War Paint

Might be hard to see but these are photos of all of our faces after they were "painted" as a part of our african dinner. Some times being a tourist is fun!

Creme Brule

Wow, today has been one long day. The flight was long and mostly sleepless, yet enjoyable. After we went to the hotel which was stunning. I'm trying to be quick here so... I apologize for the lack of detail. We then went to Mandela Square, which was a huge mall. There they had the nicest cars I've ever seen; Ferrari's, Aston Martin's, Porsches, Mercedes. All on show in the center. For dinner we went to a fantastic dinner called Lekugotla or something like that. Exquisite! The buffet was most delicious. That's pretty much it. God Bless,
Ryan

A night on Joburg

Hey, all! It's the old lady, again. Woo Hoo! As Jon said, we made it into town and to our hotel and had some excellent advice for an evening on the town. We headed to Nelson Mandela Square and had dinner at a totally African Restaurant by the name of Lekgotla. We had to try their buffet of beef ribs, shrimp curry, lamb chops, other meats, mixed veggies of every kind with all of the aforementioned seasoned with fascinating African spices, exotic desserts which included a mango creme brulee, specialty breads with spreads and salsas, and a couple of bottles of Cabernet shared by those of legal age. Our entertainment was a kind of Latin jazz, African style, with a crazy hip dancing 'little person'. And we all managed to have our faces painted.
Then, we did a quick stroll around the square and some shopping areas, all with fancy sports cars on exhibit both inside and out. Had to get some pictures with the Mandela statute, as well. All told, a nice night; but we felt like we were in any hip, large city anywhere in the world. Ah, but tomorrow, we imagine we will experience that culture shock we were anticipating, as we're off to Livingstone and then Mwandi. All are well. Remember: God is good, all the time. And, all the time, God is good.

Love & Hugs, Pam

Were in Africa

Hey All - We are here in South Africa. We had a small delay in Denver with some ticket stuff but we quickly worked it out. The flight was long but it wasn't full so a few of us switched seats - I got exit row. Two free mini bottles of wine a sleep aid and I slept - restlessly but I slept for about 10 hours of our 15+ hour flight. Thank you - Jesus. Customs was a snap here and all our luggage arrived - Thank you - Jesus. Ryan took some photos while were in the customs line and was forced to deleat them all but Bryan took some and wasn't observed doing so. Figuring out the shuttle was a little adventure but no problem and our hotel is nice - the rooms are small and very european. Our hotel is part of a big Casino so we were advised for our group to head to Mandella square which has some shopping and resturaunts.
I took sometime on the first leg of the flight to journal, pray and so on. God is good - so good and I am excited for what we get to see and do tonight and even more for tomorrow. I miss Pam and my boys and look forward to the day when like Bryan or Jean I can take the guys. I'm being charged to get on line right now so I'll sign off - but praise God both all of us and all of our stuff made it - Pray for tomorrow.

Hey, just letting everyone know that I finally figured this blogging thing out. Well we all got checked in and are waiting at the gate for our first flight right now and it's kinda scary but I am excited. The only thing that I think I forgot so far is my contact case, and if that's all I forgot I'll be alright.

To blog or not to blog...

Hey!

Wow--there's a lot involved in getting off to Africa.  Doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging but I thought I'd give it a quick whirl...  I'm so excited for this trip and even though we've been preparing for months I have NO IDEA what we're getting into!  I just pray that God would work powerfully IN and THROUGH us and I would love your prayers for that as well!

Back to packing...

