Tag Archives: travel

The Beauty of the Hard Places

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I had a piece I was going to write tonight, but I decided I’ve written enough about my thoughts lately. My thoughts can get tiring to me sometimes, so I can only imagine what it’s like for other people. So tonight I’m writing a very picture heavy blog featuring some of the amazing places I’ve seen in going to the hard parts of Africa. All photos were taken in South Sudan, Kenya, or Ethiopia. If you ever get a chance to go to these places for whatever reason, they can be utterly heartbreaking yet stunningly beautiful, sometimes at the same time.

Sunrise in Arba Minch, Ethiopia.

A man paddles down the White Nile in South Sudan.

Children in South Sudan with grass fires in the background.

A woman in a remote part of the Borana region of Ethiopia.

The beauty of Yabello, Ethiopia.

The desert near the Ethiopia, Somalia border.

A waterfall on the slopes of Mount Kenya.

A giraffe with downtown Nairobi, Kenya in the background.

Jeldu Gojo in the mountains of central Ethiopia.

A rain storm drenches South-Central Ethiopia.

110 degrees f at the top of Jebel Kujur in South Sudan.

Lightning over Dire Dawa, Ethiopia.

Children watching the massive cattle herds go by in South Sudan.

Morning in Addis Ababa.

Tea plantation in Kimunye, Kenya.

I could have kept posting pictures, as there are simply so many epic places in Africa, but I’ll just have to save some for another blog post.

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A Week in Kibera.

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Recently I got back from spending a week in Kenya, most of it in the Kibera slum of Nairobi. It had been 3 1/2 years since I’d been to Kenya, and I was eager to see how our friends were doing. Though we’d been in contact with many of them, it’s much better to be able to physically see how people are doing than to just be told. Plus it’s the unspoken things that really tell the stories.

Some things had changed. More of the roads in Kibera are now paved, keeping down a bit of the mud and dust, but the trash problem has not gotten any better. Many of the children in the daycare are new, but that’s to be expected, as children get older and start going to school and are replaced by younger ones.

What didn’t change was the absolute beauty of the people in Kibera. As I came from a nation where material things are so important to people, but unhappiness and loss of purpose is rampant, I am reminded that there is as much blessing in not having what you don’t need as there is in having what you do need. The words of Proverbs 30 are brought to mind.

“Two things I ask of You—

do not refuse me before I die:

Keep falsehood and deceitful words far from me.

Give me neither poverty nor riches;

feed me with the bread that is my portion.

Otherwise, I may have too much

and deny You, saying, “Who is the LORD?”

Or I may become poor and steal,

profaning the name of my God.”

Before we think we have it better, look at the joy on the faces of the people of Kibera and remind ourselves that joy doesn’t come from what is outside.

The Worn Out Passport

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In two days I leave for Kenya. I’m not even sure how many times I’ve been either to or through Kenya, but it’s been over three years since I was there. Too long, frankly. My focus the past several years has been Ethiopia, but I’m being brought back to Nairobi, and I’m expecting God to do great things.

This also marks a milestone for me. For the first time I’ve completely used up a passport. On the front you can still read “passport”, but the eagle has been totally worn off. More importantly, I have only one blank page left inside, and that will be filled some time on Monday at Kenyan immigration. I still have three years left before it expires, but I’m going to have to renew it when I get back because I’ll no longer be able to go anywhere that requires a visa, which is mostly where I go.

This passport has taken me a lot of places. Some were for missions, some for work, and some strictly for fun. Since renewing it, I’ve been to or received a stamp or visa in my passport from South Sudan, Kenya, The Bahamas, St Kitts and Nevis, Ethiopia, The Dominican Republic, Mexico, Turkey, Belize, South Africa, Honduras, and Switzerland. Some of them have been several times.

