things arond than the "largest UN peacekeeping force in the world."

We've put a bunch of new pictures up recently... in case you haven't been by the photo page

from our August newsletter:
Renee and I curled up by the fireplace today. It's quite cold in Nairobi, unseasonably rainy too. Today is the tail end of an overdue week of vacation for me... the week itself an end to three overly busy months. I have fallen behind on nearly everything, including this letter. Finding time to write has become the elusive quest of my life these past couple years - but one I may be finally gaining on.

I took some vacation days and an airplane and headed off to Kenya's northern frontier with the family this past week. We picnicked in the desert, encouraged our missionary friends who are working in a remote and lonely place, saw the stars again, and generally rested from the pace of the past several months. Upon our return, we welcomed back to Nairobi a missionary family who has become dear to us over the years. They have also now become our neighbors, much to our delight, and will soon be our co-workers in the Media Ministry.

September marks the beginning of AIM's On-Field Media Ministry, which I hope you already know some about from our previous letters. Myself, along with two others, are now in the throws of developing a viable ministry model for this new department, and looking forward to jumping in with the actual work. Looking forward is perhaps understating it... We three are giddy with excitement, but attempting to keep a low profile lest our new ministry looks like too much fun (which it probably is.)

I have arranged to share my time between AIM AIR and the media department equally. Some have expressed concern (unwarranted I assured them) that I would simply resort to filling two full-time positions. Such imbalance is not entirely out of character for me (Renee rolls her eyes at this point in the conversation) but I have taken careful steps to make sure that proper boundaries are in place. I will, in effect, have two bosses. Despite my best efforts, however, this will be something to pray about. Both my flying and the media work are ministries of service, and it can be difficult for me to say no sometimes when I ought to.

AIM AIR will be losing me as an administrator as I shift over to this dual-role. But my flying will probably continue at pretty much the same intensity as before. The past three months were full – typical runs in and out of Sudan (where they have seen the worst flooding in decades... making travel impossible at times, and giving me plenty of opportunities to muddy the airplane.) I've experienced quite a few of those moments which bring a smile: Arriving at an airstrip to be greeted with welcoming handshakes and a heartfelt "boy are we glad to see you." As I continue to serve and interact with the missionaries who rely on the airplane, I am tuning my senses, now more than ever, to see the stories of God at work through them – stories I will then be able to develop in the media office. Renee's also excited about the work ahead of us, as it brings me a little closer to home, but also presents a few ways for her to get involved – something that's not as possible for a pilot's wife.

At home... school is in session again. Renee has started Amelia in third grade and Zach in first. The home-schooling is going well. Renee is a natural at teaching, and I think we have some pretty smart kids too. They say the principal is too mean, and that he shouldn't kiss the teacher in class... but I can't help it (she's rather cute.) As for being mean, well I hardly think lectures on responsibility qualify as torture.

It's September now and the sun, a bit behind schedule, is shining again here in Kenya. Sometimes I just walk outside and stand in it. After a few cold months, the warm rays can feel like God is smiling down on you. This, our fourth term in Africa, has been mostly sunny days – full of wonder and blessing, and an appropriate measure of hard work to ensure we don't take any of it for granted. Especially all of you. Thank you again for your faithful prayers and support that touch us every single day. It feels like a privilege to be here (have I ever said that before)? and we know very well that we are not here alone.

Blessings from the city in the sun,

Mike and Renee

An afternoon with a bunch of crippled children sure does make you smile.
Story and pictures here.

Monday morning... Renee and the kids joined me and two other missionary families for a very informal dedication of the new Media Ministry Office. We sat in a circle on the floor of an unfurnished apartment and prayed together and sang. It was the beginning of a long sought after idea that was mostly hammered out at our dining room table over the past two years - coming together in God's timing. It was pretty neat to see our ministry vision finally launching, and to see how it all fell into place, amazingly, through the lives of three different families. We begin by setting up an office. After that, we begin to tell the stories... of God at work through the missionaries of AIM.

(I will be pitching in part time, still flying two weeks each month with AIM AIR.)

