Again! Again!

It's here again!

Yesterday, 45 other students and staff, entirely too many parents, and I met in a tiny meeting room at the Hamilton Garden Inn near the airport for a question and answer session. Goodbyes were said, friends were introduced, questions were answered, and final support numbers were reported. Being back here is so surreal. I almost cannot believe that it's happening again!

Some of the differences between this year and last:
- We are studying the book of Acts instead of an Epistle (Philippians, Ephesians or another letter to a church or disciple). We will be reading through the entire book once a week, and doing some different types of reflections and observations each time we finish it
- We will be spending 2 days per week in different cities, Maribor and Koper, doing evangelism on those campuses to try to get a country wide Christian organization going
- The last 2 weeks, there will be a team of 14 doing a high school english camp and asking them faith based questions before they graduate. But since I'm on the worship team already, I can't work with these guys :(

SO many people here saw the Lord provide for them on this trip in spectacular ways. Many like myself had tons of their support come in at the very last moment, unsure if they were going to be able to go until the day before briefing. One had her last bit of support come in the morning we all left for briefing!

It's rough to take a step back and not have expectations about what this trip should be like. Last year was so wonderful that I have this "ideal vision" for what I want everything to be like. This year is definitely different - different staff, different friends, different places for ministry, and different themes for the trip. The day of briefing, we spend a lot of time in prayer asking that we would understand how God will be working, to be able to depend on our teammates and grow in community together. Most of all, we reflected on who we want to become, and to have the strength to give that to God. To give Him permission to change us, and to grow us into somebody who is more like Christ.

We head to the airport for our first flight to DC in 10 minutes, then we have a 6 hour layover before we leave for Munich!

more updates soon... :)