Visiting Africa!

 We are headed to Africa for 2 weeks this October!!! This has been a dream which God laid on our hearts many years ago when we first heard the call to serve in missions and now we have the opportunity! Anita and I will be headed to Nairobi, Kenya for 2 weeks to serve with an aviation ministry called AIM Air. 

AIM Air is the aviation branch of Africa Inland Mission, and they support the broad work of missions and the Church in a large portion of Africa representing 8 countries, and over 3 million square miles! This represents an estimated 250 million people, and the airplanes of AIM Air are the vehicle that help take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. It’s hard to express in a few words just what all this ministry does, and so here is a fantastic video that really captures the heart of AIM Air: www.vimeo.com/5768223

What will we be doing during our time in Africa? I (Jason) will spend much of my time working in the AIM Air hangar, and helping out in many different aspects of the ministry. There will certainly be some airplane maintenance in the hangar; and there will also be other things such as flight scheduling, supply prepping, flight load planning, and parts inventory management.

The 2 airplanes Jason will be working on whilst in Kenya

Anita’s time in Kenya will be to experience life in a third world country. She will spend time with other AIM Air wives to develop a better understanding of raising & schooling a family overseas. There will be a lot to process - things like learning how to shop for food in the market, how to cook and clean with limited supplies, how to travel around town, and even developing relationships with some of the locals. Anita will also spend a little time in the AIM Air hangar assisting with office operations like flight bookings. Please pray for our kids as they stay behind with Anita’s parents. This was a tough decision for us, because we are a family, and God has called our entire family into missions. Yet with this trip being during their school year, and with us moving to North Carolina only 2 weeks after our return from Africa, we feel that stability will be best for our kids.

This trip will very much be a vision trip for us. This will be an amazing experience to help prepare us for what our family life will be like as we pursue serving as missionaries in a foreign country. We will be able to see first-hand a ministry that we’ve felt God leading us to consider. There are even plans for us to fly into one of the remote bush villages and spend a couple days helping the missionaries based in that village - which will really capture the “why” behind the ministry of AIM Air.

We invite you to be a part of this journey as well. There are many ways that you can be involved. One of the biggest is through prayer. Please pray along with us as we prepare for our time in Africa. Pray for the many encounters we’ll have while we are there. Pray that we will have an eternal impact on the people we meet and to be a help to the ministry of AIM Air. Please pray as we evaluate if this is a ministry where our family can serve long-term in the future.

We also invite you to pray about and consider financially giving to help make this trip possible. We need to raise $7,250 to cover the cost of flights, living expenses while we are in country, vaccinations, international insurance and many other things. Here is a link to a website that will enable you to financially contribute to help make this vision trip possible: https://secure-q.net/Donations

Finally, we invite you to be an encouragement. We anticipate facing many challenges on this journey and that encouragement will be a tremendous blessing to us. You can follow this journey right here on our Blog, and on our Facebook page (see links to the right).

We look forward to seeing how God uses this time in Kenya to work through us to bless others, to break our hearts for Africa, and to mold us all the more into His willing servants!