April Briefing Low Down

In April, all the international summer projects from the Mid-Atlantic region met up at a campground near West Chester, PA for a briefing. There we got to meet our teams and spend the weekend casting vision for our trips and participating in a team building activity competition. We competed with the other teams going to Australia, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, and another location in Africa.  In the picture below, we are displaying our advertisement, the one event that we won. The reason for us winning was because of our teams shear size since the winner was based on the loudest cheers and our team was the biggest(most teams were about 6 or 7 members compared to our 22).  Although we didn't win, we had a great time getting to know each other. Below is a picture of our team, minus one, from the last day of the briefing.  One of our team members is from Washington state, so she was unable to come for the weekend. 34 days until Botswana!

  

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Modimo o a go rata.

Where "From the Corners of the Earth" came from...

Finals week officially began this morning at 8am. With one final down and three more to go, I can not stop day dreaming about Botswana. Excited barely comes close to describing my anticipation for the trip. There are about 15 other people from Towson Cru (our nickname for Campus Crusade for Christ) that are going on summer project. The stateside projects include Colorado, Seattle, Hampton Beach(New Hampshire) and Ocean City(Maryland). Hampton Beach and Ocean City are both 10 week projects where those students get jobs for the summer. The international projects include Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, Botswana (me), another undisclosed location in Africa, Kazakhstan, and East Asia.It's been really crazy to be apart of such a large group from our campus going out literally from coast to coast here in the US and around the world.

I knew about where everyone was going, but this whole concept of people from my campus reaching all over the globe didn't hit me until last week. A song came on my iTunes that illuminated this idea in my head. That song, "From the Corners of the Earth" by Starfield, is also where I got the title for this blog; I found it quite appropriate.

Here are some of excerpts of those lyrics that struck out to me:

From every nation God is calling out His own...

From the north to the south to the east to the west, we sing
To the one, to the one, to the one who is our King
One body, one church, one savior, one call to praise...

Hey! From the corners of the earth

We will sing of your great worth
And around the world proclaim
Our God Reigns

Here's a link to a YouTube link of that song if you want to check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sJo5LTwr-g.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Modimo o a go rata.

T minus seven weeks and counting...

Seven weeks from the very moment I am writing this, I will be at Dulles Airport reunited with my team, awaiting our departure to Botswana. That fact, although I know it's true, it all still seems to fade in and out of reality for me. It hasn't hit me that I will be spending roughly five weeks in Botswana, a country in Southern Africa. No matter how many times I tell people this, I still can't believe it's actually happening.

For the first half of our trip, we will be helping out at an orphan feeding station. We will be running a sports camp and vacation Bible school for the kids. I am so excited to meet these kids and to play with them! Please pray for these kids. I haven't even met them, and I love them so much!

The second half of our trip we will be talking to college students on the campus of the University of Botswana. The country only has one university, which means it is filled with the country's future leaders. We will talk with the students about spiritual things and hear their thoughts on life and God.

The official language of Botswana is English, however, it is mainly used as a language of business. Setswana is their native language and is more of their "relational" language. Our director explained it this way; you could go up to the  desk at a hotel and ask for a phonebook in English. The person at the desk would converse with you in English, but when they converse with their co-worker, they would speak in Setswana. The kids, especially the younger ones will probably only know Setswana. We've been learning, through our group on facebook, a few phrases in Setswana. Something really awesome I have found out is that a few years ago, Chris Tomlin, a popular Christian singer, was over in Botswana. While he was there, the people taught him his song "We Fall Down" in their language. We've actually been learning the song so we can sing it when we go. This is a YouTube link for the song in both English and Setswana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCrRZc_gruU.

I promise to post again soon, but I probably should go study for some of my finals (finals week starts this Wednesday 5/18 and ranges to the following Tuesday 5/24). Enjoy your day!

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Modimo o a go rata