Week 3, Main Outreach: Mt. Elgon

          Traveled to Mt. Elgon! *que Lord Of The Rings theme music* (near the Ugandan boarder) The roads were terrible! I shouldn't have been surprised, all roads in Africa are bad, but this voyage was painful! But we got to the town at the base of the mountain fine, and the family that hosted us was so kind! We were able to stay in their home.

Our time here was packed! We did door to door in the mornings and high school ministry in the afternoons. Part way through the week we hiked up Mt. Elgon to minister to the community up there for 2 days, then we came back down and worked with the local churches.

Local's homes atop the mountain.

Let me give you some background on Mt. Elgon. As you walk through it, it looks like paradise: coffee fields everywhere, everything looks green, quaint, lush, beautiful and peaceful. But it's not peaceful at all. This community has had post-election violence and tribal warring going on since 1963. There are 3 tribes, one tribe has a Rebel army that attacks not only the other 2 tribes, but their own as well. It wasn't clear to me if the cause of the fighting was over land, politics, livestock, or all of the above, but whatever the case, things are awfully intense. Why are the homes so quaint? Because the Rebel army comes through every few years and burns up all the houses, or the military burns the houses to flush out the Rebels. Therefore no church building has been built on the mountain; everyone knows that it will either become a Rebel camp or be burned to the ground, so it's not worth the investment. So people hike up and down the mountain to go to church at the bottom. This is a 2-3 hour hike each way. It is so steep that the only way to get up or down is on foot and with donkeys to carry your stuff. Even then, you have to stop and let the donkeys rest every so often if you have a big load.

Ripe coffee berries!

The people are poor. Though they have all the natural resources they could ever need at their disposal, they are being constantly displaced by the Rebel attacks. Their fields are torched and their livestock stolen. They can never get ahead. Just when they are starting to get back on their feet, the Rebels strike again. Even now, Rebel raiders hide in the surrounding forests and attack randomly.

This week, God really used us to reach out to a hurting community. A community that desperately needed someone to turn to in their grief and times of trouble. While God does not promise to remove us from situations, He does promise to walk with us each step of the way if we will trust in Him. He promises to work everything that happens to His children for their own good (even when it seems like the worst thing in the world at the time). We take comfort solely in the fact that our Creator knows the "big picture" even when we cant see past our own pain, and that He knows our pain as deeply as His own.

How people must travel up and down the mountain.

It was amazing to see the transformations as we simply took the time to talk to people. The walls, the pain, the anger, all come pouring out and melting away at the understanding of a God who wants to be their sense of peace and comfort in the midst of their chaos. The people want the Word of God. They are hungry for Bibles, but living in the middle of nowhere, there isn't even anywhere to buy them. The Athi River YWAM base is currently working on a Bible donating ministry to the Mt. Elgon area.

God moved in some amazing ways in this community! But they still have a long way to go. It was beautiful to see the local church really step up while we were there and their passion renewed to reach out to the communities that they live in. I truly believe that this place is in for some major spiritual transformation!

One of Mt. Elgon's majestic waterfalls

Funny moments on outreach:
- We had no water. I was on cooking duty with another girl and we couldn't prepare any food without water. A bit absent mindedly she prayed under her breath, "Lord, give us water". I kid you not, less than 5 minutes later, the spigot out front goes CRAZY! The hose blows right off! Water is rushing EVERYWHERE! We didn't turn it on! We couldn't turn it off! So we brought every bucket, water jug, and pot on the compound and filled them. The neighbor women even came and were able to fill their water cans. After 2 hours, it just stopped. We had more than enough water to cook, do laundry, and shower. Amen! :D
- Having a drunk man come stumbling up to us while we were doing door-to-door. He announced that he was a drunk... and tired of it. He wants to know God. After explaining things thoroughly to him and his wife so we could be sure that they truly understood, they both readily accepted the gospel!
- Passing out exhausted on the pastor's couch after hiking up the mountain while the rest of my team mates went and explored waterfalls and caves. I couldn't go another step. lol.

How we can pray for the Mt. Elgon community:

the home that my friend grew up in

- For the Holy Spirit to move. Healing existing wounds and convicting the hearts of the Rebel soldiers to stop attacking.
- That the government would continue to have compassion upon the survivors of the community and continue to send military aid to them as needed.
- A disbanding of the Rebel army. 20 boys were arrested from the local high school for being involved with them. (It's almost like a gang.)
- Strength and boldness for the believers living there. That they would continue to reach out with radical love to the people around them.
- For the written word of God to be brought to these people. That there may be enough of a supply that every person that desires a Bible may have access to one (and in a language that they can read).

Week 2, Main Outreach: Sigor

The community here has lots of children. LOTS. Everyday a large group of them would come hang out at our camp and just want to play with us. Even though this was not part of our structured ministry here, it was such a blessing to get to spend time with and feed these precious kiddos! And I am very excited for the next DTS team that goes here to run a kids camp.

Kids are kids anywhere. Just looking
for a little love.

Our spiritual struggle here was the religious mindset of the people. Everyone is caught up in if you are a Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Anglican, etc. They needed to hear about freedom in Christ and unity of the Church Body. This week we did market ministry (kind of like open air, and one on one conversations), door to door, and high school ministries. I got to work with the Juniors and I learned that I LOVE working with high schoolers! Who knew? All this time I thought I should be working with pre-schoool. Yay for learning new things!

Mangos!

Here in Sigor, it is mango heaven! So many mangos everywhere! At the market, it's 5 mangos for 10 cents! This made me very happy, and my team and I were constantly eating fresh mangos. :D
We also had to be very careful when cooking. The local herds of goats roam around, and we were cooking on a fire outside... Yes, the goats DO come up and eat ANY un-guarded food! No matter if it's boiling or not! So we had to have someone on goat duty all the time. Heehee.
Getting water in Sigor was a bit of a challenge; our guys had to walk quite a ways to the police station (police control the city water) where they were harassed pretty obnoxiously by the local police, but we managed ok. Oh, and my water filter broke. Oh well, hello straining and boiling!

Funny moments on outreach:
- Picking rat poop out of people's hair. (yes, the rats come cuddle at night)
- Choosing to sleep on the bench outside like a hobo in order to avoid the rats.
- Pepper spraying a goat that was trying to eat our bananas (That's right, don't mess with my food! lol.)
- Kids in the Sunday School fighting over who got to sit next to us.
- Tripping on my skirt as I was introducing myself to the church and doing a full on face plant on the stage.
- Waking up to the rooster crowing from the guys' BEDROOM next to ours. (The rooster was supposed to be eaten. Until then it lived in one of the guy's beds... then it got away. The men had to go chase it down.)
- Walking to the bathroom at night and passing through these weeds with dried seed pods. They rattled like a rattle snake every time! Scared me so bad until I figured out what it really was.

A personal revelation I recieved this week was in Ezekiel 28, where God is mad at the king of Tyre. He was called the "model of perfection", an "appointed guardian cherub", "blameless". How epicly impressive to have your character and giftings compared to heavenly beings?! Then he became proud because of the wisdom and good looks that God had blessed him with. He regarded himself as a god. (sounds a bit like Lucifer, eh?) Just think: God can bless us with AMAZING gifts and annointing to use for His purposes, and we can choose to glorify Him or ourselves. But choosing to glorify ourselves means we think we are worthy of glory, a.k.a. little gods. Wow! And that definately infuriates God. After all, He gave each of us those annointings and gifts in order to glorify Him. How dare we use it to glorify oursleves? It just really made me think. :)

Thank you so much for all your prayers! I appreciate you all!

The local Sunday school class.

1st week of main outreach! West Pakot

                While traveling to Pakot, I got my 1^st glimpse of what we’d be working with this week. Waiting for our transport vehicle, 3 little boys (probably 10-12 years old) came by, begging for money and food. At 1^st, I thought they were special needs or something, then I realized they were high. Having nothing to do, even the children resort to addictions to pass the time. Huffing industrial glue out of old water bottles, they stumbled around the streets. None of the native people seemed to care. It was “normal”.

My new little friend! This is how African
mothers carry their babies around: on their
backs. (It's actually really comfortable)

How we slept! Outside in the dirt. Gotta love it!

                After a hilarious ride on top of a lorry through gorgeous mountains, we arrived at our parched destination. Here in West Pakot, there is not water. And being no water, there is also no food. There is one well (that was put in place by another missionary team about 10 years ago) that people walk miles to and bring their herds to use. Everything is dust and dead, dry thorn trees. The daytime heat easily reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and with almost no shade, it’s quite intense. No electricity. No running water. Not even houses. There are some simple huts that they consider their “home”, but it’s usually so hot that everyone cooks and sleeps outside.

Gross!!!!

                Peoples’ priority here is their livestock. It’s ALL about their flocks. Their entire social and economic system revolves around it. Families will have as many children as possible because the boys serve as herdsmen and girls are traded as wives to gain more livestock. It does not matter that they cannot feed and clothe these children; their kids are simply a piece to acquiring more wealth. They don’t ever send them to school (you don’t need school to raise cows and have babies), so the entire area is completely uneducated. This lack of information causes some problems, such as not understanding the effects of alcohol to unborn babies and nursing infants. Again, having nothing to do in the middle of nowhere, the people have resorted to addictions to entertain them, and have become very good at making moonshine. It is the norm for people to be drunk all day, every day, including pregnant and nursing mothers. The rate of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome was ridiculous. These women have no idea that they are damaging their own children.

Some of the Pakot ladies.

                So this week, we were able to work with the community as a whole. They are a very curious and welcoming people, and would usually come to where we were staying to sit with us, eat with us, and just spend time together. Since they are not educated they only speak their tribal language, so this made it very difficult to talk with them. We had a few translators, but not many. As a whole, we knew our main job as a team there was to help the people in the practical ways that we could (providing food and clothing) and interceding fervently. The people are so spiritually oppressed and witchcraft is extremely prevalent. When we were able to speak with them, we shared the gospel, and many were very open to it.

                One of the ladies that I had the pleasure of getting to talk to about the gospel was a little, old, blind woman. After a time of visiting with her, we learned that she had heard the gospel before, but she always felt overlooked by whoever was sharing it. That as “just a little old blind woman”, she was shoved into the background and forgotten about. She felt that she was unimportant to people, and therefore unimportant to God. We later learned that she is a widow; that she had 5 children and all of them died at infancy, and that now she is all alone. In a culture where you rely on your children to take care of you in your old age, this left her in a very difficult situation. She would go from family to family, staying with them for a bit until she had worn out her welcome and they sent her on her way again. This precious woman had never been shown love. She had never been told that she was valuable, that she has a purpose, that she is beautiful and treasured. As we began to share with her how God truly sees her: as his stunning creation and lovely daughter, you could see the walls of neglect and pain coming down. I sat there and cried with her as she finally began to understand: she IS important and the God of the universe loves HER. She accepted Christ as her savior that day. J

                We adopted her as our African Grandmother and call her “Coco”, which is Pakot for “Grandma”. Later that week, my friend and I went to visit her in her home and we brought the local pastor. As we visited with her some more, (this lady whom the pastor had never met) learned that she was very distantly related to his wife! After explaining the situation to his wife, they agreed to bring her to live with them. :D We praise God that she has finally found a home where she will be taken care of.

Prayer for the community of West Pakot:

-         - Freedom from the addictions that keep them bound from living their lives to the fullest.

-          -Continued spreading of the gospel in this land, and for full time workers to go there.

-          -That the Holy Spirit would continue to move in their community. Open peoples’ eyes and prepare their hearts.

-          -Strength and boldness for the believers living there.

