Tag: prayer

Angaza Discovery Camp is OPEN!

Almost 6 weeks ago the first MOHI 6th graders showed up for the very first week of Angaza Discovery Camp! Katie joined them for the first week of the girls’ 2-week camp and then again for the first week of the first boys’ camp. There are already so many exciting stories coming from camp!

But first, you really need to see it for yourself! MOHI made a video from the first camp and we wanted to share that with you!

As you can see in this video, this is life changing stuff and we are already seeing transformations! Yes, it’s #GivingTuesday, a day when every worthy cause ask you for help. Angaza is an experience all MOHI kids from slums and remote villages should get to experience.

Angaza is staffed by pastors, camp counselors (most are MOHI graduates), mentors for the counselors, cooks, a nurse, a horse trainer, an ocean life guard and a librarian – all helping to put on a quality and powerful camp experience. As you can see this 2 week camp takes resources to put all this together.

This is where you can be a part of giving this experience to almost 1900 kids this year alone. Pray for everyone involved in putting on camp and for these 1900 campers this year. Altogether it costs around $300 for a kid to travel and spend 2 weeks at camp.

Will you send a MOHI kid to camp? Maybe 2 or 10? Their parents are not in a position to provide anything like this for them, but you probably are. Give whatever amount you want with a joyful heart knowing the joy these kids are experiencing at Angaza Discovery Camp.

This #GivingTuesday you can give to the Angaza Discovery Camp through CMF’s website. Join our family in sending kids to camp and let’s see how many kids we can send to camp!

New Wheels!

Option 1: Watch the Update

Option 2: Read the Update

It’s here! Over a year and a half ago our friend, Randy, while visiting us in Kenya told us he wanted to throw us a fundraiser. We had never done a fundraiser, but once we mentioned we would need to prepare to replace our 1997 2wd RAV4, Randy ran with it!

This summer, while on furlough in the U.S., Randy and some other Maryland friends threw us a fundraiser for our car fund. Old and new Maryland friends generously donated. We shared that story with you all and friends from Ohio and Indiana chipped in. After just a few months we reached our goal this Fall! We are so grateful for so many of you who heard about the fund and stepped up big time!

Patrick has spent A LOT of time researching cars, tracking down who really has the car, getting cars inspected by our picky mechanic, and starting over again when he invariably didn’t like the mechanical condition.

But we were able to find something that ticked all the boxes, was affordable AND was in great condition! And here it is: A 2007 Toyota LandCruiser Prado! It’s a former UN vehicle, you can almost imagine UN painted in black letters on the door.

It’s an 8 seater with a roof rack so we can be as helpful as possible, whether to bring ministry coworkers and supplies to remote schools, chauffeur visitors or simply to carpool a bunch of teenagers to youth group. We’ve already taken visitor friends on a safari through deep mud (watch below), chauffeured 4 MOHI visitors from their hotel with all their luggage and safely delivered 5 teens from youth group to their homes.

The steel bumper and bars around the car are there to both protect expensive car parts when off-roading or in the crazy city traffic of Nairobi.

Ultimately it’s a utility vehicle. It’s a strong, economical diesel with a manual transmission (because apparently driving wasn’t challenging enough in Kenya anymore). We still have the 2009 Subaru Forester that you all provided for back when we moved here in 2016. While it’s all-wheel drive is very capable and it has good ground clearance, the Cruiser will take the tougher trips and save the Forester for more years of service.

Anyway, thank you again Team GerbersGo! We hope to find more and more ways we can use it to bless MOHI’s ministry, visitors, and our friends in Kenya.

Bonus dashboard footage of a very wet safari with visitors in the new Cruiser:

Special Needs in the Slums

14993446_528725703993481_9100093477088600597_nToday was a wonderful and very difficult day in the slums. Patrick and I have been blessed to be doing a few home visits in the Slums.

Today we went to visit a single mother and her son who has Cerebral Palsy. The mother is loving and strong and does everything she can to provide for her family. I’m so grateful for Amon who works with the disability program who visits this family often to show Jesus’s love to this family and offer encouragement and support for this beautiful family.

We are excited for our teammate Nikki to come back soon. She is currently raising support to return and serve in the disability program at Missions of Hope.  Support Nikki!

We Bought Tickets!!

imageWe bought tickets to Kenya!! We have stepped out in faith to buy tickets for August 2nd so that we could get Hannah there to start school. We will spend the next couple weeks saying goodbye, packing, shopping, and selling the rest of our things.

We aren’t fully funded yet (93%). We still need around $600/month. Please consider joining 165 families already supporting us and commit to supporting our ministry each month so we can go to Kenya fully funded and keep our focus on life and ministry in Kenya.

To start supporting us, visit our page on CMF’s website.

Colorado Week 2 Update

We can’t believe that it is already the ½ way point of our month long training.   We have finished the language portion of the training and I believe we can all say that our perspective on language training has changed; to truly understand someone and understand their culture you need to get to know their language.  It will be hard work, but we are excited and nervous to begin our official language learning of Swahili.

SnowFallinTrees

This weekend we were able to experience God’s greatness through the beauty of the Mountains.  Katie’s friend let us all stay in her cabin up in the Rockies, an hour outside of Denver near some of the best ski resorts.  We were able to have tea in the Shawnee Tea Room, hike 3.25 miles up and then down the mountain, get caught driving in a white out of drifting snow, watch movies, eat s’mores and enjoy family time.

GerbersOnColoradoTrail

It’s exciting to think we are at the ½ way point of our training and we are getting close to the ½ way point of our monthly commitments.  Now is the time to join our team, please prayerfully considering joining our team with a monthly commitment.

Colorado Week 1 Update

1 down, 3 more weeks of missionary training to go! So what have we been doing this past week?

We have a very strict schedule, kinda like camp, breakfast at 7:30 (8:30 on Weekend :), lunch at noon, dinner at 5:30. The rest of the day we are all in class, and yes we have homework in the evening. The classes are full of teaching us different language techniques and phonetics to help us learn any new language more quickly and effectively. Our mouths have made sounds we never knew we could make and we now understand some Russian and a tribal language from Vietnam.

GardenOfTheGods
Katie and Hannah at Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs. [Click to enlarge]
This 1st weekend we were able to get out with a rental car and visit a Pioneer museum and go hiking in one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen, Garden of the Gods. Sunday we were able to worship at Academy Christian Church and then we were blessed to spend time with Katie’s Aunt, Uncle and Cousin who we haven’t seen in years. It was wonderful to catch up and we look forward to spending more time with them. They also blessed our socks of with allowing us to borrow their car. Yay, no more rentals!!!!

Please continue to Pray for us and if you haven’t joined our team yet please go to gerbersgo.com/support so we can get to Kenya and use all of these new skills to expand His Kingdom.

Medical Prayer Request

CMF is VERY thorough during the application process, including a complete medical work up. Both Katie and I had one test each come back “elevated”. This could block us from the June training and set us back months or be nothing. A medical consultant from CMF will determine that soon. 

Please pray that there is nothing wrong and we can move forward. If there is something wrong, part of our testimony will be that these tests caught it early. Either way it’s in God’s hands. 

Thanks!