Cindy

Safety

So for the last couple of days I have been saying good bye to some people I won't see till after the trip. Today will be the hard one of those by the way as I say good bye to Pam and the Boys as our departure is so early. Anyway, I have been struck by the the frequent if not exclusive wishes for safety. Now don't get me wrong I love being wished and prayed for safety and we picked Mwandi because safety was a top concern but somehow all these wishes for safety has me thinking about it. I guess I have never worried about safety at this location and as a result have been free to wish for other things - like changed lives both in us as a team and for the folks in Mwandi. I have also been wondering about how Jesus would respond to making safety a top concern. The verse that keeps coming to mind is "is whoever would save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it." Very counter intuitive that Jesus! While I want us all safe and sound physically Spiritually I am praying that this trip will be a form of losing our lives for Jesus sake and thus being saved. Please join me in praying about that.

Earlier Today I wrote this blog

Well I am apparently not good with posting a blog of my own so I am making a comment on the welecome page. I am thrilled that the Lord has given me one more chance to return to Africa. I daily have the desire to go back the the people that captured my heart with there love and faithfullness to the Lord Jesus and to the community around them. Going to Zambia is another exciting opportunity for God to show me how he has things planned for me that are better that I could ever think or imagine EP.3:19-20. This is what I learned the first time I went to Africa and I am confident that the Lord has the same great plans that surpass my knowledge planned for my team and I in Zambia. So here we go in the Lord's great mighty protecting hands to Zambia. May our hearts be filled with the Holy Spirit as we leave and be at peace and confindence in the plans the Lord has for our team. My prayer is to learn to love Jesus more and to love others more than myself.

Waiting

Yeah I have figured out how to post. I feel waiting is something my team and I will soon be doing lots of as we embark on our adventure in Zambia. Patience will be of great importance and I know this will be a hard thing for me to learn to have patience and wait for the next thing to happen. Really at this point it seems like a lot of our team is just ready to get on a plane and stop waiting for this adventure to start( or contiue forward in the major fun filled days as really we have been on the Zambai adventure for awhile). I am glad the Lord gives us His Spirit and blessing of one more day here with our family, comfort of home, and one more day to pray hard. Prayer is the key at this point and at every point on our journey for this trip and life in general so to help me and the team while we wait one last day, I am going to get off the computer and go pray. I hope all reading this will also pray for my team and I right now and for the journey ahead of us in Zambia whenever you read this blog or come to this site to read our updates.

only one more day!

Last year, when our Mexico mission trip was driving back across the border, Jon was talking to Ellie and me about next years trip to Africa. We both had an amazing, amazing time in Mexico, so we were so excited when we heard about the plans for next year. Then, it was a entire year away, yet, its here! Only one more day, and well be on our way, half way across the world to Africa. Im so stoked. Although, it seems so unreal. I feel like im not ready. I think friday when im at the church it will set in, because right now im busy enough with the last days of school to think about it. None the less, I absolutlutley can't wait to spend two whole weeks with everyone, travel to africa, help people, and hopefully learn about me, and god.

well, ill see you all friday morning. yay =]]

Mary

Pancakes

Ok so this doesn't have to do with pancakes, but that's the title I wanted. Wow were to begin, I'm so excited for this trip, I really can't wait. Especially with finals this week, I really want to leave soon. The only snag, is I can't find my first aid kit, which was bought with my own money. So I'm dissapointed, but it'll be fine, I'm sure.
We got our shirts in which bring to me much satisfaction. Anyway, the time has come to study for a spanish final, so with that, I bid you adieu!
-Ryan

Here We Come

Boy. I cannot believe this is already here. Obviously, I'd blocked this from my mind to a certain extent because there were so many other huge things I had to worry about before May 30 (i.e. Concerts...Graduation...) Yet now all of that is over, and Africa is coming so quickly. Of course, I'm excited...extremely excited! But also very nervous. Having never gone on any significant mission trips, diving into one as big as this has certainly got me wondering what to expect.

I am absolutely positive that this will be an incredible experience. Yet a lot of other things are on my mind, and too many of them don't involve God the way I'd like them to. I'm worried about what all I'll be missing back home. I'm hoping that my mind doesn't get stuck on this kind of thing. Like my mom, I can be very task oriented sometimes, and I don't want to get trapped thinking about all the things I'll have to do when I'm back home.

