Africa and America​

August 1, 2022

We are enjoying hosting our son Dustin and his wife here in America for a few weeks this summer.  This is the first time that Dustin has spent more than a week or so in America for a few years now.  Right now, they are enjoying a vacation visiting the Grand Canyon and the Western United States.  I have enjoyed seeing them, especially Alexandra, observe the contrast between living in Africa and America.  We all love our lives in Africa but living in Africa can be frustrating at times.

In Africa we always have to be on alert for safety and security and the electricity, and even water, may be shut off for hours at a time.  Usually when the electricity is off our phones and internet also stop working.  For safety, we limit our travel after dark. When you live in Africa you just accept it and get on with life as best you can.  Here in America, we have all grown accustom to these services being available and working well all of the time.  I typically spend a couple hours a day on Zoom calls with our staff, volunteers, and Rotary friends in Africa.  It seems that someone in Africa is always apologizing for network difficulty.

Beth and I are heading back to Africa the end of August and will be there most of the next 3 months, coming back to Iowa for the November and December holidays.  I have been able to connect with a few new churches and visited several Rotary clubs while we’ve been in Iowa.  I am finding that many people are ready to travel again and are making plans to come to South Africa to serve with us on mission trips.  One of my favorite things to do is to help some of my American friends experience the joy of being a blessing to our African children.

Please be in prayer with us as we work to expand the number of children that we are able to help feed and as we strive to collect high quality data and information about the children we are serving.  In a future blog, I will explain in detail how our feeding program and data collection system works enabling us to help feed thousands of children each week.

Doc