First of the mission trip pictures are ready

Less than 1 week after our return, I now have almost 400 of the best of my own pictures from my two cameras ready for viewing, each with captions so you can get some idea of what we were doing at the time.  They are in chronological order beginning with our orientation at Redeemer, then showing our commissioning services and finally the trip itself, including travel, safaris, our lodging, Sunday worship, our daily devotions and, of course, the vision clinic at Kiambu.  Over the next 10 days or so I will be gathering up possibly as many as 5,000-6,000 more pictures from the rest of my Kiambu team and from the other Redeemer team that served at the church in Kitengela.  I will replace my pictures with any that are better from the other team members and will add in what happened at Kitengela as soon as possible.  For now, I hope you enjoy what is here, realizing that it is Dave-centric at this point and will become more balanced over time.  I love it when I get to see the different perspectives that the others had on the trip through what interested them as evidenced by their photos.  Some people are drawn to nature pictures, such as landscapes, flowers, animals and such, while others capture moments with people in their own unique way while yet others are more into buildings, architecture and man-made places.  The finished album will likely have from 500-600 pictures, meaning it will be watchable as a slide show in less than an hour. 

This is just the first step in memorializing this mission trip.  Once I have this online album in place, I will go to work on a nice Hollywood style DVD, divided into 5 or 6 chapters, so that it can be viewed in bite-sized 10 minute segments or in its entirety.  The purpose behind these DVD projects is two-fold.  First, they make a nice remembrance for the team members and it gives them something they can show their families.  In the case of this trip, my goal is to have the project done in time for everyone to have a copy in time for the Christmas-New Year's holiday, when families gather.  The second set of reasons I feel these DVDs are important involve visibility of the project and recruiting of new team members for future missions.  I usually give away around 100 disks of each trip, some to prospective team members, others to sister churches showing an interest joining us on an upcoming trip and finally to people who have donated to the Vision Kenya Project in the past or who might be considering helping us make these clinics possible.   

I remember when I first joined a group of men from Redeemer in building churches in Mexico in 2005.  I hadn't even seen one picture of where we would be going or what we would be doing.  I felt like I was taking a tremendous leap of faith into the great unknown. I just wish I would have had access to something like one of my DVD slideshows back then.  The anxiety level might have been lower and it would have made it easier to say yes to the mission trip if I'd had some idea of what I was getting into.  I'm hoping to pay it forward to our future team members and their families by what I do with these picture shows.

With all of that said, follow the link below to get to the online pictures.  Enjoy!  Praise God!

https://picasaweb.google.com/103425019225851329391/KenyaFall2012?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMGJ8Jf9rru_mgE&feat=directlink