10 Days to Go!!!

Philippines is on June 15 and I am pretty excited. The upcoming Philippines trip is pretty exciting... perhaps a little bit too exciting. Thinking about the trip and thinking about fund-raising has definitely gotten me pretty anxious. I gave a talk sometime in February on hope and these are the things that I cling to, remembering what God has taught me. If you click the '2008' link on the right panel you can view this thought.

Anyways, tomorrow I will be heading to Boston to help my friend Jon Vickers do some callbacks for fund-raising. He is $2,400 short for the trip. Though I am sure he can fund-raise after he gets back from the Philippines, it would be good for him to be fully funded before the trip. Please pray for this process for him.

Well, now that I have some time, I will share some more details about the trip. Here is a list of people going on the trip and I have figured out where some of them are from based on their email addresses:

Who?

Trip Leaders: James Kang, Bobot, Wency, Maria and Bridgett
Trip Goers:
Joel Lee - UMass!
Jason McNeillie - UMass!
Jon Vickers - UMass!
Dario Torres - somewhere near the northeast
Drew Lukes - ???
Trenton Hannack - Minnesota
Matthew Rowe - Minnesota
Lindsey Powell - Nebraska
Alissa Goodding - ???
Chelsea McCown - Georgia
Maria Cabrera - ???
Sonia Balanay - California

What?

I'm hoping someone is from some southwest state solely because it would mean our team going overseas pretty much covers every region of the US. Whoa! Please pray that we will seek to make Christ center in all our interations and whatever we do over in the Philippines. Also, please pray that we will see that this trip is God's blessing for us; perhaps we will find God all the way over there!

Also, here is a list of things that we will be doing over in the Philippines:

1. Spending a lot of time developing relationships with the people in the poor community that you will be assigned to.
2. Lead Bible Studies and meet with people one on one for discipleship and leadership training
3. Some of the students will be assigned to help with possible building projects and maybe help develop a business among the poor.
4. I think we will also have some opportunities to teach english.
   
5. Jason and I will be team leaders for the trip. We will also be asked to visit the students assigned at different locations to pray with the students and to encourage them.
   

Please pray that all of us will adequately rest before and after the trip - culture shock can definitely take a toll.

Where?

And this is where we will go... Our team will be split in half with one group working in greater Manila, and another group working in Los Banos. I have highlighted the two regions, though I'm not sure how helpful this is.

Please pray for our safety as we do these things in the Philippines. The dates again are June 15 to August 1.

Thanks again for your continual partnership in my ministry! I look forward to updating you with more information!