The Time Has Come

A LOT has happened in the last month. I got my vaccines for the trip, I learned what my first country of travel is going to be, I quit my job, I figured out how to get to training camp, I figured out how to get to launch, I went to summer camp, and have made 2 trips to visit family. Just a bit busy. Let me give you all the details.

Vaccines; hep A, yellow fever, polio booster, typhoid, japanese encephalitis, and 30 days of malaria meds. Vaccines are crazy expensive. and not included in my fundraising. It’s one of the reasons I switched jobs last year. Vaccines cost right at $2,000 and it was my last big expense for the trip. I did opt out of a vaccine simply because I didn’t have time to get all the boosters and it would have added almost $1500 to my total. So long as I don’t get bit by a rabid animal I’ll be fine without it.

Summer camp went very well this year, especially since a friend I met through the world race got to come and help and hang out as well. New friend for life. At camp I volunteered to teach 3 lessons as well as plan out a game. I figured I needed to get used to speaking in front of people again and it’s easier to do talking to teens than peers. At least I think so.  God pulled some miracles with the weather to let everyone be able to enjoy time outside most of the week and we had 5 baptisms and 4 rededications at the end. It’s the first time someone has quoted something I taught at camp and it was a very special moment.

Training camp starts tomorrow. I’m leaving way too early in the morning to sit around in the Atlanta airport until tomorrow afternoon when I’ll take a shuttle an hour north to Gainesville and sweat like a pig for a week. Practice for sweating all the time on the trip I’m sure. Oh how I will miss air conditioning and fans. I don’t know a lot about training camp. I suppose it’s kind of like chrysalis and emmaus “participate, don’t anticipate” except we get to keep our watches. I do know that there is a fitness hike we have to do while wearing all of our gear and there will be lots of lessons meant to make us think about our faith in new ways as well as lessons on how to share that faith with others in a meaningful way. We will also be eating foods from different regions each day. Pray for me on that. That’s probably what I’m most nervous about. That and finding out who will be in my group for the first 3ish months of our trip. The staff at AIM will be watching how we interact with each other and decide our groups based on that. Then 3ish months into the trip we are reevaluated and redistributed into new groups based on what our squad mentor learns about us as well as whichever coach is at our debrief points during the trip. I’m not sure if I want to be in a co-ed group or not. Co-ed would mean we probably got put on more construction like projects and we would have guys to do the heavy lifting but laundry day would be embarrassing for a while until we got used to it. An all girls group could potentially lead to a lot of drama but would be less awkward on laundry days when things have to be hung out to dry. Pray that the staff at camp gets each of us in the group we should be in.

Launch is officially on August 6th. I’ll be flying down the day before with my mom and there will be a parent conference on the 6th and 7th while those of us going on the trip will have some more last minute training as well as a chance to say bye. Then we will go back to Gainesville for a couple days to finish our training before going back to the airport to head out to…Guatemala! Where in Guatemala you may ask. I don’t have a clue. Suppose I’ll find out when I get there. 

I believe you are all caught up on everything now. For fun I will edit this later and add my official pack weight. both the large pack and the smaller day pack so keep your eyes peeled for those numbers. I’m sure I’ll have tons more to talk about after training camp so be ready. Thanks so much for all of your support thus far. I’m 83% funded now! So close to the end. Your prayers are always welcome. Thanks again!

Okay official pack weights: big pack 47lbs, small pack 23lbs.