The past two years, I've gone on foreign mission trips with Sewanee-based LEAMIS International Ministries and then written multi-part series about them in the Times-Gazette. Every year I worry that I'm being self-indulgent by taking the space, and yet you the readers have been incredibly kind, commenting on the stories for months afterward -- and, after that, asking me if I have any trips coming up.

Well, the answer to that question is "yes." I'm going back to Kenya during the first half of August. I first signed up for the trip with the idea of going back to the Kibera slums outside Nairobi, where I worked last August with the Rev. Paul Mbithi and his congregation. I had not planned on taking another trip so soon, but it sounded exciting to build on the cottage industry workshops we began in 2004.

God, as is often the case, had other plans. I found out a month or so ago that this year's Kenya team will actually be two teams. One team will go back to Kibera, while the other team -- including me -- will visit Kisii province, in the southwestern corner of Kenya. We will be in a much more rural area and our living accommodations will probably be more like the shack where I stayed in Nicaragua than like Rev. Mbithi's townhouse in Nairobi. (Good-bye, hot shower. Hello, outhouse.)

April 29 through May 1, the Kenya team held its pre-field orientation (PFO) weekend. Many of this year's participants are the same as the 2004 team, and two of the five newcomers are people I already knew through the domestic missions group Mountain T.O.P., which I serve as a board member.

Last year, in Kibera, I was tasked with leading a workshop in a craft called copper foiling. I was never comfortable in that workshop; I worried about it, fretted about it, and wondered if it would be at all useful once we left Kenya. This year, there won't be a copper foiling workshop at either of our sites; instead, I will teach a soap-making workshop in Kisii. Carolyn Schussler, who taught soap-making last year in Kibera, will do so again, giving advanced training to some of last year's students as well as basic training for a new class.

During our pre-field training, which involved practical information, team-building and spiritual preparation, we had a few hours to work on our cottage industry workshops, and that was when Carolyn taught me the basics of soap-making. Unfortunately, there had been some miscommunication between Carolyn and one of the PFO leaders, and as a result we didn't have a kitchen scale with which to measure our ingredients.

Soap-making is a careful formula. Lye, an extremely caustic chemical which you can find in the drain-cleaner section of the supermarket, is dissolved in water and combined with melted fat (lard, in our case). A chemical reaction between the two, called "saponification," produces soap.

There has to be enough fat to saponify all of the lye, or else there will be lye remaining in the final product -- and believe me, you don't want that. A small amount of excess fat, on the other hand, is OK as a moisturizer, especially if you plan to use the soap on your face or body (you wouldn't want laundry or household soap to be too fatty). Sometimes, a cheap fat is allowed to react with the lye and then, once most of the saponification is out of the way, a small excess amount of a more expensive fat (let's say, cocoa butter) is added at the last minute, just before the soap hardens, because of its desired cosmetic qualities. This is called "superfatting" the soap.

But if there's too much fat, the resulting soap will be soft and squishy, which is apparently what happened to us at PFO -- not because we were trying to superfat the soap, but just because we weren't able to weigh our ingredients. I tried again at home this past weekend, and with the benefit of more exact measurements I got much better results. The soap appears to be just the right consistency, and even without coloring it looks beautiful.

Unfortunately, it can't be used for weeks -- it must "cure," to make sure that all of the lye has been saponified.

The soap I have curing right now is pretty plain. I hadn't had a chance to buy essential oils, which is what you are supposed to use to scent soap, so I used a little bit of peppermint extract from the cupboard, after evaporating some of the alcohol from it in the microwave. It probably won't do much good; most alcohol-based perfumes or extracts simply can't stand up to the harsh chemicals that exist in soap while it's curing, and so the scent doesn't last until the soap becomes usable. Essential oils, which are more concentrated, supposedly do better.

Another possibility is to add fragrance, color, abrasives or other ingredients after the soap has hardened, by grating the soap and melting it down with a bit of water. The additives are stirred in and then the soap is poured back into molds to harden again. This is called "hand-milled" soap.

I'm hoping to go to Mississippi some time next month to get some additional coaching from Carolyn, but already I feel a lot more confident with the soap-making workshop than I ever did with copper foiling. My only paranoia is about the lye -- my great fear would be for one of my students to somehow get lye on their skin or in their eyes. I will have to stress safety (and bring along as many pair of safety goggles as I can).

I have a lot of preparations to worry about between now and August, including continued fundraising and planning my curriculum. But I have faith God will get me there.

John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. His home page is lakeneuron.com.