Hello friends and family! This blog is our way of keeping those we love in the loop as we live in Nairobi, Kenya for the year. We will try to post updates as often as we can. Please feel free to comment on our posts. Also, check out the map to see where we are and where we’ve been. Also, check out the other resources we enjoy and have posted to this site.

As you know, we got married this May, and we moved to Nairobi, Kenya in July. We are serving as missionaries with the Network of International Christian Schools, at the West Nairobi School in Nairobi, Kenya. Amanda will be teaching social studies to middle and high school students, and Sam will be on support staff, while studying economic development and Swahili at the United States International University in Nairobi.

The way God orchestrates life for us just stops us in our tracks sometimes. Sam spent 4 months in rural Kenya in 2005 with a small missions team. During that trip God stirred a love for Africa in his heart, an intrigue about issues of poverty and development, and a dream of returning. God captured Amanda last summer during a missions project in Australia and gave her a heart for the world. She didn’t go to Melbourne with any intentions of going into ministry “full-time,” and she certainly never expected to end up in Africa. But then this man came around, with his heart is to serve God in Africa.

God somehow pulled us both towards missions completely individually, but then toward each other in just wonderful, mysterious ways. When we were finally married in May, we knew God was leading us towards missions. And whether we serve overseas for a short time or for the rest of our lives, we are determined to seek out how we fit into his redemptive plan for the world. He has led us to NICS, where we are committed to serving for at least one year.

NICS is simply a worldwide network of Christian schools staffed by Christian educators, whose goal is to instill in each student both a Biblical world-view and an academic excellence. About 70% of the students at West Nairobi are missionaries’ children. We’re especially excited about that because 1) it gives us a chance to minister to missionary families (a big majority of missionaries leave the field to pursue better education for their kids) and 2) it connects us to all kinds missionaries, which we expect will help us to explore more deeply this subtle draw towards missions that God has put on our lives. We are also excited about Sam’s studies at USIU. The intention of studying economic development is that we see it as part of our future ministry abroad.

For this coming year, we look forward to what God will do in us, and what he may do through us. We invite you all to experience the journey with us, via our blog. The blog goes two ways - we keep in touch with you through our posts, and you keep in touch with us through posting comments! So please, use this blog to interact with us - we can’t tell you how much it means to us to hear from you all when we are, to a certain extent, isolated on the other side of the world.

Asanteni na Karibuni Blog yetu! (Thank you, and welcome to our blog!)