Good goodbyes!

     Yesterday was a wonderful day and a sad day for all of us. We said goodbye to most of our church family at our final service at NMC for the next two years. Pastor Dave did a great job as always of tying Biblical teaching in with practical ways to get engaged. He had told me on Friday that at our commissioning service he wanted to do things a little different than normal. Instead of us being commissioned by the congregation, he was going to ask me to commission the congregation. At first, I didn't really care for that idea. But, as we talked and I thought more about it, I saw Pastor Dave's wisdom in it. Ministry is never on your own, but is a team or "body" effort. We need the whole body to be involved in the ministry we are about to leave for. We are merely the hands and feet, Christ is the head, and our families and team members comprise the rest of the body. This is just the beginning of the mission, not the end. We are all called to engage in missions where ever God has placed us. We are also called to engage in missions both locally and globally, nobody gets a pass on this.
   We were blessed to have so many show us their love yesterday, it was a wonderful send-off. We were blessed to have all of our children, both sets of parents and all of our siblings present yesterday. It was a great show of support. We were blessed to have Deb from World Gospel Mission come to be with us yesterday also. We were blessed by the Acts 29 small church who took up a special offering to help with our shipping costs and a new printer for us. You will be able to read more about that in the newsletter.
   We will now spend our remaining days with family as we say goodbye to them. We will be leaving from the church parking lot at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday the 19th of August. We will then make our way to O'Hare where we will depart at 6:15 p.m. Indiana time and will land in Nairobi, Kenya at 2:00 p.m. on Monday Indiana time. There is currently a 7 hour difference between us and Kenya. It is 8 hours the rest of the year.
   Thank you to all who are a part of our team, thank you to all who came forward to say goodbye to us, thank God for Pastor Dave and his leadership, and thank you to the NMC staff that has help us greatly over the last several months.

Blessings
D & D