Living in the Present

I have always been a person who looks forward to the next great adventure.  If there is no great adventure ahead, I think of places I'd like to have an adventure.  When the great adventure finally happens, I am excited, happy, and immediately start to think of the next great adventure.

Why is this?  Why is it so hard for me to live in the present and fully enjoy the adventure I am currently in?

I have figured out that before these adventures happen I envision what they will be like, the awesome things I will get to do, the people I will get to meet or hang out with, the sites I will see (all of this going on while I am currently in a great adventure)....the list can go on. Often times, I think about these events so much that when they actually happen, it's not as exciting.  Plus it distracts me from the adventure I am currently in. I have a problem.

Hi, my name is Kenzi and I have a problem living in the present.

The truth is out.  Everyone knows now. Please don't judge me.  This is not a new problem.  I have struggled with this for years now.

"This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it." - Psalm 118:24

Today, I am starting new.  Today, I am learning how to live in the present.  So much life happens in the present that I feel just passes me by because I am so focused on the future and what lies ahead. I'm not talking about not planning for the future.  I am all for that.  I am talking about mentally, physically, emotionally being present.

I always feel most present when I am in nature.  Why is that?  I think it is because we have to be present.  We have to use all our senses while hiking, swimming, biking, rock climbing, etc.  Well, I don't want to only feel present in nature.  So, I am learning to turn off the TV and put my phone down while my daughter is awake.  Now listen, I could watch hours of a TV series on Netflix, but I am learning how fast babies really grow and I want to make sure I am soaking up every minute I can with Emma.  I keep hearing "she will be in college before we know it" (cue ugly cry)!

 I also find it is easier for me to be in the present when I am trying new things.  This can be anything from doing yoga on top of a building with a friend to trying a new local restaurant with the family.  Maybe for me, living in the present means doing things that use my focus and attention. One thing I have know is that when you let God direct your path for the day, no one day is the same.

As we are preparing to move and live in Kenya, I pray that I am able to learn how to live and rejoice for the new and present day.  A reason I really want to learn how to live presently is because I don't want to move to Kenya and try to build relationships with individuals and be focused on my next trip home or our next great adventure.  Now, of course I will be missing my family and things back home, but I want to be fully there in the present with the people of Kenya.  I want to know them and I want them to know me and in order for that to truly happen, I need to be mentally present. I love the quote by Jim Elliot,

 "Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God." 

It is so easy for us to think about the next adventure and to live in the future.  It is a lot harder for us to live in the present.  To intentionally focus our time and attention on something that is happening in the here and now.  I pray that this next year I am able to learn to live in the present and trust the path God sets before me daily.  

Blessings,

Kenzi

Garage Sale

Come join us and help support the work God is doing in Kenya! There will be all types of items such as tables, couches, kitchen items, as well as baked goods! Come check it out or just come to visit. Either way we would love to see you there! 

**If you have items you would like to donate to sell please contact Mark Fogleman at mark.fogleman301@gmail.com

Trust in the Lord

We are surrounded by transition in all stages.  Each and every day continues to bring something new and we are enjoying it.  First of all, we are excited to share is that our daughter Emma Hadassah Fogleman came into the world on June 17th! She came 10lb 2oz and 21 3/4in long and is so beautiful! Nothing compares to the feeling of holding your precious child.  We of course are learning how much work it takes to care for Emma, but are loving it!  We thank all the family and friends that have helped us during her arrival.

Emma Hadassah Fogleman

From the title of this post, we just wanted to share that our trust in God is what has been carrying us through.  We are learning that no matter how much you may plan something on your own, life sometimes has unexpected turns.  An example of that is Emma's arrival.  We had the plan of Emma coming naturally on her own timing with automatic nursing etc, but Kenzi ended up having an induction and c-section for a variety of reasons.  Trusting Jesus through times of pain, restlessness, and even concern for finances gave us a peace that He was with us.  We praise God that both Kenzi and Emma are healthy and doing well.

In our last post, we wrote about the vision trip, where we visited, and feeling the Lord's presence as we visited Northern Kenya.  As we continue to take steps toward Kenya, we are going through another transition.  We just finished an amazing Foundations Training with our sending agency at the beginning of May and with their blessing are starting our partnership development (prayerful and financial) and also building our personal accountability and care team (Home Team).  Our living and project expenses will come from financial supporters that desire to join us as we join Jesus in Kenya (there is a link on the right if you would like to make reoccurring and/or financial support).  And our Home Team will help us as we launch and live in Kenya through a variety of ways from the US.