Which brings me to a conversation that frequently starts when people ask me about what I’m doing when I travel. It usually ends with, “I wish I could do something like that, but I……”, and then there’s usually a reason why they can’t go and serve. I think people genuinely have a desire to go and build God’s Kingdom, or as Jesus put it,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,

Because He has anointed Me

To preach the gospel to the poor;

He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To set at liberty those who are oppressed;

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

The problem is that people either don’t know how to start, or feel that if they go and serve, everything else will fall apart because they’re already stretched to time or money or resources. Well to the second part I would say that we serve an infinite God, and one of his promises is in Matthew 6, the entirety of which is a great chapter on serving, but specifically,

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

But to the other part, that people simply don’t know where to start, I tell them two things. First, serve locally. Find out what people are already doing and help. Or if you see a need, be part of the solution. Let the Holy Spirit guide you on what you should do, and don’t worry about the small stuff. (Most things are small stuff.) The second thing is to go and get your passport if you want to serve overseas. Before you know it, your passport will be worn out too.

Back to Kibera.

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In just a couple of weeks, I head back to Kibera, Kenya. A group of four men will be going to minister in the largest urban slum in Africa. We’ll be going back to catch up with some good friends we haven’t seen in a long time.

It occurred to me today that I used to post a lot more pictures than I have been lately. I am a professional photographer, after all. So for those following my journey, here are some pictures from previous trips to see Pastor Obedi and His wife Helen in Kibera.

Arba Minch

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Today was not a people day, it was a travel day, so the pictures will reflect that. I took two short flights and landed this afternoon in the city of Arba Minch in Southern Ethiopia. Tomorrow we hit the road, but for today, we were able to recharge a bit. I have to say, this is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and that’s saying a lot.

Unfortunately I only get to spend one day here, but please enjoy these pictures from this amazing place, including one very atypical picture of Kifle swinging on a vine in the forest.

The October 26th Update.

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As you might have noticed, I don’t have a catchy title for this article. The fact is, I’m just too tired to bother thinking of one. I’m coming to the end of my time in eastern Ethiopia. Tomorrow I’m off to the south.

One of the things that’s always great about coming here is that I meet people that are bigger and better than me in so many ways, and it really allows me to center both my perspectives and my priorities for the coming time.

I met, photographed, and interviewed people this week who have been brought down to nothing and then miraculously restored. I’m met many people who have been beaten for their faith, and two who were attacked with swords. I met a man who was blind from birth until the age of 13, at which point someone prayed for him and he got his sight. I met a man who was freed from addiction issues and now sings to God with a beautiful voice about the ways he’s been saved.

Many of these stories I will write about in the future, while some I may not? But what is the common thread that runs through all of these stories? Grace and restoration run through them all, and a desire to continually become more and more like the one in who’s image they have been created.

I’m not going to say who’s story goes with which picture, at least for now, and some of these pictures don’t have a story that I know about yet. But these are some of the people I have met here in eastern Ethiopia, and one shot of some of our team. Until next time…

Simple Wisdom

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I’m writing today from the field in Ethiopia, since I’m blessed to have internet in this part of the country. We spent the day today training and interviewing a couple hundred church planters. As usual, I’m on media duty, which for me is not a duty at all but frankly pure joy.

One of the great things about going to Ethiopia is getting to hear perspectives and simple wisdom from people I would never have contact with otherwise. Today’s simple but profound statement said to me by an Ethiopian brother was, “Jesus didn’t die to save buildings. He died to save people.” I wish we’d remember that whenever we refer to the building we go to as “the church.”

Here are a few pictures from today and yesterday. The first includes the man I was speaking to.

The Magic Canoe

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I’m in the airport in Washington DC, waiting to board my flight to Ethiopia. If we’re honest, a jumbo jet is really not much more than a giant aluminum canoe with engines big enough to get it into the air. This makes the possibilities of what it is and what it can do even more amazing.

It was not that long ago that my mother rode a cargo ship to the mission field in Nigeria. It was not that long before that, that missionaries would board a sailing ship with their worldly possessions packed into a casket, because they knew that’s how they would be going home.

