Martyns in Africa

• Larson on the move!

  Posted: July 15, 2011, 8:00 pm by Taylor

  Larson has had quite the month! He sat up by himself on Father’s Day.
  

  He has really enjoyed starting solid foods
  

  and most recently started to do a fast scoot/almost crawl.
  
  

• On the road again…

  Posted: July 14, 2011, 8:00 pm by Taylor

  We have spent many hours on the road and wanted to share with you some highlights.
  
  As you can guess the kids have gotten use to their car seats.

  
  We have all enjoyed getting to spend time with family and introducing Larson to many.

  
  We have enjoyed reconnecting with friends, like Andy (a JBU friend) and his wife Amber, and got to experience the Atlanta zoo together.

  
  We spent two days with the McGahey family in Anderson, SC. They are a wonderful family and Avery loved getting to make new friends.

  
  We were also able to spend time with the Dukes in Atlanta, Texas and got to share an update with their Sunday school class. It was great to meet their little ones Carson and Caroline! They had fun together cooling off in the pool.

  A HUGE thank you to Taylor who did the majority of the driving. What a guy!
  

• Avery in America

  Posted: July 14, 2011, 8:00 pm by Taylor

  Avery is a real joy in our lives and is already a seasoned traveler and adjust very well to moving around all the time. She has loved getting to spend time with family, going to story time at the library right down the street, learning about new things like mail boxes, how churches can look very different but are still churches, having parks to play with on almost every corner…..the list could go on forever but I will stop there. Here are some pics of our cutie that we had to share.

• Maria, Humphrey and Mr. Twiga

  Posted: July 13, 2011, 8:00 pm by Taylor

  Another post to play catch up. Here are some photos from our last day in Nairobi. We would love to introduce to you Maria. Maria watches Avery and helps keep our home clean. She is a wonderful lady who we have grown to love.
  

  Humphrey is one of the wonderful guards who keep our compound safe and has become one of Avery’s many “uncles”. Since he, like many, lives in the city for work and his family is upcountry it is neat to be like a second family.
  

  And last but not least….Mr. Twiga. A random and quite large metal giraffe showed up next to the newly remodeled tree house. We then learned that his owner only needed a temporary home for him but we enjoyed getting to play with him for a few days.
  

• Who we are and what we do

  Posted: July 12, 2011, 8:21 pm by Taylor

  As we have been going around sharing updates we have had the chance to share with some folks we have not meet or shared with before. We just wanted to give a brief summary for any new readers out there about us and the work we get to take part in.

  Allison grew up in a wonderful Christian home and attended First United Methodist in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was able to go on many mission trips and felt the Lord’s calling into missions as a career at a young age. She attended John Brown University, that is where we met, and majored in Community Development. Her heart longs for being in community and helping them use what they have and giving them tools in the form of education in areas like water purification and agriculture to improve their lives. This shows the love Christ shows by meeting physical needs leading the way to open ears and hearts to then meet spiritual needs.

  Taylor also grew up in a Christian home and went to John Brown University. He always thought he would enter the business world and be a supporter of missions but that it wasn’t really for him. He was interested in media and majored in Digital Media. Through a talk from a videographer for a mission group called Mercy Ships he saw that the Lord could use his skills too.
  A brief history:
  After giving ourselves a few years to get use to married life we got serious about looking into what agency we wanted to go with and settled on SIM. Our first assignment was to go to Sudan and Taylor would be in charge of helping produce the media needs for the Sudan team. This would be film, pictures, promotional tools, prayer cards, you name it. After settling into life in Sudan it became clearer that perhaps it would be best if we could be used by other countries as well. About the same time SIM was looking at starting new media hubs that would service areas and not just countries. They invited us to join and move to Kenya. Taylor was able to go back into Sudan for some projects, help out with things in Kenya, and even went to Burkina Faso.

  Looking forward:
  At the end of our first term SIM informed us that they were putting the media hub idea on hold for the time being. This would mean another change for us ministry wise next term. We still desired to stay with SIM but would need to find another location in which to continue media ministry or look into secondment. Secondment would mean that we would be “borrowed” from SIM and work for another agency. Taylor had been working out of the media office for another mission agency, Africa Inland Mission (AIM), while we were in Kenya. Thankfully it looks like things will work out for us to stay in Kenya and be seconded to AIM for our next term.

  January 15, 2012 we will fly back to Kenya for two years. Taylor will continue to work in helping spread the word about missions through media. Allison will focus primarily on being a mom to our two little ones but keep her eyes out for something else to help with be it formally or informally.

  So that is a basic re-cap of our journey to the mission field, our first term, and what we plan on for our next term. After that we will reevaluate and see where SIM is in the process of their idea of media hubs, what other opportunities they might have in other countries, or if the Lord is calling us to another agency. As always we would appreciate your prayers for wisdom, discernment and for us to lean even more on our Heavenly Father.

• Happy belated independence day!

  Posted: July 11, 2011, 10:26 pm by Taylor

  The Republic of South Sudan became the world’s newest country on the 9th. It has been neat to hear from friends in Souther Sudan about the joyous celebrations the new country is enjoying. Please keep praying for peace and for the new government.

• Update

  Posted: July 11, 2011, 10:24 pm by Taylor

  We have been enjoying our time catching up with family and friends. The trip out to SIM USA went smoothly and the kiddos were great travelers. It has been fun to catch up with many of you and we hope to put together more formal get togethers for later this year.
  Keep checking in for updates as we have two weeks in one place now and hope to get some pictures up soon.
  Thanks as always for your prayers

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes