Life below -40.

First of all, if you're wondering if I mean Fahrenheit or Celsius, it doesn't matter, the scale of temperature converge at minus forty. Now, to the story:

I awoke in the morning, and as per usual threw on my clothes quickly to go start my car to let it warm up to something resembling comfort when I start driving to work by six-thirty in the a.m.. However, upon my arrival to the out of doors, I was astonished to see my car listing harshly to it's starboard side. This was not a natural position for a vehicle, that much was instantly apparent. A quick stroll around the car enlightened me to the problem: two flat tires on the right side of my car.

This did not instantly appear to be a show stopper as I had in my possession an air compressor and I sorted through the tools in the back of the vehicle, located it, set the psi gauge for automatic shutoff, and attempted to place the compressor on the tire stem. It didn't fit. At all. The cold had shrunk the compressor nozzle sufficiently to nullify my attempts to inflate the tires. I decided I should warm up the nozzle by running it under the warm tap. It worked, the nozzle fit over the valve and the tire began to accept air.

After breakfast, it was time to air up the second tire, as the compressor had shut itself off. I unlocked the nozzle and as the air started draining from the tire, realized that I could not remove it from the valve as the cold had shrunk the
nozzle again. While struggling to remove it, the stress and cold of the environment finally won over the plastic compressor nozzle and it failed. Now I am stuck left holding two pieces of my compressor and no way to inflate my tire.
Not a good position for one to be found in.

After considering the damage I would do to the tire, I decided to drive a mile, slowly, to the petrol station and filled my tire, which held air for me to continue my journey to work.

All in all, quite the mystical journey.

Civil Unrest

So, I'm supposed to be in Africa right now. Turns out, I'm not. Not because there was a financial situation, quite the contrary. I was overwhelmed from the support of the community and the resources that were redirected towards this effort. It was quite impressive. My hometown community raised over a thousand dollars towards my departure, so after it was all tallied there was very little that I had to cover out of pocket.

However, there is more to traveling overseas to a foreign country than simply financial issues. If you've watched the news at all in the last month or so, you know that there has been quite a bit of civil unrest in Kenya. I'm not a reporter, and don't want to add to any of the misinformation that's associated with current events, but basically Kenya held presidential elections the last week of December and they went badly. The incumbent was accused of rigging the elections and then a clan war broke out. Now, after more research has been done, it's starting to appear as if the clans involved had a preconceived notion that this was going to happen, and even more than that, some reports say that what has happened in Kenya the last month was highly orchestrated and planed to start a full blown civil war in the Eastern African country that is usually touted as one of the most stable.

Anyway, the trip has been postponed until all this settles down as the LCMS doesn't feel that they want to send over people to be pawns in someone else's conflict. Given the circumstances I highly agree. The earliest we might be going would be sometime in October, but that's very much yet to be determined.

I would like to extend my thanks to all the participants of the fund raising and organizing. I feel very blessed to have so many people who will support my decisions and do what they can to allow those plans to come to fruition. Thank you.