Last few weeks...

I just thought that I'd put a few pictures on from the last few weeks. We have actually gone to a number of places, just around town here - with all the saddness of the memorial services for Frank and Ryan, and thinking, praying and trying to do anything to help the families, we have enjoyed doing things with friends - ha, mostly eating out and well just being with others. It has also made us also miss our family and friends more - as we have to just trust the Lord in his timing. :)

This is a picture for Warden and Brandon! See - Micah is juuuussst not quite as tall as me yet! This was taken at a new Mall like plaza with parking in the basement - it was quite funny as we could just walk thru it! :)

Here is Micah and his friend Jonah. He and his family just moved here a few weeks ago. So he and Micah enjoyed M's last few weeks of summer break.

This is Kurt and John. We went out to eat Ethiopian food with our friends Nate, Candace & kids. We always make a joke about the injera - the sour tortilla like bread. Nate calls it "stinky, wet ace bandages." So here is Kurt "bandaging" John with the injera - ok, the waiters probably didn't think it was so funny!

These last few pictures are from a place called Diamond Plaza. It is an outdoor mall with lots of little stores. It is all run by Asians so it feels more like you are in India then Kenya! :) Here is a guy cutting up fresh coconuts. He'd cut the top off so you could drink the milk out and then eat the coconut. They had one little area with these hilarious rides that seemed like they were from the 60's and were loud!! - but that didn't matter - kids love that!

Here are Kurt and Nate putting Dinah's Christmas present together! - Yes,that's right - Christmas in August! Candace and Nate got this for her for Christmas and they couldn't wait any longer to give it to her. We he had it stored at our house, so they are getting it ready for Dinah!

Tribute to Frank and Ryan

I’m sure that most of you have heard about what happened here on the 1st of August. In case anyone hadn’t we had an airplane accident where one of our pilots (Frank Toews) and one of our mechanic’s (Ryan Williams) was killed. They were doing a photo shoot over Kabira which is one of the largest slums in

Africa and we believe experienced an engine failure of some sort and had to put the airplane down in a very heavily populated area just on the edge of Kabira. There were two photographers in the back of the airplane who survived. One with serious injuries and some broken bones, the other with injuries, but not quite as serious.

Frank and Ryan were great men. They will be greatly missed. They have both left a wife and 4 children behind. Sometimes we just don’t understand why things happen, but we can be certain that God really is in control. They paid the ultimate cost of following Jesus as you can read in Luke 9: 57-62. How much does it really cost us to follow Christ? Of course the costs are going to be different for each of us. Frank’s wife Tiffany and Ryan’s wife Dawn will need a lot of prayer and support in the days, weeks, and months to come.

The AIM AIR family is working through this tragedy. Plans are being made to begin flying again in another week or so. Although this has been a tragic event the ministry and support that AIM AIR has is a very significant part of many mission organizations in East Africa. With God’s help it will continue to be, but we covet your prayers as we move forward.

You can find a lot more information on the AIM AIR website (aimair.org) about the accident and their families who have been left behind as a result. You just need to click on the LMB accident site once there. http://www.aimair.org/

Zanzibar weekend

This past weekend Angie and I traveled to Zanzibar to celebrate our 25th anniversary which is coming up next week. We had a great time on the north coast at a place called Blue Bay Beach Resort. It reminded us a bit of Siesta Key in Florida, but with beach boys who keep trying to sell you things. We arrived on Friday around noon and were there until Sunday afternoon. Micah stayed behind in Nairobi and we had a friend stay with him at our house. We had a good time relaxing on the beach and also took in a couple of tours including a spice tour as Zanzibar is known as the "spice island", and a tour of stone town which is a very old part of the city. It used to be a major slave gathering and sale point. We got to tour some of the areas where they were kept and sold. They used to whip them to see how strong they were and by that they knew how far they could ship them with them still surviving.

The resort was pretty cool with great food and a nice pool to lay around as well.

We stayed in the unit on the left. We could see the beach which was full of blues and greens similar to what you can see in the Caribbean.

The spice tour was pretty cool. It was a walking tour where we walked all through an area for a few hours learning (and tasting) where the spices come from.

This is a nutmeg. I had no idea that they were actually seeds in an apple like fruit and that they are surrounded by a red cover that is used for mace.

Next are cloves which grow on pretty big trees. There are a number of different qualities which you can tell just by looking at the growing plant before it's picked and dried.

This is peppercorn. I did taste one of these. It was pretty warm! Even green and raw.

And here are some samples of what all we saw. We enjoyed the tour.

Then we were off to Stone Town where we walked the narrow streets and found a number of interesting historical things to learn about. It was pretty fun and ended up sitting on a balcony having a coke at the old British Officer's club.

It was a great weekend.