Celebrating Sixteen

Caleb and I just landed back in Bundibugyo from our weekend trip to Kenya to celebrate Luke's sixteenth birthday--thanks to the generosity of some fellow-missionaries we were able to hop on a MAF flight this morning that kept our total time away from home at less than three days, and will allow Caleb to attend afternoon classes and me a couple of meetings. Amazing.

The Birthday Celebration was just right for a sixteen-year-old American-African. We picked Luke up on Saturday morning (thanks to our field director's the Carr's car . . ) and drove down the rift escarpment and over the valley floor to the extinct volcano Mt. Longonot. The area is preserved as a national park with a smattering of zebra, giraffe, gazelle, and elusive unseen buffalo and even leopard. We climbed a very dusty and strenuous trail to the rim, then hiked all the way around the edge. The peak is almost 9 thousand feet, with views out to Lake Naivasha to the west, the shelf of the Rift Valley escarpment to the north, and the dim and dusty settlements of the valley. Walking around the crater we balanced on a narrow trail with sheer drop-offs on both sides. It took us about four hours at a brisk pace to do the whole trail (and I mean brisk for teenage boys, which is on the edge of survivable for middle aged moms). The intense equatorial sun, the spectacular views, the complete freedom from other people, made for a wonderful day of just talking and enjoying each other's company. After rehydrating at the bottom again, we drove back to RVA. Luke's guardians the Newtons had prepared a great dinner for all of us, and later we joined the boys in the dorm watching a movie at the dorm parents' apartment. Sunday morning the dorm mom, Michelle, helped me make a big cinnamon roll, bacon and egg breakfast for 24 (all the dorm boys plus our families). We brought 16 fire-cracker-like sparkling candles that almost burned down the dorm (or smoked out the inhabitants) and were great hit with a bunch of high-school males. After church Caleb and I joined Luke for lunch in the "caf" and gave some moral support during homework, then had to say goodbye in the late afternoon to return our borrowed car to Nairobi before sundown and be ready for this morning's pre-dawn flight. Luke had another dinner and cake with the dorm parents last night.

I am thankful for Luke at 16: growing in confidence, able, tall, friendly, creative, cutting to the point, working hard. He's taken a lot of change in stride this year. I'm thankful for Caleb as a traveling companion: paying attention to directions and instructions, seeing the world with his sense of humor, carrying most of the stuff without complaint. I'm thankful for a weekend away from normal life to focus on two of my boys. I'm thankful for the unusual experience of traveling light, just two backpacks for the two of us, and traveling quickly, by air. I'm thankful for the nurture and challenge of RVA at this point in our lives. And I'm thankful that God saw my mother's heart and allowed me to drop in for this Birthday.