Let's make it two!!

In the summer of 2009, Raoul was speaking at church about how much work was needed to help the people of the island. He spoke of the drastic reduction in the number of missionaries that visited the island since he began his ministry back in 2004 (15 groups in '04 to 5 in '09). He said that we, the American visitors, didn't have to bring our entire family or all of our friends, Raoul challenged us by saying, "Each one reach one." If we could go home and recruit just one friend or family member, the amount that we could help could be immeasurable. Whenever Raoul speaks, I get fired up. It's hard not to because he is such a inspirational and moving preacher. So when I was called upon to say a few word at the service the words that came out of my mouth were not my own. I promised the congregation (and challenged my group) that we would triple the number of team members (21) in 5 years. WHAT WAS I THINKING?? How in the world we do this? Obviously God had a big part in making this happen because within 2 years we more than doubled the numbers. The team kept growing until we topped out at 51 last summer, but it was very difficult to manage all of them. Some times we were tripping over ourselves on the jobsite. Feeding time was pretty insane, and we needed two vehicles to get around everywhere. There had to be a better way to do this. As a group, we had tossed the idea of two trips for a few years, but the biggest hurdle wasn't getting the kids to come or availability on the island, it was would my wife be ok with me going? But something amazing happened last summer, she was able to join us on the trip and saw the great things these kids did, so before long the two week dream became a reality. This reality brought about some new obstacles - most importantly getting enough leaders to help out. Getting participants was easy, but now we needed double the adult presence. So after some negotiating and compromising, we were able to get enough leaders to create two smaller sized groups totaling 57 people. The goal is to finish the work we started last summer at Miss Velma's house, and hopefully with two whole weeks of work, we could get pretty close to accomplishing it. If you are moved or felt called to join us or help in any way - prayerfully or financially - please email, call, or contact me or any member of the trip. There is always room! Maybe next year we can pull off three trips!!