Habari!

That's "Hello" in Swahili.
Greetings from Nairobi, Kenya.

The month of intense travel has begun. It started for Jon almost two weeks ago now when he flew from Johannesburg, through Ghana, on to Liberia. He was there for a week for a program training and was able to meet some of the West Africa national directors who we didn't see last year. Maybe I'll try to get him to write something about that. You'd like to hear his thoughts too right? I think it'd be great!

But, anyways, he arrived back in South Africa on Sunday morning after an overnight flight and we spent the day doing final errands and finishing packing all of our stuff, because we're on our way to Ghana! - We spent as much time as possible with Bernard in February and March training him and getting him going in so that he can take care of Southern Africa for us, which we are really grateful for. And now we will be spending the rest of the year focusing on the other three regions.

As I said, we're in Nairobi. We flew in on Monday, and we're continuing on to Ghana tomorrow (friday), but it's been a great visit. We have very much enjoyed meeting and getting to know the team here and have been spending a lot of quality time with the Regional Director, Philip, learning more about his region and the ministry going on here, and spending some great time with him and his wife Eve in the evenings. Nairobi itself as a city is not particularly exciting on the surface, and the air pollution is really bad, but we're looking forward to spending more time here in a couple of months and getting to know it a little better. The National Park is actually in the city, then expands out beyond it with no fences on that side, so the wild life in it is really, truly wild, not contained. When we're back we'll be sure to go there, and there are other things we would like to see as well.

When we get to Ghana, we'll unpack and set up our next 'home.' Then next Wednesday, we're off! We'll be traveling through four French speaking west African countries over two week's time with Jim (similar to last year's trip) - Togo, Benin, Mali, Burkina Faso - and then Jon & Jim will go without me Congo - Kinshasa (DRC) for four days. phew... That will be exactly one month of constant traveling for Jon, and about 3 weeks for me. Then we'll settle down again, and will stay put in Ghana till mid-may. 

We'll then be based in Kenya from mid-May to July, then back in FL (for meetings) & CA (for sister's wedding) in July! and the second half of the year is unplanned at this point!  haha but it will probably be split between being based in Ghana and Kenya.

SOOOOooooo, that is what's going on for us! Now that interesting things are going on, I'll try to post a little more often to share about our travels and experiences with you, and hopefully be able to post a few picture along the way as well.

We love you all! Please pray for us as we are traveling a lot right now that we will get rest when we need it and we will have energy to serve well as we're visiting national directors and sitting down to work with them.

-Jon&Lisa

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UPDATE: in between writing the above and now getting ready to post it, we found out that there has been a coup in Mali - their military has take control of the country, and all borders are closed. This is very unexpected for Mali. So, the update for us is that we will obviously not be going into Mali. But please be praying for that country. You can find articles on BBC news about it.
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