What the Heck!!!!

So this is blogging, not sure why a person would do this, some would say its the ego stroke, some might consider it just a form of expression, those that are more practical would consider it informative. I might be more of the later, just informative, especially when traveling, just to let people know what is happening on the "road" or in the air as it might be.

Over the next few months I will be traveling to various parts of the world on trips. Those trips are going to be to:
Paraguay, for a medical mission trip.
EA, during the Olympics no less, as a way to get to know the culture and the people of East Asia .
At the tail end of summer going into fall, to Kenya. The purpose is to work with children that have been orphaned, primarily due to AIDS. All of these trips are different yet so similar in purpose.

Trip to Paraguay
Paraguay, having been lucky enough to be involved in the planing and organization of the trip gives it a special place in my heart. Its a trip that I have made a number of times already so it has a familiarity about it and I feel very much at home traveling to Paraguay. The last trip, in 2006 was quite extraordinary in many ways. While there I was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure, not exactly what a person wants to hear, but on the bright side, the condition was diagnosed and I was able to make a pretty good recovery. Another member of the team was hospitalized on the second day and ended up having emergency surgery, bowl resection, and spent another week there at the hospital recovering after the team had left to come back to the US. On the other hand, we provided care to over 3800 patients during that week, the medical teams where amazing and the treatment provided discovered a range of conditions that probably would have remained undiagnosed and could have resulted in that patients death. All that participated saw Gods hand in the events that took place daily.

This years trip has a slightly different feel, it will have fewer people and will probably be more focused once we get there.


Trip to Kenya
Kenya has been a part of the Africa that everyone associates with safaris, but as a country with a pretty stable government for the last 40 years, it has been overshadowed by the plight of many of the other African nations that have struggled with famine, civil wars and numerous other difficulties it has remained somewhat quite. The bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi brought it to the forefront however after a year or so that even dropped back to the shadows once the world trade centers fell. However there is a problem that has emerged in all African countries that even Kenya could not escape, AIDS. This disease has decimated the populations of so many African nations. Africa is thought to be the origin of the virus by many, although this has never been proven fact, just scientific conjecture, but none can deny that the disease, regardless of its origin has had a devastating effect on Africa. One of the results of this disease are the thousands of children that are left orphaned as a result of both parents dying of AIDS. We as a society have turned a somewhat blind eye on these kids who, through no fault of their own have been left in many cases to fend for themselves. Last year as part of a vision trip on behalf of my church we were able to go to Kenya and meet some of these kids. It was determined that while many church organizations don't want to have anything to do with AIDS and the negative connotations it has within traditional church circles we could not stand idly by and do nothing. We are going to try and do something, if nothing else just let these kids know that someone does care about them, it seems like so little yet I hope it can mean something. We are taking a group of individuals that will get to spend some time getting to know these kids, getting to learn from them about life and maybe just maybe make an impact on them.

Well that's it for now, as each trip nears and as each trip occurs and as each trip is behind me, I'll write some stuff about it, maybe it will only mean something to me, maybe someone else might be inspired to go themselves or maybe it won't amount to a hill of beans but as i have always been popular of saying and you will see it a lot.

IT IS WHAT IT IS !

Later to all,

norm