Gray Smith and his older brother Frank, two courageous pioneer ministers from Cape Town, set off for British East Africa to explore the possibilities of spreading the good news. They took a car, a De Soto that they had converted into a caravan (house car), loaded it on a ship along with 40 cartons of books, and sailed for Mombasa, the seaport of Kenya. A recently built railroad connected Mombasa with Uganda, crossing Kenya’s highlands. So, at Mombasa, the two pioneers sent their precious books by train to Nairobi, the mile-high [1.6 km] capital city that about 20 years earlier had been nothing but a few rickety railroad supply sheds.

The Smith brothers then tackled the 360-mile [580 km] road to Nairobi. Today’s travelers cover this distance in about seven hours on a modern, paved road, but in those days such a trip in a loaded caravan was sheer adventure.

Frank Smith in Nairobi, near town center, in 1931