...friends along the way

One thing that can be quite daunting and intimidating is to arrive in a completely foreign land without knowing anyone. Fortunately, AIM told me before hand that there would be another person heading to Kenya on the same flight. So it has been a tremendous blessing for me to have gotten to know Matthew en route to our destination. Matthew was really helpful in guiding me in and out of the city since he had been in western Kenya previously teaching for two years. So, I actually had a personal tour guide. What made it even better was that we're the same age. He's actually coming back to Africa to serve full term somewhere in the continent. Anyways, he's from Lincoln, Nebraska and is a huge Nebraska football fan, but from what I gather they're not quite all that good this year. So he's been pretty miserable about that. So we were at Africa Based Orientation (ABO) at Scotts Theological College at Machakos (southeast of Nairobi) with other missionaries for three weeks. Thankfully there were other guys on this ABO, which made it really fun to just play some sports with them after classes.

Jeremy (middle) and Daniel (right) are part of the Training in Ministry Outreach (TIMO) team t. They usually put together a team composed of a couple of families and several singles and send them off to an unreached area. Some of their goals, I think, are to learn the language and culture well enough by the first year that by the second they may be able to develop an indigenous church in the region.
We sometimes called Jeremy, who is from British Columbia, Canada, "rabbit killer" because he used to have a business back when he was in high school selling rabbit meat to Chinese restaurants. He was supposedly offered $15 for his pet rabbit by a Chinese restaurant owner...and he consented. He killed his pet rabbit and sold its meat for $15 and started "Jeremy's Rabbits." He even showed us his business card. Haha, he's a really funny character and a good guy. Daniel is also Canadian (from Toronto), but he had lived in Brazil (I wonder if he knows Lincoln) as a child and so speaks Portuguese. I think I have to say that he's the most intellectual out of us guys, at least in my opinion. He loves John Piper...come to think of it, I heard John Piper a lot during ABO. And, oh, one thing that amazes me is his ability to remember all the words of hymns. Seems like he knows them all, so he usually starts the singing when we're out driving to and fro.