Amy in Africa or the One Where Jeff's Heart Starts Breaking

Amy is in Africa! I can't believe that she's finally there. After almost a year of waiting to get to the field, she's finally flown to Kenya. She's about halfway between Nairobi and Naroq, living in the bush and working with the Masai tribe. She's with a group called CMF International and specifically her ministry is called Community Health Ev-ngelism. This means that she'll be teaching locals about the AIDS epidemic and how they can prevent its spread through community education. This is a really cool method for instruction and sharing the Message.

Basically the G-spel message is embedded in the community health messages about AIDS. Kenyan Nationals (community leaders) are taught this system and then they in turn go back to their communities and teach their friends and neighbors! Such a cool program, huh?

Well anyway - we could use tons of your pr@yer about Amy in Kenya. Here are the quick details. It is very expensive for me to call Amy in Kenya and even more expensive for her to call me in Russia from Kenya. Amy doesn't have easy access to the phone and we can maybe talk once a week for 5 minutes or so. This is much worse than we initially thought and we're very sad about it. Although she does have internet access there, it is also only once a week and she has to pay by the minute! So we're going to be writing emails and letters mostly to communicate.

Also, I'm planning to go to Africa to visit Amy in December/January sometime and so far it's MUCH more expensive than I ever dreamed. (funny - that's more of a Russian construction than English -- why didn't I say imagined?) Anyway - it looks right now like it'll be upwards of $2500 to go and visit her, but I'm committed to making this happen.

Please be pr@ying for her as it's a much different situation there than what I've got here in Russia. I knew so many people before I even came and am already very plugged into community here. Although Amy is part of a larger team, she and her partner Helen are very isolated and experiencing the first pangs of homesickness!