As I sat there this past Monday and thought about what lie ahead, I was pretty excited (and Renee too). And once again, thankful for the work God has placed before us.

Flew a hurried medivac today. Just 40 minutes from the city, to a rural place north of Mt Kenya. The flight was for a stranger. I didn't even know his name - the man who died there beside the plane. My craft and the doctors just a little too late to start his heart again. The medical crew worked furiously to stabilize him, but it was taking too long. I walked away and stared into the hills intermittently between staring into the dirt. My introspection shattered by the anguished cry of a new widow, as she crumbled into the arms of her friends. I felt profoundly sad for her. Prayed for her.

My job switched, in an instant, from being the hero of the day to simply being human again. I loaded this man's body into my airplane as respectfully as possible - purposeful, careful. I tried not to be afraid to touch his purpled, heavy hands as they fell to the floor. Witness to a life that has just left our world, we are hard pressed not to see ourselves there, in the helpless form of a body emptied. Even the police, usually dodgy and difficult, put aside their shenanigans for a moment to reaffirm their solidarity with the fallen human race.

I washed my hands and flew home. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Somehow one makes the other possible.

Twelve thousand feet.

I spend a good deal of my life here, suspended between heaven and earth. Two miles up - and still more blue above than below. But this, my most common of cruising altitudes, is surely high; High enough to out-run the reach of a bullet, and to clear most mountain peaks in this parcel of earth. It is high enough to escape the heartache below me too, and to gain a little perspective before heading down into it again.

Flying has been described as "hours and hours of sheer boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror." There's some truth in the words, certainly for bush pilots whose "moments" can be rather spectacular if the weather or the airstrips are particularly bad, or if the goats are too stubborn to move. But in this juxtaposition of adrenaline and boredom, little is said about the "hours and hours." Probably because they make for less interesting stories. Most pilots thrive on the adrenaline.

My love for flying, from a child day-dreaming through the chain-link fence at the local airport, to a young man commanding a sophisticated machine with skill and a clenched jaw over Africa, has slowly progressed. I have come to appreciate the hours in between. I've thought that maybe this development is because my days are so busy, and the time flying from one place to another is some of the only rest I get. It may also have something to do with where I fly - hard places that bear so much resemblance to man's fallen nature and so little to the manufactured paradise of the world I come from. Part of me needs the rest. Part of me wants to escape.

This sort of escape is not to be shunned. Running from the rebellion is sure to land us in the Father's arms. And this is where I land, when I fly. My slice of sky at pressure-level one-two-zero is like a church, even as it is unlike one. The front pew has space for two but I usually sit alone. My seat is comfortable and comes with three-way adjustments and a five-point restraining harness. The preaching is quite good, and varied, as I load up sermons in an iPod and cram the earbuds under my headset. And the music is even better. Third Day often leads worship and, much to my delight, singing along is encouraged (so long as the microphone is flipped out of the way and I'm careful not to transmit over to Air Traffic Control.)

This church is a sanctuary without a building. No stained glass or carpets. No vaulted ceiling. Just a face full of sky and cloud as I lift up my head and sing, pray, think, ask, wrestle, rest, and sometimes cry. Could God be any closer at altitude than He is on the ground? Such thoughts remind me of the story of the first man in space, a Russian cosmonaut, who upon reaching orbit dutifully reported that God was nowhere to be seen and therefore must not exist.

Such an ideological stunt almost seems more childish than what I heard from Zachary, our five-year-old son, when I took him flying just last month. As we climbed above a layer of friendly-looking clouds, he perked up over the intercom. "Mom is this where God lives?" She tried to explain, but to no avail. "Mom, if we go higher can we go all the way to heaven?" We smiled as parents do, but Zachary was utterly mesmerized, little gears chugging away in his head... "how can I get closer to God?"

I imagine the dour-faced cosmonaut was thinking the same thing, regardless of his state-sanctioned media byte. It is a question in the heart of every man. The answer, of course, does not require an airplane. We all live our lives in the "in between." Between the breath of God and the stuff of earth. Between our precious soul and our troublesome biology. Divine providence and our human condition. Between Heaven and earth. From this standpoint, a sanctuary is any place that turns our eyes (and hearts) toward Heaven.