getting ready for main outreach!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! :D Wow, I can't believe it's already January! 3 months down, only 2 left.
Before we left for outreach, our camp was struck rather hard by sicknesses of all sorts: stomach infections, kidney infections, urinary tract infections, bronchial infections, strep throat, malaria, typhoid, parasites... if it was all the same illness it could have been pin pointed to something that we may have done or neglected, but seeing as how it was all different and not everyone got the same thing and it didn't really hit until RIGHT before we left for outreach, we difinitley feel it was a spiritual attack. Sadly it was severe enough that 2 of my fellow students re-agravated pre-existing health problems that were so severe that they had to return to the States for treatment. :( Our team will not be the same without them, but we are trusting God that His plans are perfect and He would not have taken them back home unless they were needed there more than they were needed here.
I was extremely ill myself; I had no appetite and wanted to throw up anything that I did eat for days (which was the symptoms of stomach infection). And knowing my appetite, that its alarming and quite out of the ordinary (I eat more than most teen boys). Before going to the doctor, my team prayed for me. I really claimed the healing as my own, knowing that God could choose to heal me then and there, or through medicine, but I knew my God is faithful. On the way to the doc, food was actually starting to sound good in theory, but I still couldn't stomach the idea of actually eating. By the time I was called in to see the doc a few hours later, I was actually hungary! After running multiple tests on me in the lab, they could find nothing wrong with me (and I was DIEING for some chicken and fries). ;) I know back in America we tend to doubt God's ability to do miraculous healings, but I will never doubt that again. I KNOW I was sick with what a few of my other team mates had, and that was a stomach infection. And it was gone. GONE! It took a day or 2 before I could eat a normal size meal in one sitting, but that's certainly to be expected when you haven't eaten in 3 days. I just really wanted to share that amazing experience with you guys. :)
Our last 2 weeks have been on outreach to Maasai land, I week in different villages. We had a kids camp during the week for ages 3-25, and revival meetings (really just church services focusing on encouringing and uplifting) every evening for the community. We would also go on home visits in the surrounding community; encouraging, praying for people, building friendships, and sharing the love of Jesus. At one home we came accross a mother who was re-mudding her house, so we got to help her. She was worried for my health though (apparently "white people are not used to hard work and I might just fall over dead at any moment"). Lol, but I had a great time helping her as long as I did and I did try to keep helping; she had to resort to telling me that she was out of mud. The people were SO friendly and welcoming! I had a hard time leaving. I made lots of new friends who all wanted to know when I was going to come see them again. It was very sad telling them that I really wasn't sure if God was ever going to lead me back here to Africa, but if He does, I will definitley be looking them up. :D
It's so humbling to visit someone who wants to give you a present of a goat or a chicken when they live in a mud hut and dont even know how they're going to feed their own family that weekend. And to refuse a gift in that culture is absolutely rude. It really makes you think about what you value: people or possessions?
My Christmas wasn't very eventful, traveling over Christmas Eve, a small group of us had decided to go ahead of the rest of the team to prep for when everyone else came, so 3 others and I were in a new village. We just went to church and ate dinner with the pastor's family. Nothing especially "Christmas-y", but it was still a nice day. Quite honestly, with the lack of Christmas music, decorations, and the 80 degree weather we're having, it didn't even feel close to Christmas time.
Funny random moments of outreach:
- all the Westerners bursting into line dancing when someone plugged their ipod into the portable speaker.
- scaring the stink out of people as they came in the dark to wash their dishes. (heehee!)
- being told by one of my African team mates that I look like Mr. Bean (I almost punched him).
- getting a Maasai name: Nolamala; "one who gathers groups of warriors". This is hilariously ironic considering all the random marriage proposals I've gotten since being here, yet on the other hand extremely profound from a spiritual perspective. :)
- swimming accross the river because I refused to go accross the REDICULOUS "bridge", which was really just 2 trees that grew at angles and were tied together in a GIANT arch over the water.
- getting a flat tire while on our safari.

We were able to go on a  safari while we were in Mara! It was AMAZING! Oh my goodness! Zebras, buffalos, wildabeast, hyeenas, elephants, giraffes, gazells, impala, dik dik, toupe, hippos, cheetahs, lions! It was crazy! The safari vehicles get SO CLOSE to the animals! It was rediculously amazing! We couldn't help poking a bit of fun at the tourists (having lived here for 3 months we consider oursleves pretty legitimately African.) We had forgotten how WHITE white people are! Seriously! We have all tanned so much! Lol. It was pretty hillarious.
After traveling all night (11pm-8am) we arrived back to our base in time for New Years. We had a Lord of the Rings marathon (how very American of us. Lol.). We also built a bonfire and chilled out under the stars.
Well, now we are leaving for our "main outreach": 6 straight weeks! I don't think I'll have any internet access durring that time, so I'm terribly sorry if I'm not able to update you durring that time.

Prayer requests:
- continued unity and creative ideas as we prepare for main outreach.
- safety and health.
- sensitivity to the Spirit and a willingness to learn and obey.

Praises:
- my finger has healed up VERY nicely! :)
- God has been shaping and molding us in such amazing ways.
- I've been abnormally NOT homesick! Yay!

Thank you all so much for your love and prayers!!! :D

My little friend, Edwin

Well, we survived our 1st outreach! This week was definitely AMAZING and I wouldn't have given up this chance to meet these wonderful children for the world. Each is so precious and unique, even if I could have adopted on the spot, it would have been almost impossible to choose.

