Tag: travel

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:

Summer Furlough 2019

This summer we are due to take a short furlough after 3 years in Kenya. Normally this would be a longer 6+ month furlough, but we didn’t want to take Hannah out of school. The main purpose of furlough is rest and relationships.

We have a fairly busy June and July scheduled to meet with many of our supporting churches and catch up with our supporters. Sundays are booked for churches, but mid-weeks will be slower to allow for visiting with friends and family and a few support events. We are building in down time with our families and even a vacation. Let us know if you would like to connect with us! Here are some dates to know where we’ll be:

June:
2nd – Private Event – Harford County, MD
9th – Greenville Church of the Brethren – Greenville, OH
10-13th – East 91st Christian Church – VBS Missionaries – Indianapolis, IN
16th – East 91st Christian Church – Indianapolis, IN
16-20th – Retreat – Indianapolis, IN
23rd – East Main Street Christian Church – Greenville, OH
25th – Private Event – Fort Recovery, OH

July:
7th – Beechwold Christian Church – Columbus, OH
14th – Boulevard Christian Church – Baltimore, MD
16th – Private Event – Harford County, MD
21st – Mountain Christian Church – Harford County, MD
25th – Private Event – Harford County, MD
27th – Fly to Kenya!

Team Retreat at the Indian Ocean!

14691182_515865958612789_1239173129923727306_oHannah’s the first in the family to step foot in the India Ocean. Our team is at the coast for our annual retreat. Since we skipped family vacations the last two years, this will do.

This team retreat has been a great opportunity for our family to get to know our teammates better, talk about the team culture we’re striving for, and just relax after a long 22 months of crazy transitions for our family.

GerbersGo to OHIO

Ohio Gerbers

We’re coming home to OHIO!  We wanted a chance to visit with more of Team Gerbers Go and share our story April 15-17th.  You’re invited to join us for an hour to hear the whole story of how God has called us to Kenya, the amazing ministry in Nairobi, and how we go about getting there.

Friday 7pm – Greenville, OH at Ted and Sue Ann Shuttleworths (request address)
Saturday 3pm or 7pm – Columbus, OH at Beechwold Christian Church
Sunday 11am – Columbus, OH at Beechwold Christian Church (during an adult class)

This is NOT a fundraiser, so come join Team Gerbers Go and hear the whole story!

Colorado Week 4 Update

We’re home! BIG Support Update!

We can’t believe that a month is over so quickly. We spent our last week in Colorado learning how to handle grief and loss and how to say goodbyes well. We’re not looking forward to those “goodbye” times, but we feel a little better prepared for them. It was bittersweet leaving the training center too because we formed such strong bonds with the other missionaries at MTI who understand exactly what we are going through. We are excited to see family and friends of course, but it also meant that it is back to reality (work, school, support raising, no more house keeping services, no more chefs preparing our meals) and less time preparing for Kenya. 

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Thanks to the generous BOLD Christmas offering by Mountain Christian Church and several of you giving generously, we are now over 54% of our monthly support and 71% of our sending support needed to minister in Kenya! We still have quite a bit to raise and now that we have finished all of our missionary training we are ready to head out and begin this adventure that God has called our family.

If you were considering supporting us NOW is the time, join ‪#‎TeamGerbersGo‬ and click on the “Give Monthly” or “Give One Time” for start giving or please just contact us and we’d love to talk about it with you!

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.

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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.

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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.