Take Off
Betsy Stockdale, Sharon Repp, and I left Betsy’s home in Hoover at 1:00 pm today to drive to the Atlanta airport. Sharon’s husband, Bill, drove us over. It was like having our very own Groom transport - right up to the International terminal. There was even a rainbow to welcome us!
Our flight leaves at 8:00 pm EST. We will fly to Amsterdam overnight and then fly to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. We should arrive on Tuesday at 10:00 Kenya Time (2:00 pm CST - 8 hours ahead of Birmingham). I plan to sleep on the Amsterdam leg and stay awake til Kenya. I hope when we get in so late, I’ll be tired enough to sleep. I’ll see how my plan works. From what I can tell, this will be like back-to-back trips to Europe - about 8 hours for each leg. With planning, I hope to arrive ready.
We are currently waiting for our flight to depart in the terminal's food court. As we grab a meal, a piano player is playing great jazz music to pass the time. Swaying, eating, and waiting is a great way to start our journey.
We will be working at Africa Exchange, one of VHBC’s primary Global mission partners. Sam Harrell, the co-executive director (with his wife, Melody), will be our guide for our partnership trip. We will join a team of 7 from First Baptist Church, Greensboro, NC, who is also a partnership with Africa Exchange to build an Integrated Child Development Center in the country. We will both visit the sites of our centers.
Sam describes our trip as a Kutana Kenya journey. This is more than a mission trip; it’s built to be a spiritual and cultural encounter as we do mission together. Over the next ten days, we will move from the cool hills of Brackenhurst - a former Baptist retreat center - to the arid beauty of Atulelo, the home of our future ICDC. We will travel from the countryside of Kitui to the wide plains of the Maasai Mara. Along the way, we will worship under the shade of acacia trees, visit communities where children gather to learn, share meals with new friends, and experience the wonder of God’s creation on safari drives.
Kutana means “to meet, to encounter,” and together we will meet people, places, and stories that reveal God’s presence in new ways. We are going to Kenya to be changed by what we see and who we meet so that when we return home, we can see with fresh eyes and open hearts for God’s work in the world.
My hope with my Kenya Blog is to give our church a first-hand report of Africa Exchange’s work, the country of Kenya, the community where we will build an ICDC, and the experiences of travel. Our next Katana Kenya trip will be May 11-21, 2026. Let me encourage you to consider making this trip next year!
I’ll blog again when I get to Brackenhurst to let you know how the journey went and my first impressions of Kenya.
Until then,
Eric