Each day was filled to the brim with washing the kids' laundry (by hand, and quite full of mud, I might add), cooking (over fire, no gas or electric stoves), Bible lessons with the kiddos, songs and games, dishing out food, cleaning up messes, settling fights, and getting to just play. Even in all the "madness", it really wasn't that bad. The kids were great! My group of 9 and unders were fantastic, and I am horribly dissapointed that I don't have a house big enough to take all 45 of them home with me (or at least 10 of them). ;)



We learned a lot this week, about ourselves and our team. I have a whole new respect for caretakers, mothers, and teachers after spending 10 days with these rambuncious little ones. It takes a strong and commited person to be able to get themselves out of bed EVERY day just to look after others.

Precious Zipporah

Playful mayhem in the dining hall

With December now here, everyone is getting a bit homesick. Some of us on the team have decided to go old school and try to decorate everything with colored paper and whatever other stuff we can find. I had had too much coffee the other night, so I paper snowflaked the dorm windows while everyone was sleeping. :) We will be here at the home base for 2 more weeks of lecture, than we will go on a 2 week outreach over Christmas.

Prayer requests:
- Health. Some of the students have fallen ill with slight stomach problems and severe allergies. Also, I cut myself pretty good  the other day while trying to peel food (classic Sam. I really should not be trusted with sharp objects.) But it's nothing too serious. My only real concern is trying to keep it clean to avoid infection. :)
- Unity. Our team is really struggling in this area.
- Willingness to learn. I know there is so much more out there for me to experience and absorb.

Praises:
- we were safe on our travels
- I had a horrid rash from bug bites, but it's cleared up now.
- God continues to teach us amazing things each and every day.

Thank you for your prayers! I miss you all!

Kids Alive

Nairobi... how would I discribe this city? Capital of Kenya. Dazzling skyscrapers, next to metal sheet slums. Large stone walls, once pristine, now tarnished with grafiti. Tall fences intertwined romanticly with thick ivy, topped with barbbed and razer wire. A huge metal gate, painted a playful teal, in front of every drive way, with an armed guard and dogs right behind it. Hundreds of people walking the street at the same time. 75 people sitting waiting for a 12 seater mtahtu to drive their way. Peddlers selling candy, sugar cane, news papers, hats, bunches of bananas, and roasted corn for mere cents at every traffic jam. Certainly a loud and bustling city. :)

But this week, driving to our outreach, I can't begin to explain how beautiful it was, and is here! The sweet smell of honeysuckle and fresh grass, with the occasional waft of kitchen fire smoke, blew in through our open bus windows as we wound through vallys and hills covered in big tropical trees with bunches of bright yellow, neon orange, and brilliant purple flowers draping from them. Everything is green and lush... and quite muddy. We ended up having to buy rain boots just to be able to walk through the ankle-deep mud. Hahahaha!

We are at Kids Alive; a really cool organization that is in multiple countries throughout the world. They save children from abusive homes, orphans, and abandoned kids and raise them in a loving and safe environment, wether they are HIV positive or not, or special needs or not. This K.A. base has about 80 children from the ages of 3-24. 45 of them are in the 3-9 range, which is where I've been placed to work this outreach. I have to say, considering the large amount of children, I'm very pleasantly surprised at how well they are taken care of. A few people had told me to prepare myself for horrid conditions in 3rd World orphanages, but quite honestly, these kids almost have better living conditions than my own team at our home base! They are well fed, have acres and acres to run and play, their own school, running water and electricity, and are even split into "homes" (about 20 kids in each house) with "house mothers" so as to have a more "normal" lifestyle. Each of them is so sweet, and I know I'm going to be absolutely miserable when it comes time for us to leave. (Many of us have already started to ask our team leader about the Kenyan adoption process, and we've only been here a few days. lol.) But we all know that we have to return to our training after this week.

I'm so sorry it's been so long!

