Greetings from Danville, Illinois. We just arrived on Wednesday after a grueling 14 hour flight from the middle east to Chicago O’hare. We are on an adventure of our lifetime as we head to the West Coast of the US to settle Joe and Sarah into their first year of life in the USA. Our plan is to be out there with them through August at least and then what, we are not sure at the moment. For the first time since the 1990’s we have no return ticket in our hands. We believe we will know more in the next few months how long our stay will actually be. As a result, we have set Tray and Lydia into the Directorship at KKV for the duration and hopefully for the foreseeable future. When we go back to Nairobi, our hope is to serve and support their leadership at KKV and to see how else we can be of use to the Master on the African Continent.
As such, we have been preparing our house to serve as a KKV guesthouse for the next 6 months or more. Our days have been marked by two things; Scanning and shredding. One of the most touching things I have done is scan all of our newsletters from 1984 to the present. I now have them all in pdf format. Scanning them has brought back many memories of our 35 years in Kenya, bringing up both gratitude as well as a bit of regret. Regret for the things we had on our to do list and never got done… Like, climb Mt. Kenya or Mt. Kilimanjaro or see Mount Kenya Safari Club or get back to Lamu or go to Garsen, North Eastern Kenya to see our brother in Christ, or re-visit our brothers in South Sudan, or plant the remaining 996 churches of the 1,000 in Africa. Our hearts are still full of vision for personal conquest and especially for Kingdom conquest. But this season is another step in fulfilling our commitment to our kids.
Transition is never easy, so I have included a few good quotes regarding transition that should serve as incentive to never give up, but press on to the high call of God in life.
“If you can’t fly, then run, If you can’t run, then walk, If you can’t walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” –Martin Luther King Jr.
“The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.” –Abraham Lincoln
“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” –Chuck Swindoll
No matter the side trails offered to us, we are determined to stay the course, move forward into the great opportunities before us and continue to serve the Lord one day at a time.
Jon and Molly Stern
