I’ve been walking with Jesus for over 21 years now, and it’s been an incredible journey. During this time, I’ve greatly enjoyed the blessings of prayerfully and financially supporting other missionaries. I’ve often prayerfully considered various mission trips, but never felt led to actually go.

In mid-April of this year, a team from my church (Rich Fork Baptist Church in Thomasville, NC) returned from a medical missions trip to El Salvadore. After hearing their report, the Director of Missions at my church mentioned the upcoming missions trips that were scheduled through the rest of this year. One of those was a trip to Zimbabwe. I wasn’t instantly attracted to this, but it struck a loud enough chord with me that I did mention it in my journal. Over the next several weeks, I prayed about it, seriously wrestling with the idea, and the Lord confirmed to me in mid-May that He was calling me to serve on this trip.

The trip will be for 11 days, including travel to and from Zimbabwe. I will be teaching in a Bible College outside Hwange that was started by Simon Mukolo. Simon has started over 400 local churches in the area and recently started the Bible College to help train the pastors in those churches. When I am not teaching, I will be helping in the construction of a conference center on the Bible College grounds, and other work in the area. We will also have people in our group that will be implementing one-day Vacation Bible Schools in the nearby churches.

I’m excited about getting to use my spiritual gift of teaching in this manner. It’s something that I’m certainly unqualified to do on my own, but I’m willing to be a vessel through which the Holy Spirit can teach.

I have made a lot of friends via the Internet over the years, and I know that a lot of you frequently read this blog. I would like to ask each of you for your prayers for me and the rest of the team as we prepare for this trip: pray for the team, for Simon Mukolo’s Bible College, for those who will be attending during our tenure there, and for those churches that will be touched by our visit.

In November, my Pastor and the Director of Missions at my church went on a fact-finding trip to Kenya and Zimbabwe, to see where our church could best help in those areas. At that time, they had asked some of us techies at church if we had any old laptop computers that they could take. I had a 5-year old Dell Inspiron 2500 that I was pretty much just using as a Linux test machine. I decided to donate it. Here is a picture of the happy recipient, Pastor Timothy and his wife Ericka. When I go this time, I would also like to take several old laptop computers with me. I can wipe them, reinstall the operating system, add some open source Bible study software, antivirus, and a few other utilities. Machines that are ready for the trash heap here, are like brand new to them. They don’t need to be powerhouses–they just need to use them for basic word processing, email, Bible study, and Internet browsing. If you would like to donate a laptop to be used by the pastors and Bible College students in Zimbabwe, please email me and I’ll be glad to give you more information.

I’m not requesting financial assistance from anyone in this endeavor; however, I’m sure that some of you would like to have a part in this work, just as I appreciate having the opportunity to support others in such endeavors. If you would like to contribute financially, you can email me for more information on that as well.

Most of all, I appreciate your prayers as I embark on this new adventure.