While posting all about our family time I realized we have not shared an update about Taylor’s work trip! He had a pretty successful time looking at many options of locations for the film. Thankfully AIM is working under a Kenyan media house who had its owner represent them in beginning negotiations to secure locations. A huge praise is that the writing was completed by a Western missionary and is under review by a Kenyan to make more culturally appropriate.

Please continue to pray for the project. Prayer needs include clear wisdom and direction in guiding of those in charge of the script and directing. Pray that this will be an effective tool the Kenyan church can use to help promote missions from within. Please also pray for funding to come in and all the details of directing, acting, set and costume design…etc.

Thanks as always for your continued prayers!

Though I have not seen very much of the world, I feel confident in saying that Kenya is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Here is just a quick picture we took along our drive back to town for you to enjoy. We went from the coast, through mountains and amazing plains in a matter of a few hours!

Our kids are such great flyers! Here is a pic from our quick flight to join Baba. Avery made Larson laugh with a puppet show, thanks to the air sick bag.

Thankfully both kids LOVED the water. We had a large and small pool at the gorgeous home we stayed in. There was access to the beach a five-minute walk away. It was such a treat to have great weather all week and enjoyed all the time outside.

We have had some crazy internet lately. So, after a few days of trying to upload a video I gave up and then spent about 5 hours to upload pictures. I give you the picture tour of our new home.

Welcome to the wonderful AIM Muringa Compound! There is a guest house/ media office and three other duplexes on this compound. Here is our home. Come on inside!

Karibuni sana! When you enter in our home the stairs are straight in front of you with the living room to the right and a washroom to your left. Here is a picture of our living room with the dinning room right behind. A note for all our Nairobi buddies, the couch set was found at Odds and Ends.

Here is a picture of the downstairs washroom. You can kind of have an idea of what it looks like. You can make out the shower wall on the right.

If you walk past the washroom and make a circle around the stairs you would then come to our laundry area. It is a bit different to have this space indoors. Typically your have these big sinks to wash clothes or washing machine outside. It has been quite nice to have indoors and to have two sinks. A huge help in filling up the washing tub to save time on the wash cycle and to catch the rinse water to re-use for the next wash cycle….I will quit here but just wanted to share this really has been a huge help.

Next stop is the kitchen! It is quite big for Nairobi kitchens and has a good layout. You can’t see it but to the right is a pantry, to the left is the fridge and behind me is the dining area.

Let’s go upstairs! To the left of the stairs is the guest room and another washroom. To the right is Larson’s room, our room and the entrance to the attic/Avery’s area.

This is our guest room/office that is still a work in progress.

Here is the upstairs washroom. If you could see to the left you would see the tub.

This is Larson’s room! I have some decorations I would still like to put up but it really has been nice moving into this home with really great paint colors left from previous tenants.

Here is the master room. We have a door out to the balcony you can see from the first picture on this post. Just need to get a chair or two to put out there.

This is one of the many great features of our home…storage! The guest room, Larson’s room, our bedroom and even along the wall at the top of the stairs have these big closets! You can also see the door that leads up to the attic. It is a finished attic and Avery’s area!

One side of the attic we have stored our trunks, camping equipment, school/craft supplies, etc. There is still room for a play area for Avery, Larson and their friends. This takes up half of the attic.

The other half is divided up into two “rooms”. This room is Avery’s bedroom.

This room is her “reading room”. We have a bookshelf full of wonderful books for her to enjoy in her tent or on some comfy pillows.

Back outside to show you our patio. The last tenants were really into gardening and we have benefited from having an oasis in this dusty summer time. Avery is here to show off her latest water color masterpiece! Another bonus is that we have clothes lines under the awning as well as out in the sunshine!

Thanks for stopping by! As you can see we have a lovely home and are really enjoying it. The thing we have most enjoyed at our new home is the wonderful AIM family. We received a very warm welcome. Most have children our kiddos ages or just a bit older. It has been great for Avery to have so many playmates! I hope to have more pics as time goes on so you can have a better picture of our life in Nairobi.

We love this little guy and are enjoying his personality coming out more and more. What a bundle of fun. Avery and he are really starting to play with each other and it is so fun to watch them interact. Our home is full of laughter, giggles and Avery and Larson “singing” to each other, what a joy.

Once a year, the missionaries from each country get together to have their own recoup time. It’s a time for prayer, spiritual healing/awakening/refreshment, and a time to get to see the whole team together. Many of them never see each other but for this one time every year because they work in such remote areas.

The team is extremely diverse with missionaries from Ethiopia, Wales, New Zealand, England, Kenya, Canada and America. This creates such a unique experience while doing God’s work for his kingdom.

Click the image for the larger version.

Wow, what a trip. We’ll be getting out a letter to all of you soon and to those of you on our email list, you’ll get an email as well. I’ve got a lot of video and photos to show everyone. Over the coming days, the photos will be all up on my Flickr account you can access to the right. I’ll be doing little 2 minute videos about different things that happened when we were in Sudan and hope to get those up about once a week. Here’s a cool photo of me shooting video of some kids in Atar.

I had set up my camera on the path they were all walking down on. All of the sudden, one kid runs up and screams back to the rest and they all look up and see me and begin to run toward me. At first there were maybe a dozen, slowly inching toward me, as they wanted to be toward the front. Eventually about 60 kids were surrounding me all yelling, screaming and laughing. You’ll see the video eventually.

I (Taylor) wanted to share with you about some recent developments within SIM USA in regards to media in Sudan. There has been a recent push by a department that specifically reaches out to large donors. They are taking a trip themselves to Sudan in a week to film many of the projects going on and interview both people doing the projects and those being impacted by the projects. Most of the projects in Sudan directly serve the physical needs of some very war hardened Sudanese. The goal is to empower them so that they can be self sustaining. Through doing these various projects, we hope to impact the people personally and gain their trust so that Christ’s love will be evident and opens the door for salvation and all that comes with becoming a Christ follower.

All of that to say, there is a large push to create a lot of media for Sudan to share with donors. As many of you know, Sudan is in the world’s spotlight right now, not just by the US. We hope that these new methods of communication cannot only be used in and by the US office, but other SIM offices around the world to highlight the needs in Sudan and get more people involved around the world in the work Christ body is beginning. The encouragement comes in that many more people are getting involved in Sudan through the use of media and even before I’m officially “active” with SIM, I am being invited to take part in work already being done there. There is a chance that even before I go active, I will be helping post production (editing) on a lot of the video which will be acquired this summer.

Please pray for much of the ground work being done right now for the projects SIM has envisioned. It is only through your prayers, your financial donations and God’s favor that makes these thing happen.

Read more about Rebuilding Southern Sudan: Church & Nation.

A typical school in Southern Sudan.

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