My airborne reprieve is a dwelling place for the moments, not a place to settle down. Part of me wants to keep on going up, like little Zachary, beyond the clouds and my ability to comprehend, all the way to heaven. And part of me knows there's something still to do down below in the dust. I have come to appreciate the moments suspended in Africa's wild blue. There God draws me to the sidelines of the battle, whispers encouragement, and nudges me back into the fray.

Down below I remember. "Closer to God" is not a place from which we measure a distance or an altitude. It is a heart from which we foster an attitude.

It's summer in America. Summer holds different meaning for different people. Since living here in the land of eternal summer, we have new associations with the season that differ from our State-side perspective. One notable feature of these fleeting months is a surge in our flying ministry. It seems all the regular flying continues as normal while we get an additional burst of requests from all the summer mission teams heading out to various ends of the earth. It is a fun time, albeit exhausting, for the pilots and mechanics on our team. I wrote once about the special place these summer "volunteers" have in our hearts. (The Volunteers) Now that the season has come around once more, the experiences are fresh again.

I arrived overhead Mariel Bai airstrip last Saturday, the culmination of a 569 mile trip. It is truly impossible to get there any other way but by airplane - especially now at the lively beginning of rainy season in Sudan. I was there to collect a team of thirteen people from Florida who had spent a week on the ground conducting medical clinics among other things. I also had the roof for a nearby church in my airplane - two thousand pounds of wood planks and steel sheets. Given that the roofing supplies had to come out before the passengers could get in, I had some all-to-willing helpers with the load. Some of the folks recognized me from flying them around the year before. Sunburned, unshaven faces gleamed with joy once again, first at the sight of the airplane, and then at the recognition of the tired guy flying it. In lands so foreign and strange, it can be nice just to recognize something. Well, I started the engine to cheers and shut it down four hours later to gracious applause. It's not because these volunteers were jaded by their mission experience. Quite the opposite, they were overcome with joy at having been there. The cheers and smiles could be attributed to something much simpler. As my passenger so candidly put it while we flew the first leg out and back home, "You can only eat so much goat."

I laughed. And then we got in a conversation about the differing levels of toughness that goats come in. These short-term missionaries, if they are flying with us, are going to some very hard places. It's not easy. Part of me, for better or worse, is glad about that. For the folks who venture this far out, it makes the trip more worthwhile in a non-tourist kind of way. And because of the goat stew and the cold showers and the rough beds and stinging, biting creepy things, it makes the airplane a "sight for sore eyes." The pilot...a hero. It's kind of fun to be mistaken as a hero sometimes. It only lasts for a season.

This one nearly slipped by. We don't get little reminders like television commercials and greeting cards in the supermarket out here. I've managed to miss quite a few holidays - and been assigned to flights on every one except Christmas over the years. But not this year, not for Mother's Day at least. At church this morning, as we were once again amazed at that paragon of goodness and virtue, Mrs. Proverbs Thirty-One, Renee was reading through the list and keeping score, 2 out of twenty... OK three. And me, next to her, jabbing my elbow lovingly into her ribs, I was correcting her incomplete picture. It turns out that my wife is perhaps "the best mom in the world." At least that's what Zach said this morning to me, and to the guy wrapping her flowers at the shopping center, and I think he blurted it out quite loudly in church too. Take the expert opinion of a five-year-old if you want to know what a great mom is. These two kids "rise and call her blessed" not only on Mother's Day, but pretty nearly every day from what I can recall. The true importance of motherhood, it seems to me, is in the wonder of how our homes end up becoming our world. When I was gone for a week in Sudan some months ago, Renee sent me a text message on my phone. "Just prayed with Zach to ask Jesus into his heart!" I smiled at the glowing letters on my phone and wrote her back. "And this is how a mother changes the world." And it is. I remember my mom teaching me the same things at my bedside so long ago. I'm thirty five and still call her blessed. Happy Mother's Day mom. (And you too sweetheart.)

