2010 Summer trip

It seems no one has posted in a LONG time...

I actually forgot about this site as I should have posted about the trip last year that Mike, Ken, and I took with a VIM group. It wasn't a "big" trip, just one to really connect better with the young leaders. In that, it seemed quite successful and helped me see how much time and energy it takes to really invest cross-culturally (when it's not a culture you are familiar with or connected to in any other way).

This summer will be yet another exciting trip. We have Mike leading the way again with Brett (La Croix college pastor), Ken (his third and surely not last trip), Priscilla (a stay-at-home-mom, cattle rancher, and artist), Wendy and Nick (semi-newly married and headed to seminary in Chicago for the fall), and me, Izzie (current seminary student who is having this particular trip count as credit for a course, hoping the 15 page paper for the class will help Mike out as a resource for further ministry).

Since our group is a good, medium size, it looks like we'll try to start out in St. Petersburg (which I haven't been to yet) and do a little this and that there, then Moscow for a day or so then off to camp and then back to Moscow for a day or so before heading back to the US! The details for the whole trip have not been hammered out but considering this is my third trip, I know I can be okay with that and it's the unplanned stuff that's the best anyway! I still remember walking through a Russia cemetery with Mike and Valya the last day in Moscow and snapping amazing pictures of the beautiful tombstones of Russia's former military heroes, actors, singers, poets, and writers. Although I had spent more time alone on that trip than any other trip abroad I've been on, I found our time at the cemetery to be the most peaceful. Then we semi-rushed back to get to the airport to meet the group and made it in plenty of time because the flight was delayed, as it often is...

We leave in a few weeks and hopefully we'll be able to update a couple times. It should be pretty exciting to get to pour into the lives of young people who want to live for Christ and also share the love and testimony of Jesus with some that haven't really heard of Him before!

Izzie