We then proceeded to find all our luggage in baggage claim, which luckily had all made it. Our “caretaker” Constantino met us right outside the baggage claim and rolled the bus up to meet us. The bus itself was quite large, luckily large enough to fit all of the stuff we brought. We brought all sorts of medical supplies, toys, candy, school supplies, etc to bring to various places within Kenya.

The ride from the Airport was supposed to take about 30 min, but took more like an hour and a half due to the intense traffic. It was utter chaos. Vans were actually driving off the side of the road up into the dirt and making their own roads. Within all the traffic, vendors were walking up to cars and trying to sell goods. It reminded me in some ways of crossing the border from Mexico back into the United States. Along the way you would see nice buildings along side people living in the streets. Shanti towns were scattered along the route, which is the first time I’ve really experienced seeing something like that other than on TV. The ride in general was quite enjoyable other than the fact that we’d been pretty much up for 30+ hours with little sleep and I think most were ready to get to our destination. We finally arrived to our destination, the Africa Nazarene University, which is set on a beautiful campus. There is a housing building especially for work and witness teams which we are staying in. It’s a 3 story building with many bunk rooms. Because we were behind schedule due to the traffic, we unloaded everything, got our rooms, and then headed up to the cafeteria for a late lunch/early dinner.

We met Freddie who is our chef for the time we are going to be here. He is a very nice, enthusiastic and friendly guy. After dinner we all came back to the house and pretty much crashed.

We did meet another team that is staying in the top floor of this building, and oddly enough they are from Calvary Church in Hillsboro, just down the road from where we live. One of the party was a Duck fan, so I even got a little ridicule in Kenya of all places. It’s quite funny that we can travel half way around the world and end up with people who go to church right down the street from us.

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.

From a trip to crater lake. Not quite the fresh snow and partial cloudiness I hoped for, hence the black and white treatment:

Timberline Lodge, one of my favorite places, and where I’ve spent a lot of the winter snowboarding:

A couple Sunsets/Sunrises from the Oregon Coast.