Dear friends and family,
It is currently 7:17pm on Sunday, May 29th and in exactly one week from now I will be on my first plane beginning my journey to Kenya.
Today was filled with many goodbyes and enthusiastic "when do you leave?!", "you're going to have such a great trip!" and "now make sure you stay safe now" comments... and then of course the weekly baby cuddles, family time and trip planning.
I am beyond blessed to call Calvary Temple my home church, a church where I truly feel I have a family. I am overwhelmed by the amount of support I have received for my trip from Calvary temple, and from other friends and family. It has brought tears to my eyes to see God pulling all of this together so smoothly. It truly is a testimony that in one month I have been able to fundraise almost to my goal. God is amazing.
I want to begin my blog by explaining to you how this trip came about and why I decided to take on this adventure! Firstly, I want to stress how clearly I've seen God's hand in every detail of how this became possible for me. I often describe it as "God- orchestrated" when explaining it to people.
SO. To explain: as a lot of you may know, this past Christmas I set off on an adventure with my school's fellowship group to St. Louis, Missouri to attend a missions conference called Urbana 2015. Together, we were exposed to many teachings and encouraging words regarding what true missions entail and the desperate call and need for each and every one of us to take action in one way or another to share the Gospel abroad. It was there God put Kenya on my heart, and it was there where I met Peter, a representative of Medical Missions Africa, MeMA for the first time. Peter would soon become a close friend and a mighty prayer partner. Although I had met Peter, and knew that MeMA was the organization I would eventually volunteer with, I did not begin contacting MeMA until mid January. I remember trying to contact Lucy, and not hearing back for a long time, and I remember being discouraged, but I felt to not give up. Soon, Lucy replied and she gave me Peter's contact information and, I guess, the rest is history.
I'm not sure if any of you travel, but at least when it comes to me (I may just be the weird one..), whenever I get an idea that I'm so in love with in regards to traveling or beginning a new adventure I go all in so quickly that I get this sort of "high" out of all the dreaming and excitement of it all. My heart gets set on my dream so fast and if things fall through, I generally feel it pretty deeply. Well, needless to say, I didn't even think of what my parents would say before I began contacting MeMA and was in the process of committing my summer to volunteering with them. AND, I didn't even stop to think about the fact that I would be going all alone, to a country I've never been, experiencing a culture mostly unfamiliar to me with people who spoke a language that I did not know. It's funny, this is how beautifully God orchestrated this, before I even really stopped to worry about being alone, God provided me with a missions partner. And the way He did it was so weird and crazy and amazing.
My fellowship was going to go on a retreat to Moncton near the end of January. There was a huge snow storm that night and I'm not even sure I know how we made it there alive. It took us 6-7 hrs to get to the camp (a little past Moncton) from Saint John. That should tell you how bad the roads were (and, that I may be a bit of a nervous driver in the snow ;) ). Anyways, we made it. And that night, the girls in my cabin sang worship songs together before going to bed. That's when the girls in the next cabin overheard us and jumped in for the fun. And that's the moment I met Brittany. She ran over, climbed up on the top bunk that I was sitting on and, basically we swapped life stories. We learned we were both in nursing, both loved the same field of nursing and both had a crazy strong heart for Africa and serving there-- all in like 30 seconds (or at least that's what it felt like:P). I'm not sure if by this point I had decided on going to Kenya, but about a week and a half or 2 weeks after the retreat, I had committed to serving for the summer. At that point, I messaged Brittany for advice about traveling and serving there (Brittany has been on about 4 missions trips to different parts of Africa already, so I knew she would be a great resource to reach out to). Needless to say, before I knew it Brittany wanted to jump on board and was totally gearing to go with me! It was only by God's provision that we were both able to financially afford this, and that both our families allowed us to make this crazy, incredible commitment.
Throughout the past few months, Brittany and I have been in regular (almost daily) contact with each other, Peter, and the rest of the team we will be joining in Kenya. There has been so many details regarding the preparation that we've done, so I won't go through everything. But, I will say everything fell into place so beautifully.
Recently, I have been collecting medical supplies and shoes to bring over to Kenya for donations. If the rest of the donations come through, I expect to have 5-6 EXTRA suitcases apart from my personal luggage filled with donations to bring with me! Crazy eh? Amazing really! Not sure how all that packing will work out, but I will be doing my best to get everything together this week!
In case you are reading this and you don't know what sort of work I will be doing when I'm over in Kenya, I will be going on a medical missions trip working in rural villages providing individuals access to health care that don't regularly have it. The team will also be working in a local orphanage! So I'm collecting shoes for the children in the orphanage and medical supplies for the clinic! I will also have opportunity to help out in the local churches affiliated with MeMA, and work through ministry there. My trip will be 2 months and 3 days in length and this will be the longest I've ever been away from home!
To conclude this first post, I want to invite you to follow me on my journey this summer. I will be (hopefully) posting at least once a week, providing I have reliable access to internet at my home base in Kenya. I hope to also include photos with the blog to show you the incredible sights I will be seeing, so you will be experiencing this with me!
Please keep me in your prayers as I prepare throughout this next week, and during my journey throughout the summer, for safety and a strong spirit.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and may God bless you and keep you, always!
All my love,
Jaclynn Beckett
Ps: below is a picture of a suitcase filled with the first batch of the medical supplies donations that I've gathered! :)
