Dan Peters, along with his wife and some others, will be flying out on January 12 for Kenya, Rwanda and Congo with the organization Home of Hope.

On the eighteen day trip, the group will work with orphaned children and women that are either infected with HIV or have suffered extreme violence and trauma. The group will start of in Nairobi.

"We'll be spending three days there, interacting with the kids, because in a way these are like my grandkids. I've been doing this long enough to where I know these children. We'll be taking them out on some excursions, and then also spending time with the staff, encouraging the staff, doing some training with the staff. And also, what I do in all of the locations that I go to is auditing. Not financial books auditing, but money trail auditing, making sure that the money that we send over is doing what it's supposed to do."

Peters has been volunteering with Home of Hope for over a decade. He got involved in the early days of the organization, when his friend, founder Brian Hoover, invited him to visit Africa for the first time.

"We started in Rwanda. He asked me and said, 'Dan, you need to go to Rwanda,' and I repeatedly told him, 'Brian, I need to go to Maui'. Anyway, I took my first trip in 2007 just as an exploratory, kind of, ok let's see what we can get involved in here, and I knew my life would never be the same."

This will be Peters eighteenth trip with the organization. Some of the areas he will be visiting are unstable, and he says that common sense must be used, but overall he is not afraid.

"Is there a risk factor? Yes, there is. Am I shaking in my boots, deathly afraid? No. Most everything that has any meaning in life has a certain amount of risk to it. People ask me, isn't it dangerous? And I say, you know what, driving down Highway 2 can be dangerous."

 

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