Bye-Bye

Our hope was to be able to blog to our family and friends about our life here in Africa. We have failed. Not because we are having too much fun with the kids at ROHI, or because we spend a lot of our day cooking, or because we get to go on cool safaris, nope not at all. It's because we live in Africa and our internet is way too slow to post anything on our sweet blog.

We do hope, however, to keep you updated through pictures and blurbs about what is going on here through our Facebook account. We have noticed writing and putting pictures on that site is doable. So, please look at our sites and comment. We would love to know if anyone wants to keep up with our live:-)

We love you all and thank you so much for your love and support with us being here. We know we could not do it without any of you.

The Sammons'

Great times with the parents...

we are going to miss them, a lot!

Last week we had an emotional week when we found out a good friend tested positive for HIV. I was with her at the appointment when they gave her to confirmatory result that it was HIV. My heart broke. I could see her heart break. I just held her as she cried. I reassured her we won't leave her and that we will help her through this. But hearing those words are devastating and scary. It's frustrating and confusing because 5 yrs ago and last yr she tested negative so it was a big shock. The only time she could have contacted it was 6 yrs ago.
I would appreciate your prayers. For my friend and how she will see God through all of this. That she will cling to the Lord and not run. Praise the Lord there are good medicines out there so can live a good life, just like normal.
Please pray for me that I will have the Lord's words flowing from my mouth. That I can show Christ unconditional love and that I will be able to help her however I can.
God has a perfect timing of her finding out when we are here to help her. I know the Lord has a plan in all of this.
I hope you have a great week filled with many sweet times with our Lord.

little Hope...

These are a week old but at least I am getting them on:-) Little Hope is such a sweetie. She is very easy and very cute. She sleeps really well at night and eats really well. I couldn't ask for anything different. Dakota and Kate love her. They are always helping and wanting to hold her. The above picture looks a lot like one of my baby pictures. When she was first born we thought she looked a lot like Dakota's baby pictures, but now we are thinking she looks more like my baby pictures.

This past month my mom has been here. She has been extremely helpful. She plays with Dakota and Kate all day, puts them down for nap and bedtime and makes me and Troy go on a date every week.:-) She has been so fun to be with. She will be with us for another 1 1/2 weeks, yeah! My dad comes in tonight for 10 days. We are very excited to have him here. The girls miss him a lot.

Thank you all for your prayers. We have felt them and we appreciate them more then you'll know. We hope all is well with everyone. Please if you think of it keep us up-dated on your life...we love to hear whats going on with others. :-)

cuteness...

Zed

Emmanuel, Zed and Gilbert

These are the cute boys who live on our property. Their dad, Douglas is our groundskeeper/guard. They are a very sweet family.

Hope has arrived!

Hello world, she is here! Hope arrive last night at 10:25pm Kenyan time with great health and is doing good. She is 6.7lbs and 19in long. Her full name is Hope Noelle Sammons. Depending on how Kenya votes on a new constitution she could be considered for dual citizenship, but we are not holding our breath as we are excited about the freedoms she will have as an American citizen. Bekah did amazing as the labor went from normal hard to accelerated and ridiculous after she past 5cm at 9:30pm. One hour later, she was out before the doctor had time to leave her house. The nurse did a great job delivering her and no complications were present other than the obvious of getting a baby out of mommy.

Her sisters visited early this morning with expected mixed responses. Dakota did great and immediately commented that Hope's hair needed a bit of gel. Kate was a little more stoic about her excitement and liked being close to mom or dad with a bit of a harder time. We are resting up at the hospital today and will probably leave sometime tomorrow to wait for Yia Yia to arrive.

Thanks for all the encouragement, and notes we are soaking them up and have been blessed to have the technology to connect with people rather easily. Thank you for all the prayers we know her birth is a miracle, like each, but with the army we had praying she was well covered, praise the Lord for a safe and healthy transition.

She is almost here...

I just wanted to let you know we leave tomorrow, Wednesday, January 6th, for Nairobi. We will be staying with my Uncle Mike and Aunt Liz Bussell awaiting the arrival of little Hope. We are SO grateful to have family nearby that are so hospitable and let us stay with them. They have been more then gracious in helping us in every way possible.

