The Return of Retreat

It had been three years since our Kenya field had gathered for our annual Retreat.  It was a major Covid loss, which is why it was all the more exciting to finally be together again like this.  It's always a beautiful time of fellowship, connection, worship, and rest.  Living in Chogoria has made Retreat especially sweet because we don't see our WGM colleagues much otherwise.  So it was with a special joy that we traveled to Retreat this year.

I was the person in charge of planning the whole thing, but I had an amazing committee of folks to help me.  Everything came together well and I am extremely grateful.  When it was discussed what the theme could be for this year, I said it didn't matter because people were just so excited by the fact that we were having Retreat at all!  Which led to "The Return of Retreat" and I made a poster based on the Star Wars movie poster for The Return of the Jedi which led to a lot of laughs.

The setting was the Kenyan coast on the Indian Ocean.  I am not a beach person - especially not a beach on the equator that's hot and humid all the time - but I do appreciate the majesty of the ocean.  The colors, the expanse, the shifting shoreline due to tides... all of it inspires awe.

Also, the beach is a boy's paradise!  Crab hunting, wave crashing, sand digging.  These boys played hard and wore themselves out every day.

I was busy most of the week because of overseeing things, so I didn't get to relax much.  I tried to sleep in as much as I could to compensate for running around, but one morning I woke up early and just couldn't go back to sleep.  I decided to head down to the beach and was greatly rewarded.  The sun and the clouds put on a show for me.  I also watched a heron catch its breakfast, and discovered a monitor lizard climbing on the rocks.  It was a treasured time.

On one particularly full and fun afternoon, our boys played in the waves while Eli had a beach wrestling match with the high school boys.  This has become a tradition. Several years ago some of the boys wanted to wrestle with Uncle Eli and see if they could take him down.  They failed, of course, but they loved the challenge and repeated the attempt in subsequent years.  No one has yet to beat Eli, even when they've teamed up against him, but they all have a great time and get covered with sand from head to toe in the process!

Shortly after the wrestling match, someone spotted a turtle shell floating down the shoreline with the current.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be a dead green sea turtle.  It was huge and was the only time we've ever seen a sea turtle in the wild.  It had clearly been attacked by something, probably a shark, and Caleb helped push it to the shore to get it out of the water.  Thankfully, someone notified a local conservation group who sent a couple guys out to bury it.  Apparently they monitor a huge stretch of shoreline for wildlife situations, including things like this, and they manage it.  These guys dug a deep whole right there on the beach in order to bury the turtle.  They said they had just buried another turtle like this the day before.  Both of the dead turtles were females, which was sad, but I'm thankful there are people who care about this stuff and monitor it.  Caleb, our conservation guy, was particularly interested to learn about it all.

After all that commotion, Caleb and I went for a camel ride!  There are often camels hanging around the beach, looking for people like us to to take for a ride, and Caleb decided he wanted to go.  He'd had the chance in past years but had always been too nervous to try it.  His courage was encouraging to us and we wanted to take advantage of it.  We bartered with the camel guy and off we went!  We were seriously proud of Caleb for trying this because it was a big step for him.

Something else the boys always love at the coast is seeing monkeys and baboons running around everywhere and looking for crabs.  The colobus monkeys are particularly beautiful, and are a highlight because they're Angolan Colobus - a species that is only found in that part of Kenya.  We saw lots of them.

The boys found plenty of crabs, both hermit crabs and ghost crabs.  Kai got pinched pretty bad once, but given how many crabs they picked up it's really amazing there was only one pinching incident!

All of these fun activities are great, but the greatest joy of Retreat is being with our WGM Kenya family.  These people are precious to us.  They are colleagues, friends, and family to us here.  We are so thankful for them!

Our boys had a great time getting reacquainted with old friends and making some new friends too.  And here's what else I love about these people - the MKs are really good at building relationships across the generations which means the older kids are paying attention to our younger kids and giving them time and attention and kindness and I LOVE IT.  The boys in this picture went out of their way to meet the request of my boys to play with them in the pool and to sit with our family at lunch.  What normal high school boy does that?  Not many.  But these boys do.  And I know it's having an impact on our own boys because they're learning that they're important to the big kids, and they're also learning from that example and will (hopefully) emulate that when they're older too.  I just love these people!

Okay, I realize this is a litany of why I love Retreat and why I love our people here in Kenya, but there's just so many reasons I am thankful.  Here's another reason: this group of folks know how to have fun!  Every year at Retreat we have a Fun Night, and it looks different from year to year, but it's truly a lot of fun and people look forward to it.  This year we had a Variety Show showcasing hidden talents and it was fantastic!

Many of the events included challengers - people who challenged the expert to see if they could do it too, or even beat them at their own game.  Suffice it to say, it added to the hilarity!  My two favorite events were the banana-eating contest and the hot sauce chugging competition.  You might think a banana-eating contest wouldn't be very exciting, but that's because you've never seen Eli eat a banana.  I won't spoil his secret, but that man leaves people in shock and awe when he shows them how fast he can eat a banana!  Our own boys, who'd never seen Daddy's feat before, were deeply inspired and discussions have ensued as to whether this could become a Horn family legacy!

As for the hot sauce chugging competition, it's just an impressive stunt and had people laughing and cringing at the same time.  Good fun!

Spending time with these people is lifegiving.  Laughing together, worshipping together, praying together, sharing meals together, talking in the pool together while making sure kids stay afloat... all of it is valuable time spent and helps us refresh before heading back to our various ministry sites.  This year we had the special privilege of spending time with Boaz and Africa, who used to live in Chogoria with us but now live at a different mission hospital in Kenya.  Boaz was in our first class of graduates with the Family Medicine residency, and now he and Africa are a part of WGM as they prepare to return to their home country of Burundi to serve.  They are an absolute delight and we cherish them deeply.  Spending time with them and their children was encouraging in many ways.

Lastly, another reason this year's Retreat was special for us is because it was Madison's last year and we got to celebrate her upcoming high school graduation.  Madison is like a big sister to our boys.  Our families lived in the same apartment building at Tenwek and we quickly became close friends.  Shortly after we arrived in Kenya, Madison came upstairs to our apartment and asked if she could babysit our kids regularly so she could gain babysitting experience.  And she instantly became my favorite human being on the planet!  Madison babysat every week, and in lieu of payment she asked to spend time with me each week working on her writing.  I'm telling you, she's one of my favorite people!  It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that has deepened over the last six years, even though we moved away from Tenwek and don't get to see each other much.  Our families like to meet up in Nairobi just to see each other, and we've gone to visit Madison at boarding school, and we do our best to keep up with each other across the miles.  Madison is so important to us.  So it was special, albeit bittersweet, to be with her at her last Retreat and to celebrate her at the Graduation Banquet.  Madison asked if I would be the person to pray over her at the banquet, and I sobbed my way through it, but was deeply honored to pray for her and bless her in that way.

I haven't even mentioned the sessions in which the speaker offered encouragement and food for thought, or the worship that fed our souls, or the Communion and Baptism service that reminded us of the beauty of the Body of Christ sharing in these traditions.  A lot happened during Retreat, a lot that filled us up, and we returned to Chogoria with full hearts.