Well, I think our pre-field orientation (PFO) for the Kenya trip went quite well. I’m delighted with the team, which represents a broad range of experience levels, ages and personalities. We had 16 of the 18 team members in attendance. Taylor Siegrist, whom I have not yet met, was traveling, but his sister and mother (with whom I’ve been on mission trips before) and his father were all there. My pal Jan Schilling somehow thought it was more important to be present for the birth of her granddaughter than to be with us on the mountain. Imagine that! (The baby arrived Saturday, and everyone is said to be doing just fine.)

Gail and I met Thursday night to plan the PFO. Friday, Gail was busy with catering and her cafe on Friday, so I worked on setting up our meeting room at Morton Memorial UMC and on writing some discussion questions and skit scenarios for use during the training. The actual training ran all day Saturday and Sunday until 3 p.m. We attended church Sunday morning at Morton Memorial UMC, the home church for several of LEAMIS’ key staff members, and Morton Memorial did a commissioning service for us, which was very nice. I was pleased to see one of the Mountain T.O.P. youth ministry staffs in attendance at Morton Memorial as well, sitting together as a group.

I didn’t get home until 5 or so Sunday night, and I was pretty tired. I worked on converting and uploading the new LEAMIS video to Facebook and to LEAMIS’ YouTube account. I have some followup e-mails to send out to the team members this week.

Now, it’s just a matter of getting a million little details taken care of between now and July 22. It will be here before you know it.