Kenya Countdown

Jambo!

Nine days from now the Sauder family, along with two other Louisville families, will be boarding a Delta flight to Atlanta, flying to Amsterdam and finally arriving in Nairobi on Thursday, June 2nd. Our assignment: training with Life In Abundance (LIA), a nationally begun and run ministry that empowers local Kenyan churches to equip the people of their communities with skills and opportunities so they can meet their own basic needs in long-term, sustainable ways. Open doors for sharing the truth of the Gospel abound as believers invest in lives and love on people.

We anticipate learning so much!! We’ll attend Vision Seminars several mornings, then spend the afternoon practicing what we’ve just absorbed. Activities (related to our training) in the Mathare Valley slum and Kibera as well as with widows (many HIV positive) and street children, are sure to open our eyes to a “normal” we’ve never experienced before.

While many in Kenya speak English, most residents of the slums do not. We’ll have a Swahili interpreter with us, but hope to communicate cross culturally as well with smiles, hugs and by praying without ceasing!

Sharing testimonies with fishermen on Lake Victoria, worshipping alongside Kenyan brothers and sisters in Christ in local churches and spending a day marveling at God’s mighty handiwork in the Maasi Mara while on safari are a few of the other incredible opportunities we anticipate experiencing while in Africa.

We’re asking the Father to

• Show us His glory!
• Empower us to live and love as Christ
• Create a humble, learning posture in each of us
• Line up divine appointments that will impact eternity
• Teach us, fill us, use us . . .

Not completely sure how much net access we’ll have, but we promise to return home with tons of photos and some video footage that we’ll post here and on the kids’ Facebook pages. If possible, we hope to blog from Kenya.

We are counting on your prayers. Through your intercession, we’re prepared to see God do what only He can do in our lives and in the lives of the Kenyan people we meet.

Stay tuned for a rhinoceros-sized report!