We would appreciate your prayers while we stay with them. It will be tight courters, they have two girls. Please pray the girls will do exceptionally well and that we all will not get too cramped in the house.

Also, please pray for the arrival of baby Hope. We re very excited for her to come... we can't wait! We do hope she will come early so we can get back home and enjoy our new bundle. Please pray for her health and safety.

Last, my mom arrives next Wednesday! Please pray for her safe travels. We are more then excited to have her here with us. The girls are always talking about Yia Yia sleeping with them in their room. We know it's going to be so good for Dakota to have my mom here because she has been missing family and friends a lot more lately. So praise the Lord He is bringing Yia Yia at the right time.

Thanks for all your prayers. We hope everyone is doing well. We pray for you often and praise the Lord for your faithfulness for praying for us and supporting us during our time here.

Thank you!

A bible study group from LBC adopted our family for the year. They are committed to praying for us and sending us goodies throughout the year. We are so blessed to have them doing this for us. They sent us a ginger bread cookie decorating box. They girls had so much fun decorating the cookies and eating the candy. They would eat a lot of pieces of candy then put one piece on their cookie.

Thanks Allison's bible study group. We had so much fun!!

We hope everyone is having a blessed December. We hope your week this week is full of remembrance of what the season is all about. May you enjoy your time with friends and family.

We love you and

Merry Christmas!

My loves...

Dakota trying to carry Kate on her back

the gansta face

Just wanted to share a few pictures of my 3

favorite people

Friends

Here are Dakota and Kate's new friends.

From the left, Gilbert, Emmanuel, Kate and Max (Rita's son)

The baby is Zed

Arrested…. Was it Troy or Bekah? Well lets just say both of our driving records remain intact and we have not been put behind bars due to our sleeping angels in the back seat, but having Bekah pulling up with the police lady in the car announcing that she was arresting my wife was a rather humorous situation.

After a successful weekend of navigating around Nairobi and visiting the Bussell’s we had only one errand left, to try and get a few items from the local market for our house. Our car, which I had remarked the night before how much I was liking for its sturdiness, promptly ( within 20 seconds of the remark) had the front window mechanics break. So the following day with a window stuck in the down position and two sleeping kids we think this is a great time to shop but we have to do it from the car. Well it worked, they brought the merchandise and we bought until we had to get out of the car to barter. I passed the drivers seat to Bekah so she could just leave if things got too crazy. It was a waiting game and the car was very hot so Bekah drove around in circles. After about four circles she was done, I was unsuccessful at getting a Kenyan price and not the Mzungu price (foreigner specifically white) so I grabbed our stuff waiting for her to surface. Finally after what seemed a longer time then would take to drive the loop I see the car and then see a Kenyan in the passengers seat. I was perplexed trying to figure out why she let a vendor get in the car, so I flag her down and she is pointing toward the other direction but finally pulls up for me to get in. I then realize the white uniformed shirt and hat was not a normal passenger but a police lady. She rolls the window down and says “I am arresting your wife.” I reply well that’s not good because we are suppose to leave for Nakuru. I ask what bekah has done to be arrested and apparently she crossed illegally during a U turn and needed to be sentenced and ticketed the next day. Well with the excuse of no money to give and sleeping children that would not allow that she decided that these Mzungus were not giving in and let us free to go. Bekah whisked us down the street where I took over and took us back to Nakuru where the rest of the trip was uneventful and the window could be fixed with out hassle. So Bekah’s slipped through the cuffs of the Kenyan jail and the rest of our journeys while bumpy and stop and go have been safe in the beautiful hands of our Lord. Oh those small things make life so different and yet still fun for us. Just thought I would share so you can give her a bad time about it next time you talk to her.

Here is our excerpt from our next newsletter from december but the story is pretty funny and worth reading if you haven't heard it yet.

Then Bekah walks out

As I pull into the driveway just completing my inaugural drive on the backwards side of the Kenyan roads, I was feeling accomplished and confident in our survival in Kenya. Then Bekah walks out. Thinking that she is curious about the drive, I wait for the question only to hear, “Kate locked herself in the bedroom.” “What?” confused for a second and processing. She proceeds to tell me that the key on the inside of the room she was playing with while supposedly napping got turned and now she is locked on the other side. What to do now?

