Let me share just what our squad has been through this past week…
We wake up and do a 30-minute exercise each morning before breakfast. Each day the food and cultural norms we participate in are generally based on a country to which we will be traveling. Our first morning of breakfast we had …believe it or not…chocolate rice with anchovies! We had to eat this with chopsticks only. The rest of this week hasn’t been as intense and extraordinary as that first morning’s meal…but that is (literally) a taste of what’s to come for us. We greet each other as people in that country would and we continue to learn about cultures, language, meals, and how to encourage one another to take intentional steps deeper into this risky adventure of ours 🙂
Our June (I) squad consists of 32 young men and women. Some of us have never been on a mission trip before or traveled overseas, while some are veterans of the overseas experience. We come from so many different states, one member comes from Australia, and yet through the miracle of God we have all come together as a real family in just a matter of days. After one week to the day, we have declared to stand by each other through thick and thin this next year as we purposely make choices to sacrifice and pursue God completely. It already seems painful to think of leaving each other on Sunday and to be apart for two months…but that will make the reunion in June that much sweeter! We will be praying for each other daily and encouraging each other to stay on track of the things that need to get done before we can take off.
In order to help along the purpose of experiencing community, our squad has been broken down into 5 teams. We will be annoucing our team names to each other tomorrow night,.
…see the next post about the team I’m on.
