long enough.

I‘ve been home for 3 months now.  Long enough for the smell of India to have worn out of all my clothes.  Long enough to have forgotten how to say thank you in 11 different languages (well, maybe if I think really hard…).  Long enough to miss the heat even if it did mean sweating 24 hours a day.  (Hey, I live in the frozen tundra of Michigan now, any kind of heat definitely sounds good!)

 

And long enough for my ‘post-race’ plans to have changed a couple of times over!  So I’m really excited to update you on what I’m doing these days.

 

I’m living in Port Huron, Michigan with a bunch of other crazy World Race alumni.  We have a beautiful, cozy gingerbread house where I can see Canada from my window!  There are currently 6 of us (and about to be 12 of us!) who live and work out of this great house.   And we get to continue to live out this community lifestyle.  I’m about to share a bathroom with 8 other girls!  We bump into each other and things get messy (both figuratively and literally!), but at the end of the day, I’m surrounded by people who encourage me, who challenge me and who want more for me than I even want for myself.  It’s pretty awesome.

 

I’d always planned on moving to Michigan, but about 6 weeks ago, I was approached with a new job description.  While the World Race travels to 11 countries in 11 months, we also have some shorter term trips known as ‘Real Life.’  These trips are for college-aged participants and are 11 weeks long, usually in one location.  This program needed some new direction and I’m very excited to be leading it!  We sent out around 200 missionaries this year and are hoping to double that by 2011!  We work with local ministries in about 25 different countries and have huge ideas for how God is going to work through this!  So even though I’m not on the field right now, I get to be a part of bringing God’s kingdom to the nations–probably about 15 in this next year!

 

Because we want to keep the trip costs as low as possible for participants, all of our staff continue to raise our own support.  I’m still looking for  about 25 people to support me $50 each month.  You would be directly impacting what happens on the ground in Swaziland.  In Kenya.  In Nicaragua and India.  In Uganda.  In the Philippines and Peru and Bolivia.  In Israel.  Tanzania and Brazil.  And think how far beyond that your investment would go.  These trips not only minister directly to the people on the ground, but participants lives are changed and many of them return to the mission field after graduation.  Many of them have come back and are now leading trips to new places.  I’d love for you to consider being a part of this!

 

Hmm…Maybe it hasn’t been that long after all.