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(I put a bunch of info on the About page.)

It’s natural to want to bring gifts when you visit friends, but we don’t do this on ZOE trips, for several reasons:

• If not everybody gets the same thing, it can cause strains in the community.
• If not every visiting ZOE group gives the same thing, it can cause disappointment.
• The obligation to reciprocate might be a burden.
• We don’t really do the kind of ministry where we give people things (the seed grants notwithstanding).
• The ZOE families are proud of their ability to host us, and if we come in with some big gift that overshadows what they have to offer us, it’s kind of raining on their parade.

However… it’s perfectly okay to bring small (tiny) mementos of our visit, and we’ve made a postcard to give our families, so they can have something tangible.

Here is what it looks like: The postcard. (I particularly like the Bible verse.)

ZOE is a program of support and encouragement for people (children, really) who are trying to make their own way.  We give financial assistance to support them, which appears (at least in part) in the form of grants for them to get started, with things like crop seed or animals, if they choose the route of farming (so they can sell the produce of the crops they plant, or eggs or milk) or training, if they choose trades such as barbering or carpentry.

But also (and this is why we’re physically traveling to Africa), it is a ministry of social support.  We are traveling to meet our friends,to show them that we are interested in their progress, and to learn more about them so we can bring their stories back to our congregation.

(Here is a more eloquent version of the same thing: UnforgettableJourneys.pdf.)

These are the families we are traveling to meet. We have had their names on our refrigerator door for the last six months, praying for them, and wondering how they are.  Now we finally get to meet them.

So… we’re going on a trip.  To Kenya.  With ZOE.  To visit orphans.

Here are the deets:

• ZOE: http://www.zoehelps.org/
• Map (an actual map, not some abstract tag cloud thing): https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zy2xhHGBHC3A.kEYAwZuPZrBs&usp=sharing