Departure

The time is here! I leave today for Lesotho. Its been a fast paced month of getting everything ready, and I think that I finally have everything ready. My flight leaves around 4 today and I wont get to Cape Town until 9:40 PM Tuesday. That is a lot of travel time! I've never spent any where near this long on a plane before, so it will be an experience. Thanks to everyone who made this trip possible! I couldn't have done it without a lot of help from a lot of people. I am deeply grateful. I would love to hear from all of you, so please keep in touch throughout the year. My next post will be from Lesotho!!

Everyone Is Leaving!

This is the week! This is the week that most of the YASCers for the 2012-2013 year leave for their placements. I am so excited and so proud of all of them. I cannot wait to join them. I finally have a departure date! I leave for Lesotho on August 27th, so I have about a month left here to get everything ready to go. There is still quite a bit to do! Ill be working on all the important stuff like packing, shots, financial stuff, travel arrangements, but I will also be preparing myself mentally. This includes lots of prayer and reflection, but also spending time with people that I wont see for a whole year! I still dont think that fact is processing yet. A WHOLE YEAR!!

I did get the chance to spend two weeks in Toronto during July with all the YASCers and also a group of missionaries from the Evangelical Lutheran Church. We spent two weeks learning about what it means to be a missionary and what we can expect while serving others. Meeting and talking with the group from the ELCA was great because they had so much prior missionary experience. I feel much more prepared to go after these two weeks in Toronto.

The group from the Episcopal Church and ELCA in Toronto

Please take some time to read over the blogs below of the current YASCers. As I said, most of them leave this week and their blogs will be filled with great stories and great experiences. They need your support and prayers just as much as I will over the next year! Although we may all be serving in different places and doing very different work, we are all working toward fulfilling God's mission.