What an encouraging email!

This is an email from a host of one of the camps the Ireland team is working with:

Dear Brandon,

I got your email address from the UPC World Deputation blog that the
Irish team told me about. I hear you are the guy to talk to if I
wanted to send feedback on the UPC students back home ahead of them.

I am on staff at a small Presbyterian church in the suburbs of Dublin
and late in the day, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland got their act
together and let me know in advance that I was getting a team of four
American university students to help me with my 3-Day youth outreach
camps in socially deprived areas of the Irish midlands.

It turns out that these four students, Calvin, Kelly, Trevor and
Camille have been a terrific bonus to our summer ministry at a crucial
time. We were a little worried in advance because PCI had not given us
a lot of forward information. We simply didn't know what to expect
when we went to pick these guys up off the train from Belfast. But
they have been here for a week now and we are just thrilled that they
came, so thank you for sending them.

They had an excellent attitude to all the different roles we dropped
them into- from helping out with our Sunday service to having patience
with the Irish weather as it rained our camps out right through to
mixing brilliantly with our congregation. They were genuine servants
to us. Calvin's energy, Camille's questions, Trevor's sense of humour
and Kelly's maturity shone through over the last few days. Our camps
were not easy jobs for short term missionaries like them but they just
got stuck in and were eager to help out every way they could. It was a
pleasure to work with them.

There was nothing dramatic or sexy about the ministry we were doing
this week but strategically for the development of our little
congregation and over a longer term, for the development of the
Kingdom in Ireland, this kind of day-to-day work is crucial. Your guys
made that work a lot more effective.

Today they moved on into their next assignment with our parent church,
Lucan Presbyterian, where they will be for two weeks. It was great
that I could endorse them so fully to my colleagues down the road.

I hope that all of your Deputation teams are working out so well.
Thank you for running the program. Please pass our gratitude on to the
folks back in Seattle when you get the chance.

Thanks,

Kevin

Grey and rainy

A picture of the Ethiopia team sent by UPC missionary Tim Teusink. He said it was grey and rainy in Addis and they felt right at home!

Ethiopia has arrived!

For those of you who have not heard team Ethiopia has had quite the ride! We showed up at the airport Friday night to shuttle them onto the evening British Air flight to London. Well, come to find out the flight was delayed. It was delayed so much that they were going to miss their flight from London to Addis. Well instead of sending them to London the agent did something else instead, he booked them on the next evenings flight. SO here they were, all packed, all ready, all pumped, but with no place to go! Unfortunately they all went home and slept in their own beds again.
There was a blessing to the whole thing though.
Karla sister was a week over due. Karla was supposed to be in the delivery room when it happened, but obviously wasn't because it didn't happen. Well, guess who had a baby on the night they were delayed! Yep, because of the delay Karla was able to be in the delivery room!
I guess God has a funny way of orchestrating things!
I just got word that they have arrived safely in Ethiopia and will be headed north to Mekelle soon.
Well, I guess in this case they were a day late but not a dollar short. No, they gained from their delay. God was working like He always does, for the good.
In Him,
Brandon

News From Manila

We just finished putting up the siding to the Peace Center we are building in Baseco! Next, we will install the interior walling and start painting later this week. Working in this extremely poor community in Manila has been an enriching experience for all. We not only get to make a tangible addition to their community, but we also get to have an intangible impact on the hearts of the adults and children we encounter.

Recently, a member of Union Church of Manila (UCM), Barry Marshall, has blessed our team by opening his house for us! After a long, hot day working on the church in Baseco, we get the privilege to come home to his house and unwind in his pool and enjoy his companionship over dinner. Barry also hosts a bible study on Saturdays sponsored by UCM called Interface, which invites international students and young adults to join together in fellowship as we learn more about Jesus Christ. Barry is truly a stand up guy!

Another highlight of this trip was when we went to Pastor Steve Ruetschle’s house for dinner. We had so much fun with him and his wife, Michelle, swimming in their pool with their two boys. They served us spaghetti and salad, which was a wonderful slice of home cooking. UCM loves him and I get the impression that some of the parishioners are worried we are here to steal him back to Seattle :) He and Michelle send their love to everyone back in Seattle.

The team is doing very well also. Holly got a stomach bug for a day and Jenn had a cold for a little while, but overall we all are healthy and happy. Surprisingly, the stomach bug has been very dormant, but I think we all are going to peer pressure each other to eat balut (an aborted chicken embryo)—a delicacy in the Philippines—and maybe we’ll be seeing him after that :)

Our caretakers and friends keep us very busy over here, so we will have more adventures to talk about soon! Thank you all for your prayers and thoughts!

