Travel Diary 1: The Only Constant Has Been Change

Dear ITEM Friends and Family,

We began planning this trip months ago. The plan was to bring all of our country coordinators together, dividing them up by primary language and location. Get them visas, check. Covid tests, check. Transportation to their assigned location, check. Lodging during their trip, check. Sounds easy, uncheck. It’s been constantly changing for weeks.

Covid worldwide and the wintery, snowy weather that swept though the northwest US changed everything. And the entire trip has been on life support for 2-3 weeks.

New Covid restrictions in Liberia forced us to cancel that gathering all together. My shuttle flight from Portland to Seattle was being regularly cancelled all week leading up to my departure. A late arrival of a Covid test result resulted in our coordinator in Cameroon missing his flight. He took it upon himself to reschedule his own flight but will arrive after the coordinator meeting is over on Wednesday. Chris and I just had our Thursday flight to Burundi cancelled and we are booked on the Friday flight which is going to make it difficult to get a required Covid text result back in time to fly back to Kenya on Sunday. This has been the story almost daily for the past two weeks. But we are pressing on by faith.

Our coordinator meeting is tomorrow, Wednesday, and all but the Cameroonian coordinator are here already. But this day when everyone was gathering gave Chris and I a chance to sit down with key members of the Kenyan team and get caught up on ministry here. The ministry is spread out around the country and we had a chance to talk about better communication among the group. It was a profitable time. This during dinner, all but the Cameroonian coordinator were here and spent the time getting to know each other.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, is the coordinators meeting. We will have three sessions in the morning and two after lunch. We will be reviewing ITEM distinctives, strategy, philosophy of ministry, mentoring, and Chris will share about the pastor’s heart.

It’s 10pm here. Our flight from Amsterdam was delayed 2.5 hours so we did not get to bed until 3AM “today.” So, I think I’ll sign off. Get this posted. Get some pictures uploaded. And call it a day.

Pray we’ll get the rest we need and that stability will set in. But if it doesn’t. God is still God!

Thanks for praying.

By His grace,
Steve

Here is the link to the picture album.