Trained and Ready to Go!

Well it’s definitely been a whirlwind week for us. In order to get ready to go on a trip of this magnitude there are a lot of complicated factors involved and we are just beginning to hit the point where we start to realize what we’re being called to give up. I’ve been doing 20 credit hours of college in order to graduate before we leave and mid-terms hit right while we were in the middle of training camp for the World Race in Gainesville, Ga. We got back from training camp late on Oct. 25 and I had a midterm to take Monday and another difficult midterm on Tuesday. Catherine started training her replacement the day after we returned and that’s taking place during a week of blizzards and a busy financial season. On top of those things we’re beginning to see more of the financial strain and learning much more how to pray and trust. Neither of us have ever been in a position where we’ve so thoroughly had to rely on God to come through for us, but we are certain that He’s the one who’s called us into this wild quest to heal the broken and seek and save the lost. Our support accounts are being charged for the full amount of the race next Friday and at that point we will be attempting to raise support to cover costs that, from an accounting perspective, are already considered spent.

Here are some of the great things that came out of training camp:

• We finally met all the other crazy people heading out on the race with us. There are about 120 racers and we’ve been split into 2 squads. Each race squad has been given a letter of the alphabet so Catherine and I are in N Squad and the rest of the group is in M Squad. Here’s a pic of all of N Squad:

• After being split into squads we were then placed into small teams of about 6-7 people. We were tasked with coming up with a name for ourselves and had a great chance to get to know each other better. Catherine and I are in a small team being led by Michelle. We came up with the team name GLO (God’s Love Overflowing) and we based it on the idea that after beholding the Lord, Moses came down from the mountain glowing and revealing God’s glory to those around Him. Some of the verses we used were 2 Cor 3:17-18 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” and Daniel 12:3 “Men and women who have lived wisely and well will shine brilliantly, like the cloudless, star-strewn night skies. And those who put others on the right path to life will glow like stars forever” (Message translation). Here’s a picture of our team:

• Please pray for all of us as we move from strangers to family.
• We also learned a ton of details about the trip itself and had some incredible training sessions where many people grew spiritually, and we even saw at least one person get physically healed! We’ll be sharing more details over the next few weeks.

Here are some of the things left on our plate before January:

• AIM will be purchasing our tickets to New Zealand next week. Our entire team will be flying out of LA, California and we will be responsible for purchasing our own tickets to LA.
• We need to purchase health insurance for the two of us while we are away on the race. This will likely cost around $700 per person so we are saving and praying for what we need there.
• We are still trying to sell our Toyota Matrix, or give payments over to a trusted friend. Please pray for us about this.
• We still need to purchase sleeping bags, sleeping pads, a laptop, and several other items. If you are interested in purchasing any of these things for us (some are very inexpensive) you can see a list of what we need here: http://www.kaboodle.com/mogservant/the-world-race–gear-needed.html
• In order to be sent out in January we need to have at least $16,000 in our account or pledged to us through the coming year. Please be in prayer for us about these finances and consider donating a one-time gift or becoming one of our monthly supporters by clicking here:https://www.adventures.org/give/donate.asp?giveto=worldrace&desc=For%20David%20and%20Catherine%20Reyes

Please remember to subscribe to our blog in order to get all the latest updates here:http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=ElysiumOdyssey&loc=en_US It’s been difficult to blog as regularly as we would like because of our school and work schedules but once December comes we will be blogging at least once, if not twice, per week.

Lastly, please send us emails, comments, facebook notes, letters, whatever you like! It helps us to know that there are people out there reading about us and praying for us. We so appreciate your interest in our lives and we’d love to answer questions or share stories if you’re interested in hearing more.

Answering the call,
David and Catherine