I will start by answering the "why?" (you will have to wait for the next posts for the pictures). Last November I headed up to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Shenandoah National Park. I picked a cool cabin just off Skyline Drive with a fantastic view of the mountains. I took no computer and made sure I had no television. My goal was to get away from all of the distractions of life so I could focus on spending time alone with God. I sought after His will for my life and spent a lot of time reading some great studies and journaling. It was an amazingly refreshing time.
I came away from this trip with a list of action steps that I felt God was leading me to take. One of those steps was to go on a short term missions trip the following year. I specifically felt the pull toward India which I can't quite explain. I waited until WEAG (my church) released their list of missions trips for the following year and was excited to see that India was on the list. But as I read the focus of the trip, I really felt it was not the type of work that God had been leading me toward. I felt very conflicted.
I knew my friends, the Sjogrens, were going to be leading a trip in 2012 through e3 Partners that was more in line with where I felt God was calling. So I felt this inner turmoil as I fought with whether to go "where" I felt God was leading me (India) or go elsewhere with the Sjogrens and "do" what I felt God was leading me to do (evangelism). At this point I had no idea where the Sjogrens were planning to go so I would have to wait to see where their location was so I could ask God if He was instead leading me there. Not even a week later I received an email from the Sjogrens asking if I wanted to go with them...to India! Here I was stressing over something that God so clearly had under His control.
I forwarded the email from the Sjogrens to Annmarie to see if she was interested. She was most definitely in. It was one of those somewhat weird situations because we had only been dating for two months at this point and we were committing to go on a trip that was still many months away (in June). We talked about it and both felt complete peace so we sent in our deposits.
e3 is a great organization out of Plano, TX which leads a ton of missions trips all over the world each year. The three "e"s stand for equip, evangelize, and establish. Teams go into countries and partner with churches to go out and do personal evangelism. When someone accepts Christ, you go back and study with them to build up their faith. After you leave, the local churches go back and continue to work with those Christians as they grow in their relationship with Christ. I really felt God's call to do missions that focused on evangelism and loved that e3 committed to doing the follow-up. I knew we could only get but so far with people in a week and it was reassuring to know that others would continue that work.
The trip was scheduled to go to an area in southern India called Wayanad but as you will learn in another post, we ended up going to the city of Aurangabad which is east of Mumbia (Bombay). We trained over the following months and began to pull together the needed funds. We had the opportunity to begin to get to know some of our team members and were excited to minister with them. We were pumped for June 16th to arrive!
Here is a map of India with some of the locations you will hear us talk about:
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