Africa

There was a time when most of what I knew about the second biggest continent in the world came from “The Lion King”, and the Val Kilmer Michael Douglas movie “The Ghost and the Darkness”. I did often use Africa as an illustration about God’s calling, I would say things like  “God isn’t going to call you to Africa unless that is the place that will bring you the most joy. I would talk about being in the center of God’s will and throw in Psalms 119:105 or Proverbs 3:4-6. It was just one of the hundreds of devotions I would do at camp or use to teach teens as a youth pastor. However now I am living that out. When Bronwyn first texted me on March 29th “wanna move to Kenya” my initial text back was “I’ll move to Kenya”. I completely meant it too, I mean I knew we would pray and seek God’s will but I’m honestly not sure I could have pointed to it on a map. I mean I think I could have found it but not right away. Because I am now so full of knowledge about Kenya, mostly stuff I’ve read or talked to others about and the little I gleaned during my 10 days there, I wish I could quiz March 28th Brett about everything he knew. In other words I have no idea what I didn’t know.

So I’ve been having lots of conversations lately about Africa, I mean I work it into most every conversation I have for several reasons. For starters I genuinely like talking to people and it is an interesting topic of conversation, “My wife and I are moving to Nairobi in January” definitely  peeks peoples’ interests. Another reason is we are building our support base and you never know who might be interested in joining our team as monthly donors. The last reason is a little more about me I think than anything else. Whenever I am interviewing new staff I like to ask them if they would rather spend three months traveling Europe or six seconds on the moon. It’s just a fun question to get a person thinking. I like that question because I have a clear cut reason for what I would choose and it has everything to do with why I like talking about moving to Africa.

The questions I get when telling people this are mostly what you might expect:

“How hot it is it going to be?  It won’t be hot at all, Nairobi is on Mt. Kenya and is at 6,000 feet so even though it’s on the equator it will be mostly a highs in the 80s and lows in the 60s.  During camp season, it’s mid 50s-mid 70s which is awesome!

 Will you have running water? Nairobi is a major city with a population of over 3 million and if you include the metro area 6 million. The United Nations is there, so yes we will have running water and Wi-Fi.

What are you going to eat? They have amazing food and although Kenya isn’t known for any specific cuisine they do have many options because it is such a melting pot of people groups. They also have Burger King.

What language do they speak? Kenya was part of the British Empire so most everyone speaks English, we are learning Swahili phrases however because most people speak that as well.

Are you worried you will get eaten by a lion? No

Are you worried about being eaten by a tiger? Definitely no

Is it dangerous? As I mentioned earlier it’s a large city so yes there are places you don’t go at night by yourself, you know same as every city. However, I think Bronwyn put it best when she said, “the safest place you can be is in the center of God’s will.

We plan on sharing more about Kenya as we learn more, but for now we are super excited and can’t wait to see how God works all of this into His special plan for our lives.

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