Preparations

With under a week to go before we head to Kenya on August 14th, we're busy trying to prepare as much as possible for our journey ahead. Here are the main topics we're chipping away at this week:

Reading
Our LCMS World Mission field supervisor, Shauen (you can read his blog at www.thetrumps.org - he and his wife Krista have been awesome sources of help thus far and we can't wait to meet them!) recommended several reads for us to help in preparing us for mission work and the African culture, both physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. They're great reads even if you're not going on a mission trip. Here are some highlights below:

• Serving With Eyes Wide Open
• Good book and easy read on doing mission work with cultural intelligence. A good quote, "Not all Africans are starving and waiting for heroic Westerners to come and save them." 
• Foreign to Familiar
• A handbook of observations about cultures, such as hot-climate vs. cold-climate cultures. Hot-climate cultures tend to be relationship based and group oriented vs. cold-climates typically displaying high individualism, task rather than group orientation, and a high emphasis on efficiency. 
• African Friends and Money Matters
• Lays out the different approach and mindset on money Africans tend to have vs. Westerner. African society tend to act on a micro level acting to ensure the survival of family and kin while the West has focused on accumulation of capital and wealth. 
• Cross-Cultural Servanthood
• Emphasizes that before one can become a servant (ie: becoming like Christ to others), he or she must first show and gain openness, acceptance, trust, learning, and understanding from the parties being helped. This of course can take a long time. Lesson of the day: We must build relationships first!
• When Helping Hurts
• Great thought-provoking read that forces you to remember that the "American" way is not the only right way, and often times the wrong way in other cultures.

Packing
Of course this one makes the preparations list. While it's hard to think about living out of 2 suitcases for a year, it does really help that it will be WARM all year and we won't care about fashion! We're pretty much packing as much of the essentials (ie: underwear, bug spray, sunscreen, chocolate) as we can in addition to some items we've never had to consider packing for before like our malaria meds and water purifier. Did you know they now have objects the size of a pen that shine UV light into water bottles and purifies them? It's pretty nuts but it works! Check it out at http://www.steripen.com/.

Goodbyes
The biggest thing we're doing is trying to spend as much quality time with family and friends amidst the preparations. Luckily we were here to welcome our new little niece into the world last week, and we get to celebrate Megan's dad's birthday, a friend's wedding, and some other highlights in our week left. We will miss everybody here greatly, but know their support and encouragement made this possible and we will stay in touch.

Here are our Skype names for anybody that wants to chat us up once we get there:

• Timothy.Peter.Dooms
• m24ducky

Let us know if you have any other advice of things we're missing to do :)