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Monday, August 30, 2004

It all started with...

Last night I was doing a lot of thinking while I was driving... I have a lot of time to think when I drive the Krispy Kreme truck... and I was wondering when my interest in missions really started to grow.

My home church has been casually involved in missions. We are Baptist, so naturally when have 7 or 8 missionaries that we support with monthly checks. They come and visit so often, and growing up, I didn't really know a whole lot about them. The summer before my 8th grade year, we took a trip to Tepic Mexico. That was really the first time I traveled far away from home with only church people. I would say that was the beginning of my infatuation with travel, but not my passion for missions.

When I moved to Texas was really when it started to well up inside of me and really start to change my outlook on life. I started seeing things differently. WisdomWorks was supporting a bible translation project alongside Wycliffe. I started to see that there was more to this thing then cars, clothes, and money. I always knew that people needed help, but I think that I really started to get a sense of perspective on how much help they really needed.

I started to dream up ways I could serve, I've always been interested in Youth Ministry. For a long time I wanted to be a Youth Pastor, and thought that was the only way a young man could serve, the only direction to be taken. Its been a few years since I started to think differently about that, and my views on Youth Ministry have matured quite a bit. I had a vision of a nightclub-eque youth ministry that had many different facets. A coffee shop, a music store, a show venue, a chill out place... and I wrote a list of things I would need to do to prepare myself to lead a ministry like that.

One of the things that I put on the list was "Go on a short term mission trip in the next 18 months." At the time, I had recently got the Audio A Worldwide CD, and had tracks from that bouncing around in my head. The whole CD has an overlying theme of missions, "go and be", "get dirty", even the title track says... "We're gonna take it worldwide."

This summer marked the end of that 18 month window. Some could say, now you can cross of that item on your list and focus on the next thing. No way... In preparation for the missions trip... I really grew a heart for missions. Many of the friends I had in Texas were missions minded and the church I was attending has an amazing missions department. IBC Bridges International

So what exactly started it all? I'm not entirely sure. But I am glad that God has me in the position he does now.

International Teams Update: My application is in official process and currently in the reference checking phase. I was hoping to go to training in September, but this is looking less and less like it will happen. On my end, work is about to step up my hours, and on IT end, I don't think it will be processed in time. That is ok... no matter when I leave for Russia... I still go for 12 months.

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