This process too has had its ups and downs.  After our training, we came home pretty pumped up and came up with a list of some different individuals to ask about joining us and our Home Team.  As a result of a variety of reasons such as our church going through a huge leadership transition and everyone being so busy, the response of some individuals was not what we expected.  We have had to be honest and bring all this before the Lord as we continue to seek Him and what we know the the call on our lives.  We know that He will provide as we follow Him.  The advice and encouragement from the staff at our sending agency has been great and we really appreciate it.  Although we still need to quite a few to join us, we are still excited and are continuing to pray that God raises up more people to join us as we seek them out.

We also are having to trust God as we continue our communication with the local church and ministry in Kenya.  As we would never want to just move into an area and do our own thing without permission, we understand the importance of joining the locals in the ways that God has been already working.  Sometimes it is hard to feel that you are not in control or that you may be taking a step back, but we have had to rely on God to continually open doors and our eyes to see our next steps clearly.  Although some details are yet to be worked out, we are grateful that the local pastor is excited to have us join him and our future partnership.

To sum it all up, we would have to say that we must first seek His kingdom, and He will work out all these other details.  Choosing to trust rather than stress continually brings us back to the feet of Christ.  We are not expected to know it all, but are simply created to know Him and make Him known.  We are learning more and more each day about the present Kingdom of God and how we can be a part of it, in Lexington, KY and across the world.  Please pray that we will be salt and light today as spouses, parents, co-workers, etc and that God continues to use and prepare us.  We are all in some sort of life transition and can take it day by day through the power of Jesus.  As the humble cross-cultural witness Jim Elliot once said, "Wherever you are, be all there." Have a blessed day!

Where You Lead, I Will Follow

We first want to apologize for the long delay in updating.  After our trip to Kenya, we had a lot to process and even more to pray about. We both learned a lot about ourselves on this trip and even more about how our plans can sometimes differ greatly compared to what the Lord has planned.  One thing is for sure and that is where the Lord calls you to go, you go.

When we first started our journey to Kenya, Mark and I both prayed that wherever it was we were to serve, that we both would have a peace about it.  To be honest, since returning, we had been wrestling between two locations.  The first place was where we had pictured ourselves serving, a place we were familiar with, and a place both of us loved and so badly hoped it would soon be our home.  The second place was new, different, came with a bit more adventure/challenges, and the need was greater in this small community.  We had to let go of our plan and learn to embrace where the Lord was directing us.  Once we both finally spoke the words of where we felt called, a peace that surpasses all understanding took place in our no longer confused hearts.

With all of that being said, we are excited to share that we plan on serving in Northern Kenya!

While the work we will be doing is not yet set in stone, there are many areas of ministry that will allow us to serve the community.  There is one, possibly two orphanages that we would love to work alongside.  The first has many children who have HIV/AIDS.  This home has been around since 2006 and it houses around 30 children.  While we toured the home, I couldn't help but notice very few beds that actually had mattresses on them.  These mattresses looked like the ones we would throw away and let sit in the rain by the dumpster.  Other beds just had a blanket on them to help cover the springs. For some reason this really tugged at my heart.  Why did these kids not have mattresses? Who can I call so these kids can have mattresses to sleep on?  It was then that I asked the director, what their biggest need was.  I expected her to list material items...such as mattresses.  She explained that they are in desperate need for food. This home had a pretty decent sized garden in the back and even some dairy cows and chickens, but because of the lack of water, it was hard for them to get food to grow in the garden.  It was then that I had to put things into perspective.  Food is more important than mattresses.  The director told us that she is currently not able to take in any more kids because she simply cannot feed them.  This broke my heart.  We are looking forward to potentially working with this home and seeing how God works in the lives of the children.
The second location is in the early stages of becoming an orphanage.  A proposal was written up by a man in the community to get government funding to start an orphanage in a local village.  He would like to provide love, care, and empowerment for these beautiful children.  God has laid both of these homes on our hearts.  Please join us in praying for each of these homes as they grow and develop.  Please also pray for the opportunity to partner with one or both of these orphanages.

