the Brown Family » traveling http://brownsinafrica.com Serving Africa through media and arts Fri, 11 May 2012 11:53:31 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Commissioned http://brownsinafrica.com/2007/05/20/commissioned/ http://brownsinafrica.com/2007/05/20/commissioned/#comments Sun, 20 May 2007 14:00:00 +0000 Lesa http://brownfamily.ws/blog/2007/05/20/commissioned/ Continue reading →]]> DCCThe Commissioning Service at DCC was one of our most memorable experiences ever. The morning was filled with surprises for us – especially through many of our dear friends speaking and encouraging us from the stage, videos from friends in Africa, and photos of our time at DCC. It was also a significant morning musically. We sang some of our favorite songs, such as “Missions Flame” by Matt Redman, which speaks very clearly of how worship is the fuel (and the goal, John Piper!) of missions. This is where our heart is – we want to see the Lord worshiped in every tongue, in every nation. And our love of God and experience of a life of worship to Him drives us to help others find the same. At the end of the service, we sang “Jesus Paid It All” with our successor (new worship leader at DCC), John Webb. It was very powerful to lead worship together and transition from our leadership to his. Way cool. Our AIM regional administrators, David and Darlene Noden came for the service, as well. They spoke a bit about how our church needs to go ahead and “kick us out” :) so that we can go – even though it’s hard for us all to part. We all talked about the fact that it’s not so much that we are leaving DCC to go on to something different, but that DCC is now going to Nairobi through us. We are still a part of this church body – functioning not as musical-worship leaders, but as missional- worship leaders. The elders anointed us with oil as a way of “setting us apart,” as was done throughout the Bible. The oil was from Tunisia, which was cool because that was where Andy felt the call to the mission field. We left that morning and headed to an all-church picnic for us – so that we could spend just a bit more time with people. We kept saying the whole time that our cup was overflowing so much that we had to go and get another one. How could one family ever deserve so much blessing in one day? We only wish that we could have honored each and every one of our church family members there as much as they did for us. Thank you, DCC – we love you.

]]> http://brownsinafrica.com/2007/05/20/commissioned/feed/ 0 Somewhere over Italy http://brownsinafrica.com/2005/09/07/somewhere-over-italy/ http://brownsinafrica.com/2005/09/07/somewhere-over-italy/#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2005 21:34:00 +0000 Andy Brown http://brownfamily.ws/?p=3 Continue reading →]]> This is a copy of my journal I took with me on my 8 day mission trip to XXXXX, North Africa. I was invited to come along on this trip by “B”, my friend, who lived in XXXX and other places in North Africa while he was a working there. He needed to take this trip so that he could finish vacating/packing up his apartment as he and his family had recently moved back to Virginia. I traveled with B, Cam, and Ryan, all from our church.

Ok, here starts my journal: for real this time.

19.jpg12:50 am (or is it 6:50 am)? The sun has just risen and we’re somewhere over France I assume, Lione (Lyon?) by the Italian map on the screen. We all know Rome is pronounced like it’s spelled, so why do the Italians spell it Roma? We all know that’s a kind of tomato… who do they think they’re fooling? Anyhow, I’m tired but excited, only got a couple power naps in during the night (despite the Tylenol PM, Sleeping mask, and earplugs) because there’s only so long you can sit in a seat before you can’t stand it. In the middle of the night, after 6 hours of sitting in the seat, I think that magic amount of comfortable time that you might be able to sleep is around 15 minutes. Short night. Good food. Cam really likes the food, and we’re all about to discover how off-the-wall wacky this guy is. Here he is pretending to barf into the bag.

28.jpgItaly is beautiful, I tell you, beautiful. Although we technically weren’t in Italy since we never left the international concourse (as we all know from The Terminal), I managed to snap this quick photo out the window as we were landing in Milan. Yup, that’s pretty much what I thought Italy would look like.

We had a short layover, long enough for some cappucino and a bathroom break, then we boarded the plane for North Africa.

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