chris and becka warner

Today my cell phone was stolen. This is the second phone that has been transferred from my possession to another’s without my consent, though the first time was partially my fault. It fell out of my pocket and was never seen again. This time was different, and led to quite an intense situation. Becka and I were coming home from town on a bus, and in typical fashion, the bus was holding about twice as many people as it probably should have been. I was standing in quite an awkward position, in much closer proximity to those around me than I would have preferred. Suddenly, I felt someone’s hand go into my pocket and take the phone. There was no doubting who it was, so I immediately looked at him and demanded that he give it back. This was a crucial mistake on my part. He played dumb, and word quickly spread throughout the bus what had happened. The bus stopped, and at that point things got really intense. These situations are common here, and they are usually dealt with in one way: mob justice. As the bus cleared out the man tried to make a break for it, but he was grabbed by all the men. However, somehow he managed to slip the phone to an accomplice before they started beating him. Just around that time….(click here to read the rest)

Flying over Tanzania at 19,000 feet, I had no idea how varied the terrain is. For most of the flight, everything seemed so flat and empty, except for the snow-capped Kilimanjaro. However, as we descended to Kilimanjaro Airport, the details jumped out like the pages of a pop-up book. First, I spotted a green-ringed crater, with a golden-yellow grass plain in the raised center. Next, the hills became more distinct. Finally, seconds from our landing, we could see herdsmen with their cattle and grass huts dotting the landscape.

The drive to Arusha took almost an hour. Trees lined the road, and children were swatting their cows and goats into the right direction with long sticks. Masai, with their distinctive red wraps, walked along the side of the highway.

After driving a few miles past Arusha, we arrived at the turn off: on a dirt road, through a wash, and down a narrow, curving lane. Each minute we were ushered farther away from town and deeper into the countryside. On either side of the dusty road are hedges of bush and thorn, huts and mud houses, and the occasional tiny shop selling candles, laundry soap, and of course, coca-cola.

The YWAM base is a long, gated property with several large buildings facing a courtyard. It is quite a large base, and there are lots of foreign teams that come through here to do ministry. After our time in Burundi, it is strange to be around so many people who speak English! It will definitely take some time to adjust to living in community again. With electricity (most days), running water (some of the time), and other comforts, it’s always a little shocking to head out of the front gate; instantly, we are in another world, where most of our neighbors don’t have clean drinking water. Here are some pics of the surrounding landscape. The one in the middle is Mt. Meru, Tanzania’s second highest mountain:

While we are here in Arusha, we will be taking part in a three month bible training program. The school is one of the required courses that we would need to do if we decide to get our degrees through YWAM’s university (which is something we have been considering). The school was just starting as we arrived, which worked out quite well. The base has quite a few other ministries which we are hoping to help out with; a preschool and primary school, outreaches to the Masai villages, community development programs, and much more.

Well, our flights didn’t exactly go as scheduled, but we made it to Tanzania eventually. We ended up staying the night in Nairobi, courtesy of Kenya Airlines. That wasn’t all that we experienced, courtesy of Kenya Airlines, but we’ll leave it at that. The highlight of the day came when we finally found a place to sleep, around 1 am. I was going to take a shower and decided to use the flip-flops that are provided. I looked down, and in my delirious, sleep-deprived state this is what I saw (click on it for a close up):

Last night I lay awake, thinking about leaving Burundi. It would be easier to stay here, easier to keep our backpacks in the corner of the closet, empty, and to wake up every morning in the same room. But in spite of my human aversion to change, there is an excitement that always comes when travel is imminent. As I look back over the last three years, I realize that it has been the most rewarding and challenging period of my life. It has become our own, unique education; directed by God. We’ve learned the “soft” skills: discipleship, mentoring, leading short-term teams, managing, communicating, teaching, speaking, preaching and partnering with local churches/believers. We’ve also learned many practical skills: washing our laundry in a bucket with powdered “Barf” (the laundry soap of choice in many of the countries we have visited); becoming our own doctors, treating worms, fungus, strange rashes and allergies; negotiating fair prices with vendors determined to gain an extra “tourist tax”; adapting to new foods and ways of preparing food; learning to entertain ourselves when the power goes out; living without the benefit of a car to get us wherever we want to go; putting together trips and organizing ministry and service projects. Deeper still, we have had to learn to deal with the associated stresses of doing mission work, such as seeing intense poverty and human suffering. Our beliefs and ideals have been intensely challenged, but through this testing, we have come to know how deep and how solid our hope in Christ is. We never really know what to expect next, only that our Father will be there with us, helping and teaching us along the way.

Well, the emptiness is endless/
cold as the clay/
You can always come back/
but you can’t come back all the way…

-Bob Dylan, from Mississippi, Love and Theft