The Development - Part 1

So while I have a few spare minutes I thought I'd write up a bit on the story of development of the trip. It's not a very interesting story but some parts of it are pretty cool. Or at least I think so.

So it all began this past summer. For many reasons I thought it would be a good idea to look into doing some sort of missions trip before I go to school in the fall. Right now I am pursuing nursing but I am definitely having doubts about it. So I thought, why don't I try to do a medical missions trip just to get a feel for cross-cultural missions?

It turns out that I discovered that I could graduate from high school in December as opposed to May because I have fulfilled all of my credits at the end of this semester. So I began to look into doing something the entire spring semester instead of going to school. At first, it was a fruitless search. I looked online at some orphanages that take volunteers. I knew that YWAM was an option...but an expensive one to say the least. It was quite a discouraging search.

However, around September things changed. One Sunday after church Dad called me over to where he was talking with a man I hadn't seen before. He introduced him to me as a staff at an office called Evision. Pretty much what Envision is is a sending office through The Christian and Missionary Alliance. They send 18-30 year olds from 2 weeks to 2 years to do all different types of service. There are several locations to go to and several different ways to serve. After having a brief discussion with this man I got enough information to get on the website and fill out an application. About a week later a woman (who I will simple call B.) e-mailed me with a more extensive application. Thus began about a month long process of filling out papers and asking people to write recommendation letters.

Around the end of October all the papers were filled out and all the letters were in. But the stress had just begun...and since this post is getting quite long I'll save that part for another time.