Kenya, huh?
Kenya...when we first heard about it we didn't even know where in Africa it was! So what made us choose to go to Kenya for three months? It started with Danielle hearing about a travel study (from Trinity) going to Kenya. The trip was going to focus on community development, which is Danielle's area of interest, and on communications, which is what Shawn has been studying. However, we didn't see how we could manage to go on a three week travel study when we were both graduating in April.
After sharing the details with Shawn, and after talking and praying about it, we decided to look into it further. Door after door opened up for us, and then God really blessed us with the finances we needed for the trip and we were able to make the three week commitment. After much consideration and prayer, we decided since we were already spending so much on airfare we might as well stay longer and make ourselves useful.
What will we be doing there?
During the seven weeks that we are not studying, we will be visiting different missionaries and encouraging them in their work. We have three goals for our time with the missionaries:
- We want to make ourselves available to them personally to be used in whatever capacity they see fit.
- We want to encourage them in their ministry.
- We want to help enable them to communicate more effectively with their support teams back in North America.
We desire to primarily serve the missionaries themselves, and secondly to help them in their ministry. The response from the missionaries has been really exciting. We truly believe that this is what the Lord would have us doing with our summer and that through us, He will bless the people that we are serving.
WorldVision
There is a possiblity that for three weeks we will be doing a project with WorldVision. This is still in the works but if it pans out, we will be traveling around to different WorldVision aid sites within Kenya and we would have the opportunity to learn, help and encourage at the site. The main focus of our time with WorldVision would be photography and writing. We would be taking pictures of the different sites and or projects and writing articles for World Vision to publish. This would be an amazing opportunity for a few reasons. It would give us an opportunity to support aid and missions in Kenya in a different capacity and we would be able to travel, experience and share things that we would not otherwise be able to do.
Time with missionaries
The time spent encouraging missionaries will be filled with many activities. For one family we will be able to watch their kids for them so that they can take their first break together since they began full time ministry in Kenya six years ago. We will also be helping in practical manners such as building, cleaning and repairing as needed. We also really want to encourage the missionaries emotionally and spiritually through gifts, prayer and news from home.
The Travel Study
The travel study portion of our trip will be a change of pace for us. During this time (right in the middle of our trip) we will be studying cross-cultural communication and community development as it is in Kenya. We will be attending lectures by aid organization leaders and others. We will get to go on a safari for three days and we will be visiting Mombasa, on the Indian Ocean, for a few days. We are both really excited about this opportunity to study while we are in Kenya. Especially since we will be able to apply our research and learning to our missions-related work in the country.
Going Home...
We fly back to Rockford, Illinois on August 21 and then to Seattle, WA on our way back to Langley, BC on August 23. We will be in Langley for at least two weeks before heading over to Vancouver Island where we'll both be working at Camp Qwanoes until mid-January. From there, we're planning on heading back toward the midwest, but we haven't been very good at predicting where our lives would lead us up to this point, so we'll just leave that in the hands of the good Lord.
We are very excited to be going to Kenya. Thank you for your support whether financially or through prayer. It means a lot to us as we undertake this large and somewhat intimidating time of service for our Lord.