Just off the eastern shore of Lake Victoria is a beautiful mountain island called Mfangano. Its been years since I had been there, and the little dirt airstrip hidden in the trees was just as bad as it always was - maybe even worse. I flew the Caravan low southward down the coast to let my passengers do some filming. They were a film crew after all. We then swooped close over the strip and curled back around to land. One huge tree stood at the south end and I maneuvered around it at and angle to the runway, watching my left wing carefully as we zoomed past. The landing was not smooth.. but neither was the runway. My manifest of ten passengers were there for just one day, visiting a Bible translation project which has been going on for more than a decade now. The Suba translation has come a long way since I first saw it six years ago. In fact, they tell me it will soon be finished, in a year or two. I imagine we will be flying for that ocassion - Bible dedications are always a coveted assignment for us pilots. The majority of my passengers today were here to visit and report on the work, as they represented some of the donors for the project. And a handful of them were a film crew that we had flown before - neat guys with really neat cameras. At the start of thier filming day, I could tell they were needing an extra hand. "You guys need a grip?" I asked. Thier eyes lit up. "If you know what a grip is... yeah!" And so, I followed the camera crew around, hauling some of their equipment, and holding the diffuser for each interview. When I'm not occupied with an airplane, playing with cameras is a close second best. And despite the lowly job on this shoot, it was a great opportunity to see how the pros work - frame their shots, conduct the interviews, and talk the talk of super-cool film makers... "Better get a safety on that shot Joe." I flew my airplane well today, helping these folks get the most out of their day, and giving them safe transit over rough country and around some pretty menacing weather. It was a short trip and not much work really, but I knew that I had helped move the Suba Bible a little bit further along, and with it, the growing church on Mfangano. On top of that I had the small joy of knowing that this particular video documentary was going to look real nice, thanks in small (very small) part to those unsung heros of film... the grips.

Occasionally I get on a flight that can be described as, well... easy. Most are fraught with sweat, but some are just plain fun. On Saturday I flew a group out for a short mission trip with New Directions International. At the tail end of their trip, we flew into the Samburu game reserve. I got to visit with them for the overnight, always interested in learning what brings people out to Africa. I especially like to hear about what God did through them, and in them, while on their mission. I also get to tag along on their visits to the game park... which I never tire of. The parks in Kenya are majestic. We only had a couple hours on the short stay to drive through the park here, but a close encounter with a troop of elephants was enough to make the trip worth it. It was dawn (the best time for pictures) and we caught a glimpse of a herd ahead and far off to our right. So we maneuvered the truck so they would pass right by us. They did, a few of the larger females stopping to give us a look (and a warning, presumably) as the baby elephants just trotted on by, playing with the tail of the one in front of them. They continued on to the river for a drink. Here we watched for nearly a half-hour, the moms encircling the babies, and drinking and drinking and drinking. The little ones kept tripping over each-other, and it looked to be intentional. Getting wet from head to toe, wrestling, bumping, splashing. The mom elephants grunted occasionally as if to say "you kids behave" but they tolerated it well enough. As the line of a dozen massive, gentle beasts headed across the river to the other side, the little ones would double back, getting in one more dunk and splash, while being nudged back on course by some of their responsible adults. I laughed because this family of elephants was not too unlike mine - the little ones acting exactly as Amelia and Zach would. I saw tenderness and wisdom in the adults, and just felt joy watching them. I imagined this is the sort of thing God looked upon when he declared his creation "good." In a now dangerous and fallen world, there are still remnants of that good place, if we look for them.

I'm here for a four-day, four thousand mile trip. In a tent tonight - a taught, khaki canvas shelter with a bed and a small desk. I imagine this would be pretty nice accommodation for a British officer or something. For me, it's a seventy-dollar hotel room in a camp right off the airstrip in Rumbek, Sudan. The location is some three hundred miles into southern Sudan and a good middle point to stop between my days of flying. The town has also attracted the United Nations, which means it is fat with ex-patriates and money - hence seventy bucks for a tent in the sand.

