On being everywhere. . .

The last four months have been an absolute whirlwind. . .we feel like we have been just about everywhere, doing everything imaginable.  Great example, we went to Houston to speak at a missions conference and ended up doing the jumping spider and warped wall at an American Ninja Warrior gym.   Yes, we’ve been everywhere.

We are exactly 10 days from Kijabe, and while the girls are not conflicted at all about going home, David and I are caught in between the sorrow of goodbyes and the anticipation of having a home and a life back in Kijabe.  Once again our hearts are torn in two.

By the numbers, this is what our life has looked like since we landed in America:

Miles Driven: 20,000

States visited: 8

Cities we’ve stayed in overnight: 19 (many more than once. . .)

Total new beds and homes visited in America:  44

Speaking Engagements: 21

New nieces and nephews met: 4

Bedtimes demolished: at least 50

Math chapters completed: 20

Weddings Photographed: 4 in 4 states

Containers of Peeps (marshmallow candies) and chick fil-a nuggets eaten: too numerous to count

Support Raised 100% (Thanks to 42 different friends and families)

Bags packed for return to Kenya: 17

Our blog has been quiet over the past months as we have been social, perhaps more so than we have been in years.  We have been able to have conversations, to share tears and burdens, break bread, and sit in comfortable silence with friends and family on this side of the world.  Personal, intimate, sacred time. . .we are so grateful.

Stories will return in force when we land – the hospital has been through a whirlwind of its own while we have been gone and we are stepping back into a situation of uncertainty and transition.  Needs were great when we left, but Kenya has entered into a nationwide health care crisis with no end in sight.  We are most certainly returning to the trenches – to brokenness, heartache, and impossibility.

But for today, we rest in the blessing of the past months.  We have been honored to be invited into so many lives and so many homes – to realize that the years have passed, but they have strengthened friendships and brought new ones.  We leave well-loved and so very thankful – this has been a wonderful chapter of the Shirk adventure.

And here’s a cross section of the people and places we have seen (the ones where we actually remembered to take a picture. . . )