Saturday, September 10, 2011

It’s already September!

The weather I love is here. I’m just not sure how I will survive a Minnesota winter. But warm days and cool nights! I’m lovin’ that!

At the end of August 8 ‘friends’ arrived in Minneapolis. To be more precise, 8 people from Daystar University, one teacher and 7 students – the touring singing group, Afrizo! They are here for three months of scholarship fundraising concerts across the entire United States. And I’m going with them! The students come from all over Kenya and one from the Congo (DRC). The director, Hellen has been here a number of times and was even a part of last October’s Lausanne Congress in South Africa as she joined the worship team there.

Every single day is filled with all kinds of new things for this team. While my coworker in the office, Hannah set up everything it’s still a load of logistics on me to get these guys all over. Thankfully we also have a very helpful driver, Sven for the entire trip also. My responsibilities lie in a number of areas.

For the week and a half they’ve been here I’ve managed a few days when I could get into the office to try to get my head around the next step. Though I started off feeling only a millimeter ahead of them, I’m still not a lot more ready. I wish I had the time to think through all the pieces of debriefing every day and cultural exchanges. Not to mention being ready with a Bible study each week and encouragements for the team members.

Sunday evening we start our first road trip. Its 13 days to Oregon and back. I will actually switch off with another staff member and get the last half of that trip off, back in MN without the team. Maybe that is when I will mentally catch up. But then on October 3rd we start the big loop: Chicago, Detroit area, Pennsylvania, NY, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, and finally Los Angeles. They fly home from there two days before Thanksgiving.

All this is to say. I hope to blog about this grand trip seeing most of America through the eyes of dear Kenyans. But I won’t make any big promises. I will just have to see how it goes. I will however update Facebook often. And if you want to follow what the team is doing you can “like” the Afrizo! public figure page on Facebook. The one with the exclamation point is our traveling team.

Thanks for your many prayers to see me through this incredible season.