Africa and Beyond

I am returned from Kenya and the Sudan. What a wild ride!

I am still awaiting one of my bags that actually has my camera equipment in it, so no pictures until Wednesday or Thursday.

I thought the best way to do the blogging, would be to go day by day, with my thoughts, some written hastily, some remembered, many of which will be sooo hard to describe with just a picture or words.

Then in 10 days when I've told all the little stories that made up my moments and memories, maybe I will have had the time to really process the why's and the what nows?

Our little team of Travis Huber, Dan Steiner, Mayor Jon Costas and myself arrived at 4:30 at Calvary Church, no I take that back. Dan and Jon and myself did, you see we were originally supposed to leave at 5:30 to drive to O'Hair, but Jon's brother Jay suggested that we could end up in some traffic woes and may want to be safe and leave earlier. So, the we agreed at the last minute by email (blackberry is the king) to leave an hour earlier.

The three of us arrived and found that Travis was running late getting the van. He arrived a half-hour later, and we loaded the van. Now, over the last couple months Lionel Young and his wife and kids have been in Kenya. He is our paster at Calvary Church and decided a year ago to go for four months on his sabbatical to teach at a seminary in Nairobi. They left at the end of 2005, and have been posting regularly on their blog africa travel journal pretty faithfully. Those posts have led to some requests for American things to be sent along with our vision team.

So, we had our own luggage, and then each of us also packed another full bag of stuff for Youngs and stuff for the kids in the orphanages. Lots of stuff. The church collected items and then even as we were packing ... into the church parking lot rolled Christie Young with even more stuff to jam in the bags for the Youngs and for the orphans. What a funny spectacle! Four bags open in the parking lots, Christie arrived and had a bunch of stuff including two boxes of cereal for the Young boys. We literally stood on the bags, crushing the boxes of cereal to get them zipped shut!!!!

Now we hit the road, it's 5:15 on Friday the 3rd of February. We start to O'Hair for a long night of travel ... first stop London .... then on to Nairobi.

No big stories while driving, lots of political talk (and Travis aint big on politics) and I think truthfully it was just sinking it to all of us that for the first time in years we would be disconnected from the outside world. I use my blackberry to send and receive over 200 emails a day. As of 9 p.m. on the 3rd of February I was on hiatus for 11 days!!!!

First flight was British Air 777 to London. We were able to obtain "plus" seats for the all night flight to Heathrow Airport. Somehow when we checked in Dan, Jon and myself ended up with the front seats that allowed even more legroom than normal seats. Whew did that feel good. Uh-Oh Travvee (t-bone) didn't get those same seats. So we felt terrible for him right? Nope, we made relentless fun of him and threw stuff at him from three rows away. Welcome to the team Travvver John MD.

Flight was 8 hours .... More on February 4th tomorrow ... I really need the pictures. By the way if you follow the link to Lionel's travel blog you'll see some of his pictures he took while we were together too.