Getting started

As I prepare to leave for Arua, Uganda on what will be my first time going overseas (and my first time seeing the ocean!) I've been asking myself a lot of questions. I ask myself why I am going, what I hope to accomplish there, what is going to be the difference when I come back, whether I going to re-assimilate to Goshen life and go back to the way things always were, or whether I am going to let this experience infect me to the very core and if so, I wonder in what way I will be different and how I hope to see people respond to that change.

Excited and nervous at the same time, I don't really know how to feel or expect. I have great expectations though, about the impact that will be made: on the community in Arua, in me personally, and here as you and others hear about how lives are being changed by a God who seeks to renew a people that have long been abused and forgotten. I'm praying for the Church in America, for my family, for my friends, and for anyone else who hears or reads my accounts of this experience: not that people would be saddened or feel pity, but that we can get excited about developing a passion and understanding of the global Church. I'm praying that the church in Africa and the church in America both would feel the bond of unity between the two locations and be reminded that the church is more than a building and a denomination and sound teaching, it is the unity all of us share who call ourselves "Christians," the unity that allows us to be aware of more than each other's needs: to be aware of each other's humanity, the image of God that is instilled in all of us, the sacrifice of Christ for the forgiveness of all of us, and the work of the Spirit to renew and unite all of us. I'm praying for my team and myself for that same understanding of the church to be more than "head-knowledge" and be in our hearts, evident in our actions and our attitudes. Please join me in these prayers.

I don't know how often I will be able to update it while I'm in Africa because I don't know how available the internet is, I don't know how energetic I will be and I don't know that I'll have time to update. I will be journaling with an old fashioned pen-and-paper though, and I will post those journals and pictures I take when I get back if not while I'm there.

Trent