Fun Fun Finland

So much to tell...this week Mike Pilavachi from the UK has been speaking with us. He is a preacher in a church north of London called Soul Survivor. He also started a ministry of the same name almost 20 years ago that hosts a huge youth festival every summer. I had never heard of him but evidently if you are from the UK, you have. Not many people get this reference, but he reminds me of Red Skelton, the comedian. He has talked about the wilderness-Moses, insecurity-Jacob, and how to be relavent to the culture. All have been quite insightful and extremely entertaining, especially for me because I enjoy dry, sarcastic, British humor. 

Yesterday we all found out who is in our outreach teams and where we will be going in January. At first we were given a piece of paper with a sound on it (mine said, "A duck killing an elephant") and then blindfolded we were supposed to imitate the sound and locate others making the same sound. Wow. I just said, "quack" and hoped others would catch my drift. So I have 10 people in my group: Isaac, Philip, and Suzi from the UK; Olivia, Andrea, and Kristyn from Canada; Joe, Carter, and me from the US; and Peter from South Korea. Not very culturally diverse, haha. Then we had to go on a scavenger hunt following clues to figure out our outreach leaders. We were one of the first groups to locate them: James from Canada and Lizi from the UK. Awesome. Theeennnn, we had to sort through cut up pieces of paper to spell out the name of where we are going. Drum roll please....we are going to FINLAND!! 

Reaction= I knew that Scandinavia was a common destination so I wasn't too surprised and I didn't really have any specific desires to go to any one location so I was fine with it. I look forward to our group melding together and becoming more like family, and I think it's funny I'll be going to Finland in the dead of winter considering I don't favor the cold but did promise God (and everyone) that I would not be complaining about the cold this winter. I said this meaning the winter in Canada. haha. Now I get to go somewhere even colder!! PTL I'm actually looking forward to it. I will be stocking up on cold weather gear when I go home for Christmas (family, you know what I'll be asking for!) We don't know our specific areas of focus for the trip yet but I'm praying for a real passion of the people/work in Finland and that we are truly effective for Daddy while we are there.

In other news, we also received our assignments for conference duties for the Mountain Movers Conference next week: I will be a greeter from 8:30-12:30pm every day. And we got our work duty assignments for where we will be every Thursday afternoon from here on out: I will be in the cafe. Today I washed windows, how exhilarating. I'm praying for a sort of Brother Lawrence kind of experience throughout this.