{"id":502,"date":"2007-05-21T22:20:48","date_gmt":"2007-05-21T22:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/redletters\/2007\/05\/one-week-till-a.html"},"modified":"2007-05-21T22:20:48","modified_gmt":"2007-05-21T22:20:48","slug":"one-week-till-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2007\/05\/one-week-till-a.html","title":{"rendered":"One Week Till Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In exactly one week, I will load my wife and five children on an airplane and head to Swaziland, Africa. I can&#8217;t describe to you the torrent of emotions I am feeling right now. It&#8217;s one thing to plan to do something this big and another to pull it off! I&#8217;m thinking about the 16 hour plane ride with an eighteen month old, the danger that lurks in the corners of the city, the fact that my children will be in constant contact with other children infected with HIV. It&#8217;s a lot to process.<\/p>\n<p>The only thing I know is this: God has called our family to give a month of our lives to the orphans and widows of Swaziland, this is what Christianity for our family looks like this summer. It&#8217;s His voice we are following and His Spirit leading us. I have to trust that He will protect us and lead us each step of the way. And, I&#8217;m banking on a life-changing experience for all seven of us!<\/p>\n<p>I will be posting pictures, and some rough video on the blog so make sure you stay tuned. Some of you remember <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0395078\/\">Wil Horneff<\/a>, who stared in movies such as The Sandlot and Born to be Wild, right? Well, his brother, Jonathan, and sister, Samantha, will be joining us on this trip too! We have a very sweet friend, Amanda Slay from one of our partner churches, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wwbc.org\/\">Westwood Baptist Church<\/a> , in Birmingham, Alabama who will join us and be part of our family for the month. In total, we will have 100 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theworldrace.org\/\">World Racers<\/a> (check out the site, you could win a trip around the world!) and 100 other people from America. There is redemption for Swaziland &#8211; God has not forgotten! Please join us in any way you can!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/tomdavis.typepad.com\/.shared\/image.html?\/photos\/uncategorized\/2007\/05\/21\/african_skies.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"157\" height=\"105\" border=\"0\" alt=\"African_skies\" src=\"https:\/\/tomdavis.typepad.com\/tom_daviss_blog\/images\/2007\/05\/21\/african_skies.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;float: left\" \/><\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/\/DOCUME~1\/ADMINI~1\/LOCALS~1\/Temp\/moz-screenshot-10.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In exactly one week, I will load my wife and five children on an airplane and head to Swaziland, Africa. I can&#8217;t describe to you the torrent of emotions I am feeling right now. It&#8217;s one thing to plan to do something this big and another to pull it off! I&#8217;m thinking about the 16&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>One Week Till Africa - Red Letters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2007\/05\/one-week-till-a.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"One Week Till Africa - Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In exactly one week, I will load my wife and five children on an airplane and head to Swaziland, Africa. I can&#8217;t describe to you the torrent of emotions I am feeling right now. It&#8217;s one thing to plan to do something this big and another to pull it off! I&#8217;m thinking about the 16&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2007\/05\/one-week-till-a.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Red Letters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-05-21T22:20:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/tomdavis.typepad.com\/tom_daviss_blog\/images\/2007\/05\/21\/african_skies.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tom Davis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"One Week Till Africa - Red Letters","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/2007\/05\/one-week-till-a.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"One Week Till Africa - Red Letters","og_description":"In exactly one week, I will load my wife and five children on an airplane and head to Swaziland, Africa. I can&#8217;t describe to you the torrent of emotions I am feeling right now. It&#8217;s one thing to plan to do something this big and another to pull it off! 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A tireless advocate for fatherless children, Davis has spent most of his adult life calling U.S. believers to become the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to the 143 million orphans living around the world. Through those connections, thousands of orphans now have the bright and hopeful future--one that is filled with opportunities and the love of the one true Father. Davis speaks hundreds of times each year at churches and conferences, mobilizing the church to action on behalf of the poor. He is the author of four books. His most recent novel, SCARED is a fictionalized account of his first-hand experiencing living and working with orphans in Swaziland, Africa. Davis' blog is the premier resource for the latest developments in Christian orphan ministry. Davis also currently teaches courses as adjunct professor at George Fox University in Newberg, OR. When not traveling the globe, Davis resides in the mountains of Colorado in the small community of Palmer Lake. He and his wife Emily have seven children, including two adopted daughters from Russia.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/author\/tdavis"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/redletters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}