For those of you who don’t have much time, here is a quick overview of the trip changes:
Original Plan:
September 8– Fly to Gainesville, GA for a week long training camp
September 15ish– Fly to Nicaragua for The Awakening- 4 months of half day training and half day ministry
December 19ish– Fly back home for Christmas
January 2ish– Fly back to Nicaragua for 5 month internship with ministry of my choice
May 23– Fly back to Atlanta, GA for debrief and fly home the next day
New Plan:
August 6– Fly to Gainesville, GA for a week long training camp
August 11– Fly back home for a month to finish support raising, say good bye and most importantly, let everything from training camp sink in and begin putting the things we learned into action
September 23– Meet up in Brownsville, TX and drive across the border to Matamoros, Mexico to AIM’s base their. We will be doing intense ministry training and outreach.
December 1– We will have a choice of 20-40 differnt countries to go to around the world to live and work with the native missionaries. we will have no more than 5 teamates.
May 14– Fly to Houston, TX and meet with all the other groups for a one day debrief and then go home the next day!
So thats the new plan and I am pretty excited about it. When Tag, the guy in charge of the First Year Missionary program (oh and by the way, the trip has changed names from First Year Missionary to Real Life: Novas), told me about the trip changes he was apologetic about having to make the changes but I was so excited I couldn’t figure out why he was apologizing! He said the main reason for the changes is lack of good leadership. Many of the FYM leaders are getting burned out leading large groups of people for 9 months becasue they haven’t had enough training and there aren’t very many leaders to spread the weight around.
One of the things I’m most excited about is the 8 weeks in Matamoros. We will spend a lot of time learning basic skills to support a famiy. For example, we will spend some time learning about agriculture and will plant a garden with the family so they can feed themselves. How exciting! And of course, I’m REALLY excited about the 20-40 differnt country choices! And both the Philippines and Peru are on the list! How fun would that be to spend 6 months with Sharon and Ruben(the missionaries in Cebu, Philippines)!? But I’m not really sure where God is going to put me but I have a feeling it will be in Latin America somewhere and Guatemala has been attracting me lately so we will see.
Some things I’m a bit sad about include not beign able to come back home for Christmas, the trip being shortened by a month and the big possiblitly that the teamates I’ve been getting to know won’t be going to the same country as me. But the advantages to the new plan totally outweigh the disadvantages so its all good.
Well, I do believe I have told you everything I know about the changes so if you have any questions just let me know and if I dont know the answer I will for sure find it out for you. Thank you so much for suporting me and let me know how I can be prayin for you!
Oh and I’m sure there are tons of typos in here becasue I didn’t type this up in Word because I haven’t purchased it for my new computer yet! haha!
