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I can’t believe it! I am leaving in the morning. It really is hard to believe that two months of training are now over and that I am leaving for my assignment. What an awesome time it has been here at The Mark Center, with such sweet people and awesome speakers who have really taught me alot. It is going to be hard to leave tomorrow and say goodbye to all the other TREKKERS who are off to their own locations. I wouldn’t have traded training for anything.
So, we leave The Mark Center here tomorrow at 7:30am and head to the airport for our flight that leaves at 11:30am. We are flying China Airlines on a 13 hour flight, first to Taipei, Taiwan and then we have a 7 hour lay overthere. It will be long, but at least we will be able to get off the plane for a while and get some exercise. After that we have another 5 hour flight from Taiwan to Bangkok and we will finally be there! What a trip it is going to be. I think that God has made the trip that long, just so I will really be able to clue into what is actually happening. Haha..
Our team is really excited to meet the three missionary couples who are waiting for us there, also known as Team 2000. We have heard alot about them and will be nice to finally put faces to names. We are eager to find out more details about the work we will be doing there and where we will be living. Our first night should be very interesting. But, we will have to see how it goes.
But, that’s all for now I guess. I should get going, as I still have alot to get done before I leave in the morning. I loved talking to most of you today (Jennette, Dad and Sheilagh, etc.) and saying goodbye. I am going to truly miss all of you and want to keep in good contact with you all. I hope to hear from all of you on a regular basis.
Please pray for safety for our team as we fly. It will be muchly appreciated.
Well, I guess the next time you will hear from me will be from the other side of the world…That’s crazy! God bless you all.
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Hello!
Well, I thought I would finally add my first update to my Blog about what’s been happening in my TREK adventures thus far.
Oh wow, where do I begin? It has been a really busy last few weeks for me, and it would be impossible for me to tell you all the stories right now, so instead I will share with you some highlights. Well, I arrived in Abbotsford, BC about a month ago to begin a two-month training program here, at a place called, The Mark Center. It is a beautiful lodge nestled in the woods, and I have a lovely room that I share with two roommates. All of our training takes place at this center, and we have a Great Room that we have all of our sessions in and is our place to hang out. There are about 17 Trekkers in the program in total and people come from all over. There are people from California, Kansas, Iowa, and quite a few others from different parts of Canada. We even have one girl here that came all the way from Thailand be in the program, and her name is Ying. A few of the people are in the same program as me from CBC and are doing there internship as well, but the majority of them have just heard about this program and have chosen to participate for the year. It has been really nice getting to know everyone, and we have definitely had a lot of fun times together so far.
During the first week of training we made a trip up to Whistler, and it was awesome. For those of you who don’t know where Whistler is, it is a mountain village near Vancouver and it is a popular ski resort, it is also home to a lot of the events that will take place when the Olympics come to Vancouver in 2010. Anyways, we spent two nights there in a beautiful lodge, and we went hiking and swimming in a lake nearby. We also did a crazy photo scavenger in the village, which was a lot of fun. Our time up at Whistler was the first real chance that we had for everyone to get to know each other better.
After our Whistler trip, we have had 2 jammed packed weeks of sessions here at The Mark Center and there were many excellent speakers. The speakers have covered many topics and I have learned a lot more about God and about using what I know to minister to the people that I am going to serve. The next trip that we went on is known as a, “Silent Retreat”. A Silent Retreat is exactly as the name implies. We went to a camp nearby and spent three days in silence, reading the Bible, praying and processing all the information that we had learned in the weeks previous. It was an interesting time for me, as some of you can imagine…haha. I enjoyed some parts of it, but other parts I didn’t enjoy at all because the silence was dragging on for too long. But, in the end, I was able to survive.
After we had the silent retreat we all got very excited for the teams to be announced, something that we have been waiting for for a very long time. To give you a reminder of which countries were possibilities, they were: Guadalajara, Mexico, Berlin, Germany, the jungles of Panama and Thailand. Some of us had mixed ideas about where we wanted to go, and I didn’t really have a certain place in mind. All of the places sounded exciting to me. But, I am happy to announce that I will be going to THAILAND! . I have three other girls on my team and I have been chosen as team leader. I am happy to share that I get along with the girls pretty well, and we have been getting to know each other a lot better over the last couple weeks since teams were announced.
Ever since teams have been announced we have been slowly finding out more information about some of the things that we will be doing while we are down there, but we will find out more as time goes on. But, for now we know we will be serving in a city called Chonburi, which is about 45 minutes to a 1-hour southeast of Bangkok. For most of the time we will be teaching English as well as working at an Aids orphanage, called The Abundant Life Home. I am very excited to be working with the children. We are trying hard to get as prepared as we can to serve in these areas and have been slowly trying to learn as much Thai as we possibly can, even though it is a very difficult language to learn. But, it is a blessing to have our friend Ying here from Thailand, the girl I mentioned before, to assist us in our language learning; she is like a walking resource. She has also shared with us many things about the culture that will be important for us to know, so that we do not offend the Thai people.
I also wanted to update all of you on how my fundraising is going. I first want to thank-you all again for your donations for my trip, it really has been amazing to see how much all of you have really supported me in this journey and that I know I can count on you for the remainder of this journey as well. Thanks to all of your donations, combined with the money I have received from my Student Loan funding, I have more than enough funds to cover my expenses for the entire year. This is something that I have been stressed about for a while, but now that it is all-together I am able to relax. Praise God that he provides!
I also wanted to share with you just a few of the prayer requests that I have for our team, and if you would pray for us that would be great. First off, if you would pray that over the next couple weeks I would be able to get the most out of the training here and that I would be able to really grow in my relationship with God and with my team. Secondly, if you would pray for the Church and the missionaries in Thailand and that they would be getting prepared to receive our team and that there vision for their ministry would line up with our vision for this year. Lastly, if you would pray for the people in Chonburi that we are going to serve, that God would be working in their lives, whether it is spiritually or physically. That God would really be alive and active in Chonburi and that the people there would be responding accordingly. All of your prayers are greatly appreciated.
Also, I wanted to mention that if any of you are interested in visiting some of the other websites that are connected to the ministry I will be involved in this year, such as the TREK/MBMSI website, as well as the website for the Aids orphanage that we will be working at, I have added a their links to my Blog. (On the right side of the page.) If you want you can even check out the Blogs of some of my friends who are in the same program as me, serving in Mexico, Germany and Panama.
So, those are just a few of the highlights from the last few weeks of my time here in BC and there are indeed many more things that I would love to share with you. But, please feel free to contact me via email anytime and I would to share them with you. Thanks again to all of you who are apart of my Support Team; I am grateful to have you and your support. I would love to hear about what’s been happening with all of you as well, so updates from you and your family would be great. I will keep all of you in my prayers as well and you will be missed when I am gone. I want to thank-you for visiting my Blog.
God Bless.
Diana
