I do not talk a ton on here about my mission team and what we are doing so since we made a big decision this week I thought I would share. I don't talk about them not because they are not important, because they are, but because mainly right now we are just hanging out and having fun. As great as that is for us, no one on here wants to read about how we made dinner and played games together. Boring!
This update may be boring too but at least it is something. Anyways, we met on Wednesday night and decided on a tentative date for our next survey trip. Last summer we (me, Reid, Wes, Ellen and Gary) took a pre-survey trip in order to decide where we wanted to be. Now we need to go back to check into more details regarding where we will live, cost of living and probably other things I do not know about (thankfully we have Gary to tell us that stuff).
We had been planning on going back in January but because of a class I need to take and probably Chad does too, weddings, and comps it just won't work for most of us. So half joyful half sad we moved it till next June, pretty much a year from now. Half joyful because I will not have to make a decision between a necessary class and our trip, and half sad because I really want to go back. Half joyful because it will put the trip closer to our actually arrival date and leave less time for the economy and other things to change and mess up our fundraising, and half sad because I want to go now!
This happened a couple of years ago and it actually worked out for the better, although we did not know it at the time. My senior year we (Wes, Ellen, Reid) were hoping to go on our first survey trip that summer and it got pushed back because of Reid's job. We were all disappointed but knew it was for the best. So we put it off till the next summer and only a couple of months before we were going we had to change locations. We were planning on going to Guayaquil, Ecuador but found out that there were other teams training for there and we do not want to overlap on cities before they are all reached. So very quickly we needed to pick a new place and fast. We were given 4 options of cities in need and they were La Paz, Bolivia, Cuidad del Este, Paraguay, Temuco, Chile and Concepcion, Chile. We all put them in order of which we wanted most based on what we knew and we were all over the place. We ended up narrowing down our choices and visited all but Cuidad del Este on our pre-survey trip. The rest is history and now we are going to Concepcion.
What is the moral of the story? Well as much as we may want to go in January it just won't work for everyone and who knows what amazing things may come out of it. Ecuador would have been great but we are all so in love with Chile. These are the experiences we can look back on and remember how faithful God was and how he has a plan for us that we may not have any idea about. We have come so so far since that night at Wes' house over two years ago and right now we are better than I ever imagined with such amazing teammates. Who knows what will happen because of this delay but I am still excited and am waiting in anticipation to see what God does over the next year.
When we decided to push the date back we voiced some concerns about loosing our passion and getting discouraged for have to wait so much longer. This may be true so pray for us please but I have been praying for God to keep this passion alive since I was a senior in high school so I think God can handle another year. We have some ideas of how to help us along and just being together makes me excited. Yea Chile!!!