I finish my thousand miles of flying today and peal off my flight uniform, soaked with sweat and dust and jet fuel. It lies in a heap next to the bed as I sit two feet in front of an electric fan with only a pair of shorts on, reading. Already five in the afternoon it's still oppressively hot and I can feel heat pulsing off the tent fabric onto my back. The little fan blows a warm breeze, like a cozy space heater, and it only cools me because I've dipped a baseball cap in water and let it drip down my face.

As I read, I remember my physics class, the lesson about the 'latent heat of vaporization'... mentally wondering how many joules I can shed off my body when suddenly the urge for an icy cold Coke overwhelms me and I leave my tent for the bar. Navigating a quarter mile of rock-lined footpaths between tents and landscaped dirt, I make my way to a large tree turned tiki-pub. Around it is a circular countertop, and shoddily nailed to the tree trunk is a shelf decorated with bottles of alcoholic substances. There's a thatch roof above and built around the massive tree. Under it are a couple of Sudanese youth distributing beers and struggling with a cash box overflowing with various currencies - taking payment in dollars and giving change in Dinars or Shillings. I pay a buck fifty for a sip of Coke over ice, and it is like some heavenly elixir, reviving my body almost instantly. I realize that a Coca-Cola will never taste as good as it does right here and right now, after a long day forcibly dehydrated and physically drained in South Sudan. One day I'll be in a Pizza Hut somewhere and wonder what's wrong with the soda, and then I'll remember Sudan.

Since I don't frequent the bar scene very much, I feel a little like a tourist, gawking at the locals and their curious behavior. Big men with big bellies and boisterous mouths charge the bar barking orders at the boys. Everyone seems to need to be served first, given change first, seen and heard first. They are mostly foreigners, Kenyans or Ugandans, but also some fortunate Sudanese. Most of these people are working for some NGO, or the UN if they are lucky. Lord knows what they do. They have meetings about the horrible situation here, and engage in the "work" of managing programs, facilitating something or other, overseeing, monitoring, assessing, doing...nothing. They pull large salaries and make reports. Outside their air-contioned little offices the Sudanese people wither away. Here on the inside, at the bar, they seem to boast their irrelevance. A man leans up against the bar to my right. He has wild eyes and a shirt halfway buttoned, collar up like John Travolta. He's bobbing his head to music only he can hear, and orders a beer without the courtesy of looking at the young boy serving him. He catches my gaze and I look away. As a backdrop to this comedy (or is it a tragedy) are people wandering the dirt paths with Satellite phones in their hands, walking like zombies waiting for a signal. Always looking for a signal so they can talk away at a dollar-fifty a minute about their programs and assessments.

Fifty yards away a satellite linked television broadcasts the BBC nonstop. Dispatches from Sudan report of a Menegitis outbreak, and the latest string of killings in Darfur. The stories are beamed to England, packaged, and then beamed back to Sudan where they came from, broadcast on a TV in the middle of the camp, and ignored.

I finish my Coke but keep the ice and go to sit alone and watch the news. I wonder, hope even, that I am not like these people. I pray that I am doing something relevant here. I shake my head at the global politics parading across the television and thinking about how it is always the little people who get hurt, who bear the brunt of the world's collective selfishness.

There are exceptions of course, little beacons of hope and inspiration. And I guess that's what keeps many of the missionaries out here going. For certain, it keeps me going. I picked up one such exception on Tuesday. When my base in Nairobi called over the HF radio with a request to pick up "Billy" on my way to such and such a place, I got a big smile across my face. I first met him about three years ago, and every meeting since has been bittersweet. It's mostly sweet, except for his unavoidable, bone-crushing handshake. "Billy," I'll say, "How are you doing brother?" and reach out my hand and cringe. I manage to smile through the pain, genuinely happy to see him, and he is nothing but smiles as well. Ol Billy really is old. Seventy something. He should be retired in Florida hitting golf balls, but he's a vagabond missionary instead. Hardened by a military life and tales he cannot tell me from his days in the Special Forces, he's a formidable match for the hardships of living and ministering in South Sudan. Billy's coming to Christ and calling to missions is an amazing story in itself. But the way he's living out his golden years is even more inspirational. Chiseled muscle, balding hair, old folk wrap-around sunglasses, endless energy, a mind for serving God, and a heart for the Dinka people - he wanders the landscape in a white Land Rover with bull horns lashed to the grill. When the truck has a problem, he walks. When he can, he hops a flight on AIM AIR.