I think my biggest hope for this trip is to affect someone the way I know I will be affected. I don't want to go there, big, bad Americans with our guns blazing, leave, and be changed forever, yet leave the people of Mwandi wondering what just happened. I'm confident that I will not come back to Colorado on June 13 the same person that I am now. There's no way around that. I'm hoping and praying that our visit results in a similarly life-changing experience for the people I encounter there. Yikes... this is too unreal!

3 DAYS!!

This trip seems to becoming incredibly fast but it is going to be amazing. I am so excited to just go and see everything. I can't wait! My hopes for this trip are: to see God and experience him in another place, help wherever I can, make someone's day, develope relationships with the people there, learn about my faith and myself as a person, change my perspectives, get to love God, my friends (people on the trip and people I meet there) and everyone else more. I am afraid that my heart will be hardened and I won't open up. I am also afraid of offending someone or doing something wrong. I am also a little nervous about our Jesus quest and how that is going to go down/how many kids we are going to have. So please pray for those things if you would. Thank you very much to all that have contributed to this trip with money, thoughts, prayers and preparation. I know it will be incredible. Love to all

POWER TRIP!

All too often my daily life and routine lulls me to sleep. I am spiritually dull, bored and don’t expect or even look for God’s intervention. I’m just sitting in my cubicle clicking away on my computer. Why would I expect that God would be there? I think the routine, stress, to-do lists and safety and familiarity of my surroundings puts me into this frame of mind. Therefore, Jesus’ words to the Sadducees in Matthew 2:29 speak to me as well, “You are in error because you don’t know the Scriptures or the power of God.” Not expecting to see God’s power in my daily life certainly is an error.

As I think and pray about the upcoming trip to Zambia I realize that I’m looking to experience POWER. That’s right; I want to go on a POWER TRIP! This time, I don’t think it’s the testosterone speaking, even though the thought of going to a rugged village in Africa certainly does get the man-juices flowing (insert manly noises here -- here are some examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAhVmjptZMI).

On this trip I am excited and eagerly waiting to see God’s power and presence. Taking me as far as possible (on all levels) from my daily routine and safety will certainly put my focus, trust and faith in God into a new perspective. For me, the most significant indicator of God’s presence and work in my life is when I realize that he has done something powerful – so powerful that I know I didn’t do it. That’s the motivation of the POWER TRIP – to experience God’s power in new ways so that I know Him more fully and have powerful and practical stories to tell people about what he did. Maybe some of these thoughts and this brief study of power in the Bible will resonate with you. Maybe some of you will join me in the quest for a POWER TRIP in Zambia.


The power trip starts off with Jesus’ call to wait and EXPECT what was promised in Luke 24:49. “I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” This is Jesus’ promise to us too. In order for this trip to be successful we absolutely will need power from on high – the Holy Spirit. I know we’ve already been given a measure of the Holy Spirit just in the trip preparation, but once we’re in Zambia and in order to fully experience the POWER TRIP, we will need an extra measure of God’s empowerment through his Spirit. This power is also described in Acts 1:8, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Our witness will be made strong if we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us.

One of the great paradoxes of our faith is that to experience God’s power we must be made weak. Otherwise, our own pride, gloating and testosterone (again, insert the man noises here) get in the way of God’s work (oops). So, one way we’ll know we’re on the power trip is that we’ll start by feeling weak. 2 Corinthians 4:7-9 speaks to this “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” So, when I’m in Zambia and the computer lab doesn’t work, I don’t feel like I’m teaching anyone anything, I see despair and poverty and realize that on a worldly scale I haven’t done anything – that is where I expect to realize that I’m actually on the POWER TRIP. That’s when I’ll really focus on where I can see Jesus’ power in action. I also intend to remind myself of Jesus’ words to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

For those of you who are staying here, but joining us in spirit through fervent prayer, please pray Paul’s prayer to the Thessalonians (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12) for us: With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