 Mark with one of the kids 

Mark and I with the Director

Our friend playing with some of the children

We stayed with a family that serves a local community in a variety of ways such as by helping to put in water filtration systems and through different health projects.  Mark is looking forward to possibly working with surrounding communities to help with the water filtration systems.  While we visited the village we had the chance to walk around and see different reservoirs.  There is not only great potential in this community for improvements in clean drinking water, but also to help introduce God's Living Water.

This reservoir was put in by the British many years ago.  They had hoped it would help this community for many years. This is the place that many people and their livestock get water.  It is also a place they rinse their cows off after receiving a flea dip.  While it looks like a lot of water that can last them a long time, it is loaded with a lot of unsafe bacteria.

This is a spring where some of the community comes to get their water.  The women usually do most of the manual labor, such as collecting water.  Needless to say, the women had a good laugh when the white men showed up to get their white women water.

A Dam built by the British. 

The above is just an introduction to the life in this part of rural Kenya and there is so much more for us to learn.  We are both excited about the adventure and are looking forward to seeing how God may use us in this community.  

In other news, we are taking our next steps with the sending agency as we are attending a get to know you  time with them this coming weekend. It's going to be a great time of getting to know the staff.  This should help us learn more about how this next year should look for us as we continue to prepare for cross cultural work in Africa!

Please keep our trip and training, decision making, and the health of Kenzi and baby girl in your prayers.  Thank you all for your continued support!

Blessings, 

The Foglemans

Great Expectations

Happy Holidays! This is definitely a great time of year for us and we hope that you are having a blessed time as well.  We are excited as we leave for Kenya in just a few weeks!
We are finishing up our trip details in the country, but have most of it planned out.  One thing we do know from past experience, is that in Africa everything will not go exactly according to plan.  We are relying on the Lord and trust that this trip will work out for His glory.
As the trip quickly approaches we have been taking time to thank the Lord for bringing us to this point, our vision trip.  As most of you know, we both have been waiting what seems like a lifetime to take this trip.  I (Kenzi) am  not a very patient person so when the Lord tells me to stop, wait, and take a detour, I tend to throw a fit like a toddler.  Looking back, I now understand.  We needed an education in order to do what He had planned.  We needed some time after getting married to grow closer in Him and learn how to work as a married couple.
We needed to trust Him.
Something that sounds so easy is often times the hardest thing to do.
Trust.
I have greatly been relying on the Lord that after this trip we will know where it is He is calling us to work.  To be honest, I do not want to come home and be back at square one.  This trip is a big step in faith for us in that we hope God will give us some clarity on where it is we will be working.  Needless to say, we have great expectations for this trip.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to Him,

and He will make you paths straight."

-Proverbs 3: 5-6

On another note, we have something else we are expecting....A BABY!! Yes that is correct.  We are expecting our first child in June of 2014.  We were planning on having a baby before the big move across the pond but did not expect the little blessing so soon.  As it turns out, God had it all planned out.  The pregnancy is a perfect time with our upcoming trip and plans for next year.  This means by the time we do move, we will have had a year of experience as parents.  This holiday season we are counting our blessings!

With all of this being said we do have some prayer requests:

-Safety on our trip

-Health for the baby and Kenzi

-Transportation while in Kenya

-That we will come back with a clearer understanding of where we will be serving. 

We pray you all have a blessed holiday season! Thank you for your continued prayer and support. We will post again after the trip.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Foglemans

VISION TRIP

Hey, hope you are doing well.  Just wanted to bring you up to date on all that we are doing and working on. Since our last post, details of our vision trip are starting to come together.  We are excited about going to Kenya to visit and see God at work, picture our lives there, learn more about the location to share it with others, and help us better prepare for the future.  As of now, we are thinking about going at the end of December and into the first couple weeks of January and can't wait!

We are eager to step into each community and see how the Lord has been working and how we can join Him.  The four different communities that we are going to visit are all over the country and have some really cool things going on.  The first community that we contacted from the beginning is helping to provide care for orphans, street children, women empowerment, and even some water projects for surrounding areas.  It is an area of the country that we have traveled to before and know that we would love serving there.  The second community is a bit farther north in the drier and hotter remote lands of the Samburu tribe.  We have been learning about current work there regarding clean water, medical attention, and local orphan care.  Life in this area might not be easy, but know that God is proving care, love, and hope to so many there.  The third community and organization actually contacted us and is possibly looking for staff to join in their work for providing care for the local children and raise them in a Gospel centered environment.  We have never been to this area of  Kenya and haven't even met the staff in person, but would love to work alongside such brothers and sisters eager to serve the Lord.  The fourth community that we just started learning about is focused on providing a supportive and great education for the school children of a small village.  This community is closest to Nairobi, the largest city in Kenya.  We met some of the founders that live here in Lexington and after learning from them, we would love to get to know everyone there better.  We pray that God will work on our hearts as he continues to show us His vision for us.

