The phantom memory of the taste of envelope lingers on my tongue as I sit down to tell you what’s been happening in my life so far. I have been working like mad to come up with a list of at least 100 names to send out support letters to. It turns out that brainstorming the names and choking on envelope glue is the easy part. The tricky part is hunting down addresses for the names you come up with. I had yesterday off so I spent several hours searching through multiple phone books and using Canada 411 online to track people down; not an easy task. It went a little bit better when my mom sat down and started listing off names of people she knows who might be interested in reading my blog and supporting me. Several hours later I had a list of 72 names, 65 have addresses, and my eyes are still burning from prolonged exposure to the glare from the computer screen.
Right now my goal with listing names is not to include people from the church directory. I figure that list is ready made and I don’t have to worry about how long it will take for them to arrive because I can just slip them into the mailboxes at the church when everyone arrives on Sunday. So I probably do have approximately 100 names already. I will finish labelling the rest of the envelopes this morning and hopefully have them sent out around lunch time. One more item to cross off of my list.
Other than support letters I’ve been tossing around some fundraising ideas. My Mom has gotten into making cards lately and I’ve been thinking that perhaps closer to Christmas time, end of October into November, we could make and sell cards to support my mission. We also had an idea for a movie night fundraiser at church, we were hoping to show a movie and provide snacks for a donation. Maybe that’s a bit far fetched but it might be worth a try.
Right now my parents and my aunts are saving pop cans and pennies for me. Both of which are greatly appreciated. I now have $30 worth of pennies rolled and nearly an entire coffee can of them left to roll. I have decided that pennies, though slow and steady, just might help me win the race. If you live nearby and you want to save your pennies or pop cans for me I would absolutely appreciate it. If you want to contribute in this way please click on the contact me tab and send me a note so I know to get in touch with you and can arrange to pick them up.
Apart from fundraising is all of the other stuff in relation to the race that I have been thinking about but don’t really know where to start. Packing for instance. How on earth does one pack a backpack for an entire year? What clothes do you bring when you know that you’ll start in India where it will be stupid hot and end in Ireland in November where you probably want a good sweater and a rain jacket? I’ve been going over all of my outdoor rec. information from high school and it looks like I’m going to be wearing layers… At this point I haven’t even gotten to the pin cushion politics of world travel but I hope to go to the healthy unit and get all of the medical stuff figured out soon.
It has definately been an exciting couple of weeks. I believe the shock from finding out that I’m going is wearing off and it’s slowly starting to sink in. I’m really looking forward to training camp in October. And I am really happy to see that people are reading my blogs. I’ll try to be a bit more regular in posting them.
Keep praying for me, I need it. The magic number is still 100…