I picked yp Billy in Akot, buckled him into the copilots seat so we could chat over the headsets, and ran the preflight checklist. Sitting side by side in the muffled silence before start, sweat literally pouring down our faces, he blurted out a "hallelujah!" I had thought about a lot of things that day so far, frustrations piling up as they tend to do, but I hadn't thought about spilling out a word of praise. Billy never seems to stop doing it. I grin and hit the starter.

On our way he tells me about his work, and how things are going. He's teaching literacy to the Dinka, Sudan's largest ethnic African people group. His text is the Bible translated into their language. Many of the students are Muslims. The Bible, he says, speaks for itself. His ministry is simply to get it into their hands... and enable them them sip it into their hearts. With the country in shambles, the only organized, institutionalized way for Billy to teach his training seminars is through the military. A soldier to the core, this comes naturally to him. I'm flying him to the city where the Sudan People's Liberation Army (the SPLA) has its headquarters. He is planning to find his way to the group commander and have a chat. He expects the commander to assign teachers to learn from under him and then teach the curriculum to the militiamen. He will get what he expects. Billy is fearless. Flying along he pulls out his Bible and presses a strong, crooked finger into the pages of Isaiah as he reads to me line by line. "Go, swift messengers, to a people tall and smooth-skinned, to a people far and wide, an aggressive nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers..." Billy interjects to tell me how this passage is about the land of Cush... modern-day Sudan. He weaves through the text to its ending, "At that time gifts will be brought to the Lord Almighty, from a people tall and smooth-skinned..." Billy believes there will be some kind of revival among the Sudanese, that they will one day honor God in some big way. He tells me how God thinks bigger than we often do. "That's the way God is!" he laughs, and slaps me on the shoulder. "That's the way God is."

Billy may very well be one of those "swift messengers" - certainly swift today as we rocket over the swamplands at a hundred-and-fifty knots. He told me once that he doesn't expect to die here, but that the Lord will be coming back before he's done. I guess that's why his work has a certain urgency about it as he travels around haphazardly, alone and unhindered. It's a joy to find him when I do, and help him along his way. I'd endure that handshake any day for just a few hours at his side. I don't think Billy has ever written a report since he's been out here. He's not assessing anything, just doing. And man, is he making a difference. Billy Sudan - an Army of One.

From our March newsletter. On a recent flight with a fellow AIM AIR pilot, I pulled my headset off to talk to our passengers for a minute. I turned half around in the copilot's seat and ended up spending half an hour or so learning about the man behind me, a former "Lost Boy" from Sudan, named Panther Bior. As he told me his remarkable story, I thought I ought to write about his first flight home. You can read it here if you don't get our newsletter.

Some weeks ago I picked up passengers from Yei, Sudan. They were a lively group from the UK, heading home, but I didn't know much else about them. We had an uneventful hour-and-a-half flight and after landing I bid them farewell as they connected onto another flight. Caroline, the spunky woman who I was told was in charge of this group stepped aside to shake my hand and say thanks for the good work. I smiled as she handed me her card. "If you're ever in London, do stop by," she offered with a perfect British flair. Stop in? For tea perhaps, I don't know, and thanked her as well. After they had left I remembered the card in my pocket. It was then that I realized I had just had the honor of flying the Baroness Caroline Cox, of the House of Lords. After a little more investigation, I learned of her work with Christian Solidarity Worldwide and other humanitarian efforts. If I had know, I would have thanked her for the good work. Recently, I came across an article about her in World Magazine, tucked in a feature about modern slavery and how Christians around the globe are disrupting the trade. I smiled and exclaimed to Renee, "Look, it's the good Baroness!" as if I knew her from my days playing polo with Prince Charles. The article talked about her recent efforts in Sudan and her book about slavery today called "This Immoral Trade." Next time I find her on my plane, I might just give her a hug.

