Dear Friends, It has been a long time since I posted anything on this blog site, since early June if I recall correctly. I am glad to be back and telling you what has been happening with me in the last three months. I returned to Nairobi a week ago and am now feeling largely readjusted to the 7 hour time difference between here and the Eastern time zone of the USA. It took me quite some time to feel normal and not wake up for long periods during the nighttime. I have had to sleep a lot to feel rested. Some of the reasons for that, I am supposing, is the kind of work I was doing in the USA during the spring and summertime. For three and a half months I was engaged in trying to raise funds for two buildings much needed here at our retreat centre. The work involved in setting up evening events in donor's homes, or at a restaurant, or at a country club and then getting a list of names and email addresses to ask people to come was a lot of work. It involved much detail and remembering and phoning or emailing. It was that kind of work, dealing with much detail, that made me mentally weary. I did the best I knew how, received some great help from a few people in hosting and setting up these events, and then had the experience of some potential donors giving nothing or much less than I had hoped for. I will not know how well my efforts produced many donations till January 1. The bigger donors wait until the end of the calendar year to decide what they will give. We are about 40% of the way to our goal. My fondest hope is that by this time next year we will be done and ready to build both buildings. One very pleasant part of my time back in the US was visiting my three siblings, meeting two newly adopted members of our family (a 10 year old girl and her 12 year old brother), visiting numerous friends, some of whom I had not seen in many years (one for 44 years!) and then giving two workshops on the book I wrote and published a year ago: one workshop in Modesto, California and the other in Birmingham, Michigan. By the way, my book is presently being translated into Spanish and should be ready for printing in a year from now. Also, a publishing company in India is printing and selling copies in English speaking Asia and Africa. I have said in previous months that I feel inspired to write a second book. That inspiration is still very much there inside me and I feel close to starting, just to get something out on paper. Usually writing generates the desire and inspiration for more writing. Right now I am trying in my mind many possible ways of beginning the book. I want to start with an anecdote, an "attention-getter". So far I have not settled on one. I had the disappointment this morning of being notified by the dean of the seminary that my course in Teresa of Avila's "The Interior Castle" i cancelled for this semester since too few students signed up for it. It is an elective and I am thinking many other electives were offered and I lost out. I will try again for the second semester beginning in January. I would like to think that this cancellation will give me more time for writing on a new book. Next Tuesday I mark 3 years since I arrived here to live and work. Those years have flown by. I have loved the opportunities I have had here. The cancellation of the course on Teresa, of teaching, is a great disappointment. If this keeps happening into the near future, then I will seriously rethink my staying here in East Africa. I am off to bed. tomorrow is Sunday, the 21st. God bless all of you who read this. Bernie