The anticipation has built up and is finally at an end as today Amanda and I embarked on our third mission trip together. We are headed to the Africa Nazarene University in Nairobi, Kenya along with our good friend Givorgy, Amanda’s parents, her niece, and members of the Junction City Church of the Nazarene where her dad is the pastor. We’ve been looking forward to this trip for a year now, helping out with concessions at Oregon State events, and saving up for this opportunity to travel to Africa and serve in whatever way we can. This trip is a little different in the sense that we don’t know specifically what each of us will be doing when we get there, but there are a number of needs. The plan is to have those addressed based on each persons skills once we arrive. It’s always exciting traveling to a new place, and this is no exception. I’m looking forward to new experiences, new relationships, and being used in whatever way God leads. I’m excited for Amanda as well, as a trip to Africa has always been on her heart, and she turns 30 while we will be there. In fact, part of the trip is a safari to the Masai Mara park, which will happen on her 30th birthday. Not a bad way to spend a milestone birthday 
As I’m writing, we are currently at 33000 feet , traveling 627 mph 3 hours into a 13 hour flight from Washington DC to Ethiopia, and then on to Kenya. To get here, Amanda, Givorgy and I started our journey around 1:00pm Thursday Aug 4th from Hillsboro, OR riding tri-met to the Portland Airport. I should note that prior to the trip,we had orange shirts made up with an outline of Africa, a zebra, and an arrow pointing to Kenya stating “Work and Witness Trip to Kenya 2011”. As part of our team building we were to all wear the shirts as we travel to Kenya. It would serve a good conversation starter, says Amanda. Right off the bat at the bus stop by our house that turned out to be true as a guy who “loved hell” and whos nickname meant “spanish devil” struck up a conversation with us. An interesting way to start out a trip aimed to serve the Lord On the bus ride we had a couple people inquire what we were doing after seeing our shirts. One high school aged kid was actually originally from Kenya, which was pretty cool. He’d just spent a week with his youth group doing some work in eastern Oregon. Pretty cool conversation which wouldn’t have been possible without wearing the shirts that make us stick out So honey, you were right
At PDX, the bus from the Junction City church met us with most of the remaining members of the party. With them came lots and lots of luggage. They’d packed up an extra bag of stuff to donate for each person to check and take with us. Roughly half of our group flew to Seattle, and the rest of us flew to San Francisco. Of course our flight out of San Francisco was delayed, but luckily we had a bit of a layover in DC. We met up with everyone at the DC airport, including 2 other members that were coming from the eastern part of the United States.
Right now we’re stuck somewhere between anticipation and exhaustion, on our 3rd plane, and this one being the longest. I think we are all alternating between winks of sleep here and there, listening to music, and watching movies on the in flight entertainment. I’m fascinated by the screen a row in front of me, which looks to be some Bollywood type movie that is somewhere between a spy drama and a slapstick comedy. Either way i’m looking forward to getting off this flight, taking another 2 hour flight and arriving in Kenya to see what God has in store for us.
We’re going to do our best to document the trip in video, images and words. It always helps me to remember all of the great moments of trips.
