The Call to the Battle

October 4, 2005

It’s been a tough beginning for us. We’ve been in Africa for almost two months, and there hasn’t been a day that one of us hasn’t been sick. The second computer center is ready, but the only man who can finish the final stages has had a death in the family, and he has gone back to the states for the funeral.  It gets exhausting, and it becomes depressing. But four things happened to pick up our spirits:

 

 

• Harvard writes me to tell me : Well, it's the rare "corporate pig" who can make me tear up, but that you did!  I hope you don't mind, but I printed out your message and stuck it in the Dean's box.  Yours were good and terribly welcomed words to hear, and I also appreciated the chance to remind the boss why we're spending the money to let me travel in Africa.  Well, he was obviously moved by what you wrote and took your message to this big start-of-the-academic-year retreat yesterday with the pantheon of faculty and administrative mucky-mucks and read it out loud. The only thing that prevents me from truly enjoying this is how many old friends would attempt to calculate the odds that Harvard would begin their year by reading something I wrote.
• I went by the computer center a certain amount of trepidation. How would it be after a year away? Friends who have started projects and left have come back to see decay. I came back to see the center in perfect condition, all machines still functioning, and the 10^th graders are building complex databases.

·       But the BIG news is that someone sends me an autographed picture of Neil Diamond. I’m not sure who sent it; it may be a friend who I took the trouble of sending an ad in the Sunday newspaper that advertised that laser surgery could solve the problem of hemorrhoids. I would put a cheerful note saying `Maybe THIS can help!!’ Whoever sent it should know that morale has SOARED on campus; people come up to my office and are just AMAZED. Many walk away shaking their head with a glazed look that I can only interpret as true inspiration.

·       We went to our local church, where the worst singer in all human history leads worship. His singing invokes laughter, but by the end of the service you hear his heart for God, not his voice. I think heaven will be like that; we will hear nothing but the heart.

 

I am visiting schools to get counts for the lunch program we will start up at the beginning of the Kenyan school year in January. When I first went to visit schools, I was just shocked by the poverty. I moved from shock to sadness to rage to resignation to cynicism.

 

Perhaps the greatest gift I’ve ever been given is that He has moved me to a new stage. I went to a school, and I saw a classroom with 48 students that was meant for 22. There were only six books for the kids. Only three kids were wearing shoes.

I am the most unlikely soldier in the world. I would probably be the example that Woody Allen talks about when he said that in case of war, he would be taken as a hostage.

But when I see children with so little, the only way I can describe it is that I hear a call to battle. I want to strike down the enemy that has done such heinous things to children. All the obstacles fall away; I believe that whatever the odds, the adversary can be defeated. .

It doesn’t last long, but it is the sweetest thing I know. I can’t hear the music yet, but I think I can hear His heart.

 

 

Your pal

 

Steve

 

 

PS. Michael’s court date is Wednesday. He has been transferred to a prison in Nairobi where he has lice and he is charged for food. We would appreciate your prayers.

 

 

Steve and Nancy Peifer

Rift Valley Academy PO Box 80 Kijabe, Kenya 00220

Stateside Address: AIM PO Box 178 Pearl River, NY 10965

Home Number: 011-254-20-32046-458

Office Number: 011-254-20-32046-170

Steve's Cell: 011-254-0734-124292

Nancy's Cell: 011-254-0734-124291

Website: http://peifer.kijabe.org/index.html?intro.html&1

Foundation: http://www.solutionbeaconfoundation.org/programs.htm