Week One:)

Hey Everyone:) Well it’s been a week since I’ve been in the Chicago area, and despite the lack of sweet tea and southern drawls I’m still alive LOL:) We spent our first weekend at Streator Baptist Camp having orientation with everyone that is serving in Illinois this summer with the North American Mission Board. It was really encouraging to hear about the other teams that will be across the state serving the Lord in all their different capacities. We headed to our places of service on Monday and had the day off. My team and I are staying in the suburb of Joliet, but we are targeting the suburbs of Naperville and Plano. We actually have 9 people that are called the parachute team. No worries…no parachutes are involved haha! It means that we are going into areas that are in need of church plants and finding people of peace (prominent leaders in the community that are open to the gospel), evangelism opportunities, and what type of church plant and church planter would be most effective for the area. We will not really have supervisors for this project. Instead we will have almost coaches. In other words, we do not have people that are giving us a schedule on a day to day basis. We have people that will check in on our progress weekly and give us encouragement and advice. Because of our lack of supervision we had additional orientation this past week. Our group consists of 6 guys and 3 girls. 4 of the guys and one the girls are from the Chicago land area and attend Northern Illinois University. There is a guy and girl that are both from North Carolina and both attend Liberty University although they had not met before coming here. There is also a guy from California. And then there’s me haha, the Alabamian. The guy from North Carolina, Scott, and the guy from California, Mike, are doing a separate project in the Albany Park area concentrating on internationals. We all did orientation together though so we had 9 team members and a supervisor all living in our mission house together for a couple of days…it felt a bit like the Brady bunch especially at meal time haha:) Now there’s 7 of us and a supervisor in the house and I suppose it feels more like the Walton’s LOL! We have the adventure of going grocery shopping for, cooking for, and transporting that many people. To say the least….there’s not too many dull moments. I’m SO excited to see what the Lord has in store for this summer, and I truly hate I will only be here for 8 more weeks. We were able to visit and see the suburbs of Naperville and Plano this past week and pray over them. We’ll be making a game plan this weekend and then hitting the pavement.
Please pray for our team to have a unity that would reflect the body of Christ and for us to seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance in how to reach these communities for Him. Pray that we would be emboldened to proclaim the gospel in all that we say and do. Thanks SO much for your prayer and support…ya’ll are awesome:) Have a great week!