Sincerely,

Paul

P.S. The picture is of the Peace Center, before we started to put up siding.

India is seeing ALOT!

hello brandon! here is an update:}

this last week was great! it's crazy how quickly the days fly by. working with the children, as challenging as it is, has been wonderful. i work with the kids daily. because i'm teaching art i have all of the grades at least twice a week. it's a challenge to create lesson plans that will suit such different levels of ability and age. but i've been trucking along. india is beautiful. we went to mysore yesterday to do some sight seeing. just amazing stuff! we visited a few temples which was a very interesting experience, something new to us all. we also saw a HUGE AND GORGEOUS palace. natalie and i kept making up sotries for all of the different rooms, for surely it was right out of a movie! there were few other historic places we visited as well as a huge garden full of water fountains and all. the trip was quite interesting and, here's a funny story, we were like celebs! seriously, it was quite awkward for us but at the garden there were a few groups that could not get enough of us and wanted to take our pictures over and over again. it was wild! the week has been great for us all. jason is teaching a boy who is about to graduate. they are working on economics, which is what jason's degree is in. this boy who's name just happens to be jason wants to go to bible college but has a few subjects to conquer first. other than that jason (our jason:]) is working on various multimedia things for the school, a PowerPoint and a brochure. he's taking a ton of pictures to say the least. carl has become the math teacher. he teaches for the first two periods of the day and then helps jason if he has extra tasks and/or rita if she can manage in her busy day to throw another project our way. rita has more or less given us our duties and said run with it, we have much more freedom than expected. natalie has taken over the office, doing various entering of info into the computer and such. the regular office woman, supadra, just got married and spent this last week on her honeymoon! we attended her wedding reception...talk about culture differences! it was great. this week supadra will be back, and natalie, who is teaching english during first period, will be assigned to something different. i'm hoping she can come help me in the art room! ha. otherwise we're all trucking along so well. natalie and i have begun to have some problems with the food, it's just very different and our apparently sensitive systems are not reacting as well as hoped! also we went full force into it in the beginning, and i think we over did it a bit! haha. we're working on smaller portions. no one is sick yet! we're planning on keeping it this way. next week we will head off to a camp with some of the children, and prem has asked us to preach...yes preach at the english service at the India for Christ Mission church...this we just found out this morning...it should prove to be interesting. thank you all for your support and prayers! sorry to keep this short but i have such limited internet time! much love from India!

First step is EDS...

Our first few days in Fuzine have been pretty busy. We are working in a team of about 10, composed of both Croatians and Americans (Hillary Holman is here, for those of you that know her!) There's a lot to do this week and we've both been working really hard (especially Whitney because her project is pretty demanding). We are getting ready for Economic Diplomacy Seminar (EDS), which is an advanced version of ROM (the reconciliation/leadership conference which is based upon the principles of Jesus). EDS takes the principles of ROM (principles of Jesus) and applies them to economic development, which focuses on issues such as poverty, corruption, unemployment, working across ethnic/religious lines, etc. The conference will run from July 1-15.

I have been helping out with office duties and working on preparing notebooks for the participants. Whitney has been working on decorations with Branja (one of the woman on the ROM team), which has been a huge task. The leadership team arrives tomorrow, so everyone has been really busy (and a bit stressed) trying to get everything done, which has been hard because we've been having lots of computer problems. Once the leadership team, speakers and participants arrive, we will have a full house with around 60 people staying here at Hope House. I

Fuzine (where we are staying) is a pretty small village (the estimated pop. is about 1300, including the surrounding area). But not to worry, it has a bank, post office, general store, pharmacy, fruit store and a few restaurants/cafes/bars and two atms!! There are also two lakes which are great for walking/running around and for fishing, boating and swimming. Apparently this region was a safe place for people of all ethic and religious backgrounds during the wars, so that was why it was chosen for ROM (so all the participants would feel safe, welcome, etc). The coast (Adriatic Sea) is only a half hour drive from here, and we are going to go next weekend during EDS as a day trip.

Overall, I'd say we're doing pretty good and getting excited for the conference to start this sunday!

Prayer Requests:
-that everything will get done in time for the conference (and that the computers will work, visas will arrive, the new photcopy machine will arrive)
-for friendships being made and team dynamics

Thanks!
Karuna

Orientation!!! Belfast Ireland

So Trevor and Camille proceeded to turn around and try to find the pot of gold and leprechaun at the end. They thought they would have better luck with that here in Ireland.