This trip to Zambia is our Lord’s invitation to experience a POWER TRIP. For those of us going, I pray that we’ll be alert and available to Jesus and that we will see and feel his power in action. I pray that the Lord will make us all powerful for the building up of his kingdom. I pray that we’ll come back to Fort Collins with awesome stories of God’s power that will spill into our routine lives or, for some of us, our new lives at college next year. I pray that we’ll get opportunities to witness when people ask us, “by what power or name did you do this?” SEE ACTS 4:7-13 – one of my favorites! I pray that we’ll learn more about God’s power from and see it demonstrated in new ways through the people we’re visiting. I pray that we’ll all have documented proof of God’s power in our trip journals so that when we don’t feel powerful or feel that our faith is but a mustard seed, we can open up our journals and remember how we saw God’s awesome power in Zambia and that through this we will experience Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

For the days in Zambia when I add to the trip blog, I will do my best to provide POWER TRIP updates. I fully EXPECT to see God’s power, but sometimes it takes some bigger-picture processing before my spiritually dull mind sees it. Plus, as we know, God’s timing doesn’t always fit within a 2-week blog, so maybe there will be POWER TRIP updates to be made to this blog weeks, months, years(?) from now! No matter what God’s timing, we better hold on tight because this POWER TRIP is going to be AWESOME!!!!

Here are some more cool POWER TRIP Bible verses to reference:
Acts 4:7-13
1 Corinthians 4:20
1 Corinthians 2:9-10
2 Corinthians 2:9-10
2 Corinthians 6:4-102 Corinthians 13:4
Ephesians 3:14

Hey, I'm a blogger

The old lady on this mission trip team has figured out how to get this far. Woo Hoo! I'm so excited about our trip! It was a good meeting tonight - great spiritual journeys/faith stories, excellent info from our Zambia reports, lots of helping hands with all the donated T-shirts, ideas being easily shared in our Jesus Quest teams, fun in fellowship, and wonderful prayers to get us started and to wrap us up as we concluded our evening.
Emily, fantastic suggestion for one more meeting next Wednesday! We were all feeling like we needed more time together. In closing, remember these familiar verses of 1Thess. 5:16-18: "Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." (NIV)
Hugs, Pam

Photo Take to

Ah - now I get it - you have to click that you agree to the terms. Hopefully we can download some photos as we take them on our trip and upload them here for peopel to see what we are experiencing rather than just read. Thanks to Austin for being the first person on the team to sign up!

Photos and Hopes for the trip

So, I'm trying to include a photo of a small part of the team into this entry and want to encourage each member of the team to upload a photo of themselves into their first entry where perhaps you could also talk about why you are going on this trip and some hopes for it. - Jon

Welcome

Hey All,
This is my first attempt at blogging and it should be fun as I now get to try and add 15 authors. My hope and prayer for this blog is that it can be a place where we process and share what we experience in and through this trip and that in doing so in this context will allow others to grow through our experience and support us in what we are doing via prayers and words of affirmation. So with that - let me process a tiny little bit and then encourage others to get on this and do the same.
I can't believe we are only 9 full days from departure for Mwandi. God is already doing great things in and through this trip and I'm excited to see what will happen once we actually get there. Please pray for our team as we wrap up preparations in the midst of an already busy season of life. Pray for the preparations for us that are taking place in Mwandi and for Keith, Ida, Fiona, and Ru in particular. Pray for smooth travel, for a problem free experience with customs and for the health and rest that will be needed for this trip. Pray also for those who support us back home. Pray that we would all know Christ's peace that surpasses understanding and that through this trip that both our team and all who we encounter would grow in their love for and knowledge of Jesus. Our team verse is II Corinthians 4:5 which reads "For we do not preach ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus sake." Pray that we live that out. God has consistently proven to be way out in front of us on this trip, I need to rest in that. Enough for now. - Jon