I’m truly blessed to be able to walk through a door, get onto the magic canoe, and 13 hours later walk through another door into a different world. If you’ve never been to Ethiopia, it truly is a different world. Ethiopia was never colonized, so there is very little westernization. Hardly anyone speaks English or any other European language. Foods are different. Ways of thinking and doing things are different. And all of these things make Ethiopia wonderful.

In about an hour I get onto the plane, and less than a day later I have the privilege of joining some really fantastic and dedicated people from the Petros Network, to train church planters and help facilitate what God is already doing there. I’m looking forward to posting pictures and stories of what happens in the next two weeks, if internet is available. Until next time…

Back To Africa!

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It’s been a year now since I was in Africa, and next week I go back. Once again, I’ll be going to Ethiopia. I’ll be taking my camera, not to show pictures of miserable children and flies as some like to do, but to capture a realistic picture of life; to bring awareness not only of the struggles but also the triumphs that people have on a daily basis. My goal is to capture the heart of the people and communicate what commonalities tie us all together on both sides of the ocean. I’m looking forward to seeing old friends, both from Ethiopia and North America.

I’ll be traveling to two different regions, one of which I have not yet been to. I will try to keep blog posts going as I travel, though internet is not always a possibility, so there may be gaps. I may not be able to be specific about where I am at times for various reasons, but I will be traveling to the East and the South. It’s been five years since I was in South Sudan, and the southern region I’m going to will be the closest I’ve been to that country since then. I’m curious to see how the two regions compare, so in that spirit, I’m posting pictures from South Sudan today. We’ll see if there are any similarities when I get to Southern Ethiopia. Until next time, please enjoy the photos.

He Prepares A Table For Me…

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I’ve had a number of things on my mind lately that I’d like to write about, but I decided tonight to go back to the basics and tell a story of my travels. Specifically I’m going back four years to my last journey to South Sudan. At the time, South Sudan was the second most dangerous country in the world, and was quickly devolving to number one, which is where it currently stands. I’d like to be able to give reasons for why this is the case, but that would take volumes to describe. This being a blog, I fully expect to lose almost everyone if I go over 1000 words. If you’d like to know more about the how and why of the situation in South Sudan, feel free to look back through the archives where I write about it at length.

Staying put in South Sudan is not so bad. And if you have the opportunity to take a small plane where you need to go, you can avoid most of the danger, minus that of actually flying in poorly maintained small Russian planes.

The problem is when you have to travel the roads, and this is what we had to do. There was a village we had neglected to visit the last time we were there, and it was necessary to go and visit this time, despite the fact that the situation had gotten worse in the last six months since we’d been in country. The problem was two-fold. The first issue was what are known as “black snakes”. These are not literal snakes, though those exist as well, but rather armed bandits that wait along the road with Kalashnikovs for an easy looking target or a vehicle that has gotten separated. They then stop the vehicle and in the best case they only rob you. This is an ever present danger of road travel in South Sudan.

The other, more pressing problem was that of the White Army. An army of mostly children and teenagers from the Nuer tribe, they rub ashes on their faces as an insect repellent, hence the “white” moniker. They had been emboldened by the renegade vice-president and occasional war-lord of South Sudan, Riek Machar, to attack and raid villages of their cattle. The village we were visiting was directly in their path, and the only road back was in their territory. So to say the least, we were concerned about our road travel, especially since it would be nearing darkness as we were returning.

Many seemingly daunting or hopeless situations are punctuated by the simple phrase, “but God.” This one was no different. Normally I avoid soldiers in developing nations as much as possible, especially in South Sudan, where loyalties change at the drop of a hat. As Sung Tzu so famously wrote in “The Art of War”, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

As we turned out of the village along the Nile onto the rutted dirt road, a cattle truck full of SPLA soldiers was passing. We hung back a bit, but drove within sight of the truck the entire way back. Their presence offered a deterrent to any would-be attackers for the whole journey. As I thought about it later, a couple of things came to mind. Part of Psalm 23 was one of them.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil;

For You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;”

The table prepared came in the form of a cattle truck full of soldiers, and I was thankful for it. I managed to snap this clandestine picture as we drove.

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