In the journey of life, rest can be elusive even when you have the time. After an 8 hour flight, a 5 hour layover, and another 8 hour flight, we arrived in Nairobi late on Friday evening. I did not get a wink of sleep as we traveled, and then when I got to bed, sleep was elusive. Thus the wisdom in a free day in Nairobi to adjust to the time zones and care for a few tasks like buying a phone and exchanging money.

A few things that I have observed today:
Traveling to the African equator, we see plants and animals that we don’t see in North America. This beautiful tree, for example, with yellow blossoms on the Guest House grounds where we are staying.

If the people we met in the airport and on the plane are any indication of what’s typical in Kenya, there must be hundreds of westerners entering Kenya every week to work at mission projects in this country. Even so, the needs here are enormous.

At breakfast this morning, we ate with three physicians from North Carolina, here to volunteer in a hospital for a week through a Franklin Graham organization. Another man from Pennsylvania has set up neurological units at hospitals in east Africa through a program called CURE. He mentioned that doctors from the US are now coming to east Africa for training, because procedures that are rarely seen in the US are common in this part of the world.

Also met a young man from Nairobi who is here to visit family after the death of his mother. He noticed the shirt that I was wearing which advertises a coffee shop in North Carolina. He attended college at Stout and worked in the Twin Cities before moving to North Carolina. He is blending a MBA with a degree in technology. He owns 3.5 acres of coffee trees and would like to find a way to bring Kenyan coffee to the states – but he no longer wants to live in Kenya. From his experience, trust is a fundamental value in the USA but not in Kenya. Too often, in Kenya, he says, it is fraud and corruption.

Makes me wonder how to share trust. And how different my life would be without trust.

And then our driver, who wanted us to know that Kenya is not as dangerous as the news reports. He is proud of his country and feels the opportunities are improving for people. But as we pass people who are living alongside the road, I realize there are many who have not been touched by the improving opportunities.

Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

Tomorrow, we travel to Arusha, Tanzania.