A Week at Work Camp!

Greetings to any and all who might read this!

The last week (July 22-28) has been a full one, and now we get to settle back into a bit of a routine. I spent the week as the keynote speaker at Pennsylvania Christian Endeavor's work camp in Mahanoy City, PA, about an hour north of Myerstown (check out www.pachristianendeavor.org). It was a ton of fun getting to know and hanging out with the 90 or so teens and youth leaders, as well as getting to share in ministry with them. Most of the residents on whose houses our crews worked were so grateful, and one woman even remarked that our teenage work crew was far more efficient than a contractor who had worked on her job. So it was a great week for me, and for the teens, too, I think. They seemed to be greatly encouraged and challenged by the talks (or, at least, they said so), as the theme was "Just One Makes the Difference." So I filled in the blank after "One" each night, with just one "Hope," "Love," "Person," "Prayer," "Decision," and "Drink of the Living Water" makes the difference. God really met us during our worship times, not only during the messages, but also as a youth worship team from Finland Mennonite Church led us in musical worship--they rocked us into the presence of God!

While I was away having fun, Rachel was home doing the daily grind of work without me. So even though I had a blast, it's good to be back together and sleeping in the same bed--our own bed. Now that I'm settling back in, I'm working on setting up some missions stuff like sending out our first support letter and scripting our video. We're praying that all this groundwork will pay off later as we begin to build our support team and prepare to go to Spain!