Ryan had found a destination. Zimbabwe. All I knew was that it sounded African, but I had no idea where it actually was. It could have been a country, a province or a city for all I knew.

I pulled open Google and did an image search. Looking at other photographers’ images was my first encounter with Zimbabwe, and it looked beautiful. I wanted to go there.

It turns out that a lady that went to Ryan’s church had been to Zimbabwe several times, and she knew of a children’s village – a self-sustaining orphanage – outside of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city.

She said that she would contact the orphanage and see if we could begin our journey there. I had earlier used the phrase, “Drop Zone” to convey the idea that where we start doesn’t have to be where we ended up.

We just needed a place to get in. This orphanage could be our drop zone. Soon, Kara, our only contact to Zimbabwe, wrote Ryan back and said the children’s village was willing to let us stay. We were in.

I asked Ryan to handle the logistics of the trip, including how much would it cost, how long would we stay, what things would we need to survive, etc. Ryan gave me a $3,000 bottom-line cost per person, based on his figures. That’s $9,000 for all three, minimum.

We didn’t have that kind of money, so we decided that while this wasn’t a mission trip, we still needed to raise funds. I began a rigorous advertising campaign by building a Web site from scratch, filming and producing a quality promotional video and starting a facebook group that I asked people to join to help promote our idea.

My challenge was to invite people to become part of our story by helping us raise funds to film a documentary in Zimbabwe.

Once everything was ready, we sat back and waited. It was time to let the people respond.

Two months later, Luke and I joined Ryan at his house in Chambersburg, Penn., for a week worth of preparation and rest before our voyage started.

We had managed to raise enough money to buy our plane tickets and have a $50 per-person, per-day budget.

Not only that, but support from others was so great that we were able to purchase all the gear for the trip. All the gear was waiting for us at Ryan’s house.

We also packed long-sleeve shirts and jeans since it was winter in Africa and would be cold, unlike the summer temperatures in the states.

We asked others to pray for us while we were in Africa, that we would be safe and yet have a grand adventure.

We had no idea what we were going to do there, nor even what we were going to film, so in the same way we asked God to protect our lives, we asked him to give us a story.

Anticipation rising, we eagerly awaited our departure. On July 5, our airplane took off from New York, headed to London and eventually Africa.

We had a six-hour flight to London-Heathrow, an 11-hour layover in London (which we spent walking around the city), and a 12-hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa.

“Joburg” was in the midst of the World Cup, so everything was decorated extravagantly. Finally, a short hour-and-a-half flight took us from the civilization of South Africa to the neglected airport in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

Getting off the plane and looking around at the old airplane hangar, I looked at Ryan and Luke with a sinking feeling in my heart. “What are we doing here?” I asked. This crazy vision of adventuring in a wild country now seemed too large to handle.

But there, at the other end of customs, were some of the young men waiting for us, holding a sign saying “KCV,” the initials of the village.

They had remembered that we were coming, and they were waiting to take us to their home. From there, our adventure truly began.

Editor’s note: This is the second part of a three-part series about the “Step” Documentary. For more information on “Step,” visit www.stepdocumentary.com

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