     1st, I want to say if you've been watching the world news on whats going on here in Kenya, we are totally safe and aware of what is going on. All the issues are miles and miles away, so don't worry about us in that respect. :)
      I am SO, SO, SO sorry that I haven't updated y'all in so long, I've been trying to figure out how the internet works around here... apparently I've been doing it wrong and it wasn't working for me. But I think I've got it now. AND I figured out pictures! (yay!)
      Our 1st Sunday we went to one of the staff's church and the 2nd Sunday we went to one of the student's church in town. On our way there, the mutatu (like a taxi bus) ran out of gas. So we all just sat there until the driver came back, lugging a giant vegitable oil can (apparently filled with gas) and we were off again. The church was nice, but had a very "western" feel (meaning it was a lot like church back in the States). As awesome as it was, traditional African church service (like our 1st Sunday here) is a totally amazing experience! The loud (very, very loud) prayer and singing for hours on end is actually really refreshing. There almost seems to be no scheduelle. The pastor of the traditional church said, "we come to church to spend time with God, not to come and leave. We stay until we feel that God feels that He's been blessed." This easily means that church goes on for 5 hours. Sometimes I wonder if we should have a bit more of this mindset back home. Now I'm not necessarily saying church should be 5 hours long (though that works for some people), but how many times have I been guilty of rushing into service halfway through worship, then checking my watch every 20 minutes to make sure that the pastor isn't talking over time, then run off to do errands or whatever I need to get done. How nice to really be able to say, "this day is to bask in the Lord's presence".
     We are now on week 8 of our DTS, and I'd be lieing if I didn't say it's a bit hard. I'd been warned by other YWAMers that week 5 and 6 are the hardest emotionally (extreme homesickness sets in as culture stress begins) and sure enough, a few of us struggled. But we are doing much better by now and are rather enjoying our life in the "bush bush".
     We've had the opportunity to do some weekend ministry, since we have classes all week. One weekend we met with the girl's high school near our base. On Saturday we were able to talk with the high school Seniors about their life plans after high school and their plans for college. Here in Africa, to graduate high school, you must take an acumulitive exam of all 4 years of high school. Your score from this test determines your future. See, here, you can't apply to college, the college has to invite you. If you score well, you have a higher likelyhood of getting into a good college. If you do poorly, you may not get invited to attend a college at all. They don't get to choose what they persue as their major, it is decided by the classes that they took in high school and how well they did in those classes. And you cannot change your major. That is what you will study, and that will be your profession; no 2nd options. So there is quite a bit of pressure on these young ladies, not just from themselves, but from their families as well. But "college life" is still "college life" all around the world. Many of them don't know how to function with all of this freedom and the decisions they will have to be making for themselves, especially if they've attended private boarding schools most of their life where all the decisions were made for them (as many of them have). So it was a good time of expressing frustrations and worries, and advice on how to remain dedicated to the Lord and your studies in such a new environment.
Sunday when we went to their school for church service, we were able to do a skit for them. We did "Everything" by Lifehouse (You can probably find a version on youtube if you're curious). I got to play the Devil... it was super fun! I smashed up charchoal since we have no stage make up, and smeared it all over my face. I was totally creepy. :D After the service we were able to chat with a few of the girls and they felt that it really spoke to their situation and they had been encouraged by it. That was such a blessing for us to hear.
     2 weekends ago we split up into 4 teams and went to different churches in the area. My friend, Rachel, and I taught sunday school. It was so much fun! We went outside and played some games first, which ended up drawing a HUGE crowd of street children. Then we went back to the class (the number of kids had about doubled by now) and taught on the joy of salvation and forgivness (in kid version): how Jesus never intended us to feel guilty, which we feel when we do bad things, and Jesus wants to make our hearts happy again by taking away our sins, and He forgets about them forever.
     I think I'm getting used to the fact that noting is really ever truly clean here. Clothes, bedding, water, food, dishes, your skin... yeah, there's just a layer of grime on everything. lol. But I'm doing surprisingly well with it all. One of my African friends' joked, "The germs here in Africa are different than those in America: when you drop food on the ground, they are so surprised, that they all run away... You have a good 10 seconds at least!" HAHAHAHAHA! I really did almost die laughing.
     Next week we will be going on a short 9 day outreach to one of the local orphanages. We will be living with the kids, helping them with chores, and doing a sort of Bible camp. Though the Gospel does need to be told, we feel a stronger compel to show it in how we live, as we interact with the kids on an everyday basis. So it will be a lot of interaction, and a lot of fun. Challenging, but fun! I really can't wait.
     Prayers for safety as we travel, continued health (praise the Lord, no one has been seriously sick), and filling of the Holy Spirit so we may demonstrate the love of Christ in how we live are appreciated. :D

Thank you so much my friends! Much love!!! <3