From Wikipedia...
(The issue of contemporary slavery has been at the forefront of Cox' activities, especially in Sudan. In 1997 she joined Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a group which had been formed in 1979 as the UK branch of Christian Solidarity International. Between 1997 and 2000, Christian Solidary Worldwide directly intervened to buy the freedom of slaves, and in a letter to The Independent Cox claimed to have redeemed 2,281 slaves on eight visits to Sudan. In 1995 she won the William Wilberforce Award, named in honour of the former MP who led the fight to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire, for her humanitarian work generally.)

Korr, Northern Kenya. I flew in a group from a California church visiting the literacy and church planting work going on here. I went with them into a village in the morning to watch the camels being milked - the whole place was so beautiful in that golden light, especially the Rendille children. Missionaries here are doing well in living out and teaching the gospel to these people, and the church is growing strong. That evening I heard a testimony from just one of the men about how he came to faith. His story was interesting because as a boy he was actually snatched in his sleep and dragged off by a lion. He miraculously escaped when his little dog confronted the big cat. He summed up his testimony unlike any I had ever heard. "God saved me from a lion. And then, he saved me from my sins." I thought he had a pretty good idea what it meant to be rescued.

My day started with grasshoppers. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands perhaps. When it rains in the desert, the earth comes alive. And it did last night. A short burst of gentle rain just hours before my pre-dawn preflight brought a small plague of critters with it. The aircraft parking area at Lokichoggio was peppered with them and I walked with care to my plane. A massive halogen lamp illuminated the mine-field of grasshoppers as they cast unnatural shadows on the slick black pavement. It seemed a shame to step on any of them, but it could hardly be avoided. I cringed with each crackle and pop under my boots, and whispered a few quick apologies as if it made any difference.

I might have looked ridiculous goose-stepping around the plane in the darkness, but I was the only one there. I had been determined to be the first one "off" that morning, ahead of all the other pilots. All the other planes, (and there are many at Loki, northern Kenya's gateway into Sudan) sat silently waiting for their crews while I startled the morning air with my engine start, sending a hundred bugs hurtling backward.

Some of the beauty of an early departure, especially on a cloudy morning, is in being among the first to see a new sun rise. It does not rise so much as you rise to meet it, breaking out above an overcast to find a golden world of cloud and light. The sky is crisp, yellow fading into blue, and you can take refuge in knowing that there are twelve more hours of light ahead until the earth spins the sun out of sight again. And with light there is hope. Always. It somehow seems important here on the "dark continent."

I engaged the autopilot to finish the climb while enjoying the view outside. It was then that I noticed my stowaway. A single brown grasshopper, no doubt hopped aboard unintentionally in a spastic leap away from my shoe, sat atop the instrument panel, facing forward, looking out the window. It seemed awestruck, lost in the moment and (dare-say) the beauty of our sunrise, even as I poked at it. If he had a jaw, I imagined it agape as he tried to comprehend how he ended up here above the cloud, thrust forward at a 180 miles an hour. Jonathan Livingston Grasshopper. We shared a brief moment together, admiring the glory of a new day, absurd as it may sound. He captured my curiosity enough to write about at least. But I had a big day ahead of me, and after turning my attention to it, I never saw the little critter again.

My day was a mission, and it progressed quickly. The challenge was simple: Pick up four people from three different locations in the bush and bring them back to catch a connecting flight at 4pm. It was a busy day, and much too long to write about in detail. Some of my passengers were with an organization called Servants Heart. I recognized some of them from flights in and out of these same places over the years. I have always liked the name they gave to their ministry. It is the sort of thing you would like to be a part of just because of the name. These are some of the tougher missionaries I know - kind of like the "special forces" of the missionary endeavor. On our way out of the last airstrip I leveled off for a long leg to our next stop and listened to their conversation. It was a long and animated string of stories, of hardships both physical and spiritual. The accounts of spiritual warfare, the stuff of fiction novels and raised eyebrows among western Christians, seemed far too real to be anything else... about missionaries who had done "battle" with the local witchdoctor, and about witchdoctors who had lost. The shadowy miracles, and even less perceptible mighty hand of God, wove throughout the stories and lives of these folks. As I listened, I was reminded of another world, right there in front of us, but beyond our sight. The world apart from my aluminum airplane and the smell of Sudan. A world of spirits and souls, where a battle rages, and those who dare run to the fight come back with tales of war.

