Less than a month!

It's hard to believe that finals are over (for me at least), and that in exactly 25 days I'll be on the first of my three connecting flights that will take me to Lima, Peru. Next Friday, I send in my two week reminder to my supervisor and co-workers that I will be gone for 2 and half months. Wow...the whole thing seems unreal.

Between now and then, I'll see one of my two sisters turn 14, and two of my friends start their lives together as husband and wife, and another friend leave on his own mission trip in the States. It makes me wonder what I will happen in the 77 days I'm gone--and what I will miss. It's frightening actually--I've never been gone from home more than a week at a time, and even when I was, home could easily be reached by phone. Sure, when I went to Guatemala, it might've been a bit on the pricey side, but always an option. I thought it was going to be that way in Peru until last week...when I was asked to serve on a village team to reach...unreached people group, instead of teach English in a modern city. And when they say "unreached" they mean unreached by more than just the Gospel.

I'm looking at a month, and then another month after that, with possibly no showers at all. I will get one between the two months, definitely...but this is going way out of my comfort zone, even without the fact my purpose there will be to evangelize to these villagers, and that they know no English, and I maybe the only Spanish speaker on my team.

I don't have to tell you this scares the begeezes out of me. If my sister is reading this, she would probably be the first to tell you that I can be quite a grouch when I'm tired and feel dirty, and that I'm very fond of modern plumbing.

I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into when I agreed to serve on a village team though, and I still agreed, and I was definitely given a choice in the matter. But how could I say no? I knew the moment I was asked that that was where God was calling me to, and at least part of the reason I have spent the last 3 years trying to develop some sort of fluency in this language called Spanish (which I still have a very long way to go).

Just pray for me as I prepare to leave, and that God will grate me the patience, and the cool temper to deal with what lies ahead!