Less than 1 Week to Go!

You might notice a few changes to the blog - notably that we have broken down the fund raising thermometer into two thermometers. The first is for our pre-trip and initial start-up costs, which has been fully taken care of! Woo hoo!! The second is for our living expenses while we are in Kenya. As you can see, God is providing ....

We would thus like to take a minute to thank our families, friends, the churches that have opened up their doors to us, and our supporters for helping us to do what at first seemed like an impossible task of raising enough money to uproot ourselves (again) and head to a foreign country for six months! We would also like to extend a special thanks to our home church, Harbour Fellowship, for the incredible support they have provided in the past couple of months! We are overwhelmed by the support we have received, not only financially, but spiritually and emotionally as well. There is no way any of this would have been possible if not for kind people like all of you who listen to the whispers and gentle nudgings of God (John 10:27).

So Kenya is finally approaching (not that it hasn't always been approaching, we can just really feel it now)! With less than 5 days to go before we launch ourselves half way across the globe, life has been, needless to say, incredibly hectic. Taryn has been madly packing up our bags, and doing her organizational thing and has gotten packing down to a science (a weird science, but a science none-the-less). All of our bags have been measured to meet airline specifications, and each one is stuffed with approximately 48 out of a possible 50 pounds of everything from puzzles to granola bars, to a pharmaceutical box-store that somehow fit into a travel-sized medical kit. I don't ask, I just marvel.

Along with leaving for an extended period comes visiting family and friends - and we've done our fair share of that in the last week! I think our stomachs have grown several inches with all of the food we've been eating at these gatherings, which in a way is good since we are told that the thin air in Nyahururu (2000m above sea level) will transform even the most menial tasks into full-body workouts. We can feel the burn already - wait, that could be heart burn ... Last week, we were in London visiting family and friends and enjoyed our last visits before the trip. I also got the chance to play a song at North Park Community church at a nifty coffee-house style service. We got to spread the word about Harbour's partnership with PACE Ministries which was really cool - especially since most of my immediate family was there to egg me on. This is not something that gets to happen very often since Taryn and I are either out of the country on some crazy adventure, or living in Niagara which is 5 hours from Sudbury where my parents and two brothers live and 2 hours from my sister and brother-in-law.

This past Sunday, Harbour hosted a commissioning service for us after the main service, and it was very beautiful! Many friends shared encouraging scripture with us, and it helped us to reinforce our feeling of being "well sent" by Harbour. We love you guys! Taryn shared a cute story of how she managed to buy a lottery ticket when she was eight, hoping that she would win the million bucks in order to give most of it away to Africa. I noted that when I was eight, I didn't know much about the next street over let alone Africa - but that's what makes God so great - He plants dreams in us, and cheers us on as we work with Him to fulfill them.

Please keep us in your prayers this week as we make our final preparations and as we travel starting on Friday at 6pm all the way through until likely about midnight on Saturday.