Peering into that reality for a moment made me feel small. Like a grasshopper looking above the clouds for the first time, realizing that the world was way bigger than he ever knew.

“He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.” Isaiah 40:22

My back made a familiar popping sensation as I tried to pull the 50 kilo sack of sugar from the pod. My first flight back. My very first bit of cargo, and my back dutifully gives out on me. Great. I try to hide the pain as not to worry the passengers and stiffly take to my seat in the cockpit. (Who wants to fly with a crippled pilot?) Especially over Sudan. The land is so tortured and pained itself, it almost seems fitting that I should be in agony as I fly over it. So I flew today, for seven hours, moving twenty people to and from various locations. At some point I arrive at Juba, the new capitol of Southern Sudan, a surreal port city on the west bank of the river Nile, with its huge runway and odd mixture of air traffic - a UN 707 right out of the seventies, a UN chopper of dubious size, a Russian Antinov A26 with bright blue propellors slowly winding down as the back door falls open to spill out some hundred Sudanese troops. I walk by the windmilling propellor, through a small army of tall, black men in green fatigues. They are singing what seems like a victorious song of war in their native tongue. As we walk through the slurry of troops arriving mixed with those departing, my passenger overhears a passing comment about what a young-looking "captain" I am. I'm probably twice their age, but they don't know it. I smile. How could anyone mistake me as young as I hobble by, slightly hunched over from the morning injury?

On the last leg home that day I agree to take two freeloading passengers to the Kenya border town of Lokichoggio, and in the gesture make friends with a "security" official at the airport who was probably looking long and hard for a ride for his two friends. I had an empty plane going back, and, well, he asked nicely. After a half dozen handshakes, multiple thanks, and a little uneasy feeling that I had just contributed in some small way to the corruption of New Sudan, I was off; Through a haze of smoke lifting off the burning fields below, over a hundred and eighty miles of bumpy terrain skirting the border of northern Uganda, back "home" to the corner where these two countries meet up with mine.

Two Advil later my back feels better. Maybe the day's pain was a small reminder at the onset of this term that I am here by the grace of God, and that I live and breathe and fly by His strength. I can't imagine it has anything to do with my age.

I'm thirty-one again. Its my birthday, and I have decided to stop at thirty-one (four years ago.) The kids think its hilarious that I'm getting old, jumping on any opportunity to remind me of my delusional state of being in the "early" thirties. I think they like the idea that Dad is human too. Sometimes. There are those moments saying goodnight at Amelia's bedside when she has thought it out a little too far and realizes that being human means being mortal. She'll cry a little while I console her with antics of my living to a hundred and miscellaneous thoughts on heaven. Somehow 100 seems old enough. Anything less is just not fair to an eight year old. The triple-digits make it seem far enough off I guess. Such nights tend to end with an extra big hug, and I think I got one today. A good birthday present.

Renee made me a cake. Nine years ago when we were amateurs at this missionary stuff, she assembled the very same cake as she did today, a German Chocolate. Its a tricky recipe anywhere, but toss in the altitude and questionable ingredients available in our part of the world, and its a real challenge. The first one ended up rather lopsided, fitting in very well with our new Kenyan home. I think that after nine years of culinary experience, Renee had higher hopes for this one. But alas, it ended up lopsided too. She was frustrated but I think the whole thing can just be chalked up to the "Africa Factor" - a Bermuda Triangle type phenomenon with angles that add up to something other than 180 degrees... a spacial convergence of crooked lines and traffic jams that defy the imagination, a strange but undeniable force that plays havoc with every area of life. Even birthday cakes. I gave Renee a hug and told her it would be OK. Her imperfect cake was better than OK though. It was a signature creation... from the kitchen (and hands) of Renee... the woman I love, who will give half her day to make a cake for me. Because she loves me. And it was delicious too.

A good start to mid-life despite the lack of an Audi TT in the driveway.