Learning from the veterans
Scott Bourland
May 14th – 17th
Monday was a really busy day. It is my usual study day so I spent several hours in study. I also had an appointment with Ricklynn to talk to him about the graduation and ordination. I spent about two hours on the phone with Brother James talking about details of the summer group and our current financial needs, and then late that night I skyped with Greg Wagoner for about an hour. Greg has been a missionary in Tanzania for more than 15 years. Ministry there is very similar to here so I wanted to see what I could learn from him. It was great to talk to him and very informative.
I took some material that James had put together on ordination and tweaked it here and there. Tuesday Gertrude and I worked on translating it so that I can go to the churches where we plan on having ordination services and teach them about the subject. In all the churches there may only be one or two that have ever been to such a service.
Tuesday Missy and I left for our trip to Mombasa, Nairobi, and beyond. The crucial item of business was that we needed to go to Nairobi to renew our passports. But our plan along the way was to visit missionaries and those who are doing orphanage work to learn from them. Our first planned stop was to visit Juma and Mercy to see the new baby, but the rain would not allow us to get back to them, so we will try again on the way back through.
Wednesday we headed on up to Nairobi. It is a long trip, in which you have to deal with a lot of traffic, but God was with us and kept us safe and allowed us to arrive only getting run of the road twice. We hit Nairobi at the wrong time (rush hour) and with incomplete directions. Once again with the Lord’s help we figured it out. Let me go on record and say after this trip if I never have to go back to Nairobi it will be OK with me.
Thursday morning we met with John Martin. John and his wife have been in Kenya for about 15 years. They started out doing ministry with street kids and now they head up a drug rehabilitation ministry. Our time with John was very profitable and he helped us think through some things about orphanage ministry that we had not thought of. It is easy to get caught up in the thought of helping starving, homeless, and maybe even abused children, but there are some tough realities that have to be thought through.
Following our time with John we walked over to the US Embassy to renew our passports. The experience was totally different than I thought. I expected that we would show up to US military guarding the Embassy and that we would meet several Americans. We went through the whole process and had contact with more than a dozen people. We never saw an American the whole time. Just before we entered the Embassy a helicopter flew over the Embassy, which is a no no. We had to wait a little while to be sure the coast was clear, but once the let us in everything went very smooth.
Thanks for Praying,
Brother Scott