This morning I learned that everyone coming from East and West francophone Africa would arrive as planned, but the couple coming from Kinshasa had not received their visas. I communicated with Daniel Harper who got on the phone with various authorities in Kenya to try to get it expedited. They finally did get their visas but a few minutes too late catch their flight. They will come tomorrow we hope, there will not doubt be bribes to pay.

In the early afternoon, Marjolaine and I caught the hotel shuttle to the airport, where we gathered the two couples that had arrived. We loaded our luggage into two vehicles and started out for Nakuru to the West. The new express lanes around and through Nairobi saved us considerable time, but the Friday afternoon traffic slowed us down considerably.

I asked the driver to pause briefly and we got out of the vehicle at the edge of the Escarpment to look over the Great Rift Valley. It’s used in the singular form, but it is actually a series of contiguous trenches in the earth’s surface, approximately 4,300 miles in length, running from Lebanon to Mozambique in Southeast Africa. The Dead Sea, the lowest point on the earth’s surface is part of the Rift. This point in Kenya has one of the most impressive views of the Valley. Nakuru, where we will hold the conference, is on the valley floor, as are several of the famous soda lakes of Kenya.

It was cloudy, so we didn’t have the best of views, but it was still impressive.

In the end it took us four and half hours to arrive at the Imani Guesthouse and Conference Center. We arrived after the welcome reception had already started. Our administrative team was already present. It was good to see them and to greet the other participants.

Tomorrow we will begin the seminars and, in the afternoon, have a Sabbath service which, if all goes as planned, all the church members from Kenya will also attend.