Option 1: Find another key. Every key in the house doesn’t work.

Option 2: Push the old fashion style key out the key hole and have her pick it up and put it into a purse slide through the crack over the window at the top of the door. Kate takes the candy from the purse but doesn’t register the rest and by this time has taken the key elsewhere.

Option 3: Get a ladder from the neighbor and have her give the key to us from the open but grated window. Windowpane breaks in process of raising ladder. Kate doesn’t understand. Key is nowhere to be found and Kate goes into hysterics.

Option 4: Take Dakota up the ladder with me squeeze her through the bars and have more communicable and capable kid in the room. Option works, Dakota gets scared at the end of the squeezing but manages to compose her self and search for the key. No key found.

Option 5: Break windowpane above the door and squeeze through the opening to find the key. Success, Douglas, our guard and grounds keeper, breaks the pane and I squeeze through the opening to rescue the key from the bottom of a cardboard box that Kate had dropped it in. Everyone is safe not even a scratch from the broken glass despite bare feet.

Lessons to be learned. 1. Remove all keys before attempting to put a jet -lagged kid down for a nap in a new country with fun old fashion locks. 2. Keep laughing. 3. Trials are better with a Kenyan counterpart that can help. 4. God has unexpected lessons in store to grow us in faith and wisdom.

Life apart from the lock in

Our time here has been good, full of REAL adjustment which hurts and is hard to express, but simultaneously full of unexpected hospitality and blessing. Our reception by everyone has been incredible especially our family, the Bussell’s in Nairobi, who have showered us with time and genuine welcome to Kenya. We have also been blessed by the Staley’s, a South African family, who has helped us get our bank account and graciously invited us to their home treating us to the giraffe center close to their home as a welcome to the continent that they love. The Kenyans we have met have also graciously welcomed us and are genuinely excited that we are here. I will introduce them more fully in letters to come. Thank you for your prayers we know that the transition was smooth because of them.

Our vow to you.....

We,, the Sammons are sorry that we have so neglected the job of updating our blog. We vow from this point forward that we will blog at least twice a month with updates on how our family is doing. To start we will update you on our life so far in Kenya with the funny and sentimental things we have experienced to date. Thanks for your interest and support in us.

We are here!

We arrived to Kenya safe and sound. The flights went really well. The first flight didn't have many people so we were able to have four rows to ourselves and sleep! PTL! THe second flight had more people but we were still able to sit with each other. Thanks for all your prayers on getting us here. We are with Unlce Mike and Aunt Liz looking for a car and trying to adjust to a new time difference.
Hope all is well.

mexico 09- Puerto Penasco

Mom and Kate and the Hacienda

















Dakota sporting Mom's Hat











Kate Oni on the beach

Kate, can you wink at mama?

Seattle

H.O.P.E- Helping Others Pursue Eternity

We are in the process to move to Nakuru, Kenya in September. Here is a link if you would like to read about our journey. We are so excited and can't wait to go.


http://www.cvmusa.org/Page.aspx?pid=988&frsid=252

Kate's first birthday party...

The day after Christmas we had a birthday party for Kate.

We had our family and a close friend over to celebrate.

It is amazing to think about how this past year has flown by.

And it is also amazing to think about how this next year to come is going to fly by... with preparing to move and then moving in September and then adjusting to life in Kenya. Before we know it it is going to be January again.... and Kate will be two!!!

Dakota eating her cup cake
Beautiful Lorie and her little guy Henry

Helena waiting to eat her cup cake

My sis, Sarah. She was so helpful that night. She came

over early and helped me set-up and cook for the party.

She is the best!

Since all (well minus 2) of the grand kids were together

for Kate's party my grandma insisted that we had to get a picture.

Kate's birthday party continued

Kate was so excited opening her gifts.
I LOVE that smile! I just want to munch
on those cheeks.

She loved her cake.

She was not sure about her cake when I first

brought it to her but then she warmed up!