I have been a greeter at my church for a few years. We have "teams" and serve once a month. It is not surprising that I quickly formed a bond with another 2nd grade teacher on my greeter team named Anne. Last summer Anne took a huge leap of Faith and was obedient to God's call to go on her first mission trip to Belize. She went and her heart has been changed. She has since been eager to go wherever God wanted her to go next. She had no idea what perfect opportunity was about to fall in her lap...
One of Anne's 2nd grade students named Judith is from Kenya. Judith was born there but she and her family moved to America about 5 years ago. Judith's Aunt Teresia and Uncle Joseph still live in Nairobi, Kenya. Teresia came to America to visit Judith's family and wanted to visit Judith's school and meet her teacher-Anne. As Anne talked to Teresia she found out that she and her husband started an orphanage and school in Nairobi, Kenya. Judith and her family (Mom-Winnie who is Teresia's sister, Dad-George, and little sister Jessica) travel back to Kenya every summer. They invited Anne to go with them this summer.
In November, it was our greeter team's weekend to serve. We meet before going to our "posts" and have "huddle"-a group devotion and a time to pray together. Our awesome team leader, Troy asked if anyone had any prayer requests. Anne spoke up and shared about the opportunity she had to go to Kenya this summer. She was excited but also nervous. Without a second thought, I told her that I wanted to go with her. At the time I don't know if either of us knew how serious the other one was but over the next few weeks I could not stop thinking about it.
Anne started telling other people about the trip and some of them wanted to go, too! The next to jump on board whole heartedly was Angela, whom Anne had met on her trip to Belize last summer. Then Katie said she was "in". Katie and I have been in the same small group/bible study for a few years and have also served as greeters together. She just happens to be another teacher! One of Anne's co-workers, Laura is also coming. Over Christmas Anne's sister talked to her husband and 3 sons and their entire family is also on board...we hope to have a final decision from the others who have expessed interest by January 30th. Once we know how many people we have going we will start looking for plane tickets.
Anne, Angela, and I met for lunch on December 12th. We looked at our calendars and started talking about dates that we would be able to go. This has been a challenge for me in the past as other trips I had wanted to go on were not during my "track-out" dates. As a teacher, I am not able to just take off work. I do not have vacation days because our vacation days are already determined for us on days when the students are not there. Even though Anne teaches in a Traditional Calendar school and I teach in a Year-Round Calendar school, somehow our last days of school are the exact same day this year. For now, all we know is that we will leave no earlier than June 15 and come back no later than June 30.
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