As we have never been to most of these communities, putting faces to names and getting a feel for the people there will be a fun adventure.  Going there with the thought process of living there full time and raising a family there will definitely provide a deeper perspective than we have had before.  We find ourselves talking about such things as closeness to hospitals and schools as envisioning our lives there becomes more of a reality.  The people of Kenya are so hospitable and caring that we know we are going to love living life with any community that fits.

After this vision trip, we hope to be able to share this ministry better with friends, family, and supporters back here in the U.S.  Our first get-together and training with the sending agency won't be too long after this trip and we will hopefully be able to share a specific calling that we feel for a community so they can help prepare us in a deeper way.  Being able to share the specific ministry and work that we will be a part of in Kenya will help us raise support and connect the Family of God across the world.

Spending a few weeks in Kenya with full-time staff should hopefully help us better prepare mentally for what is to come.  As described above, the four different communities that we are going to visit are quite different in location, weather and terrain, and ministry.  The array of cool and tropical to hot and dry or mix of religious beliefs are expected to be challenging, but with the help of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ we will love and serve through all conditions.

Needless to say, we are excited about this upcoming adventure in less than 3 months.  We are currently working out details of transportation in the country and finding flights even with a possible long layover in an awesome European city (bucket list for both of us).

To add in a little financial note, we wanted to share some major steps we have taken this last year.  The Lord has laid on our hearts to be totally debt free before we start fund raising next year.  In doing this, we have down-sized to a smaller apartment, sold one of our cars, and rearranged our budget.  This has allowed us to pay off Kenzi's student loan, her car, and other outstanding bills.  We currently just have to pay Mark's student loan and have a goal of paying that one off by next spring.  God has definitely blessed us and we pray that we can steward it all to bless others.

Thanks for taking the time to follow up on what we are doing.  We greatly appreciate your time and ask for continued prayer as we want to see and hear God in each community, discernment of how to go about this all, communication with our in-country contacts, finances for getting there and paying our last loans this year, and safety even before we go.  We plan on writing at least right before we leave and will let you know all the final details.

Have a blessed day and continue to seek the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.  He will use you for some pretty amazing things :)

In Christ,
Mark and Kenzi Fogleman

Moving Forward

After two months, Mark and I finally submitted our applications to the sending agency!  It was a very intense process and taught us a lot about ourselves and each other. The questions covered pretty much every topic and then some.  At times we would spend thirty minutes on just one question and other times it was a simple answer.  One thing is for sure and that is most of the questions helped to confirm in our hearts that we were in the right place doing what Christ had planned for us to do. While I still feel we are at the beginning stages of this journey, every step closer gets more and more exciting.

We are currently in communication with three different communities throughout Kenya.  Each one of these communities has a piece of the vision God has placed on our hearts.  As of right now we are planning a vision trip for early next year where we plan to visit each location to learn more about their ministry, location and to see how God speaks to our hearts. We kindly ask that you join us in prayer as we prepare for this trip.  We are asking that God prepares our heart for the location where He plans to use us, that God would give a peace to the individuals that we will be meeting and for clarity on both parties, that our employers will find favor on us as we are seeking to take a few weeks off of work, and that financially we will be stable enough as we are seeking to support ourselves for this trip.  We know that there are still a few months before go, but we want to make sure it is led by God and His guidance is upon it.  

The sending agency is currently going through our applications and learning from our references.  We are spending more time learning about cross-cultural ministry and all that it may entail.  To make life easier when we arrive, we are trying to learn more Swahili. By the way, if you know of a program or class to aid in this we would greatly appreciate it! These different aspects of preparation keep us excited for what is to come.

I know this post is a little shorter than usual, but currently we are in a time of prayer and preparation.  We thank you all again for joining us on this journey as things are starting to move forward!

Blessings,

Kenzi