Us in front of the City Hall

Queens University

One of the murals that were created as a result of the troubles

The mile drive up to the Parliment Building

The tour of Belfast

Ok so we are doing some orientation before we go into some intense back to back camps. So here is a bit of what we have seen up to this point. Oh and we just met up with Malia Bushkirk and Laura Huysman, who are interns here from Seattle as well. They are former Ireland Deputees that have come back to work at some of the churches for a year. It was really great to get a different point of view from those that were former deputees and are still here. They had a different insight as to the "troubles" here and the evolution of it in the last couple years due to there involvement.

Phew! It's hot!

Hey Brandon!
We are safely here in Antalya enjoying amazing weather averaging
105-108 Fahrenheit! The trip here was great, with a couple of delays and a temporarily lost guitar that should be shipped to us via cargo tomorrow. I'll just give you a few of the highlights from our trip so
far:
Because of the delays on our way to Istanbul and the two hours spent filing a claim for the lost guitar, the driver who was SUPPOSED to pick us up and take us to an overnight hotel had left! So we found ourselves without transportation at 2:30 in the morning. THAT was fun!
A Turkish tour guide whose client hadn't showed up decided to help us out. He arranged to have his bus pick us up and even gave us a discounted price from what a taxi would have cost us! It ended up being the most fun I think possible for four exhausted travelers at 2:30am. He gave us a mini-tour of the city, taught us some Turkish, drove us by the Blue Mosque, and gave a short history lesson. We arrived safely at our hotel and slept like little lambs.
Sunday we traveled to Antalya without any problems and were met by Ben and Verna King at the airport. Upon walking off the plane onto the runway, I think all of us would agree that we felt like we were walking into the firey pits of Hell. It was 108 degrees and the wind was blowing really hard, yet had NO cooling effect whatsoever. Verna says its wind from the Sahara because it's not humid. Whatevs.
Perhaps the most amazing part of arriving in Antalya was discovering what our living arrangements would be like. It worked out that we could stay in the same apartment building as Verna's daughter, Karn, who would take good care of us. Karn's friend, Marco, lives upstairs from us, and took it upon himself to set up a flat worthy of Real World Antalya. He painted the walls, made us enormous curtains, found us linens, and even got us OUR OWN BATHROBES. We realize this sort of treatment is not typical of deputation, but we have no problem with it. ☺ Marco is getting a party this Friday with brownies and pasta but he doesn't know it yet.
Monday was spent getting a basic orientation of Turkish culture, buying groceries, and meeting some of the important people we'll be spending time with. Not before we spent five hours on a private beach comparable to "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants"! As to be expected, Lindsey Van Zanten managed to acquire a SECOND foot injury (of COURSE). This time she kicked her foot into an urchin while exploring caves along the coast. It was truly unforgettable because she spent the next hour getting spines dug out of her foot by one of the employees of the beach. I held her hand, Lindsey Morton was her backrest, and Dayna took lots of pictures and gave feedback. When it was all done we were practically celebrities because every new visitor would approach us, look at her foot, and murmur "oof", then watch the surgery in process for a few minutes. She is doing just fine now and is Our Little Soldier. We're very proud.
Today, (Tuesday?) we got a tour of the two facilities where we will be doing our volunteer work. First we went to the Kids Klub, where we will be teaching classes in English and helping with younger children as well. It was like a little kid's wonderland and we met a lot of the students who looked at us like we were freaky mutant people. We were introduced to our three "translators": Ozge (girl), Jamai, and Ahmed. They are 14 year-olds from a nearby school and are honestly CUTE AS PIE. Needless to say there is still an enormous language barrier. They will be helping us learn Turkish and communicate with our students, but we have yet to say one thing without a huge misunderstanding. It will just take some time.
After this we went to the Gorem Center and were introduced to the teachers and staff, then the students who are there for rehabilitation. They were incredibly nice to us and told us "while you are here the school is yours". It sounds like we will have a lot of autonomy in our schedules and be able to choose what sorts of classes and therapy we do. We're all very excited!
Right now we are trying to remain as motionless as possible because of the heat, but soon we will go on a hunt for ice cream. Tomorrow we start planning our curriculum and then the real work begins on Thursday. We want to thank everyone who is praying for us. This has truly been the best trip we could ask for, and it's hardly begun.
-Sara, on behalf of TEAM TURKEY!

A sketchy story but happy ending...

I arrived in Ireland yesterday evening after being detained in London immigration for 45 minutes!! I guess my story sounded a little sketchy since I didn't have any documentation, contact numbers, last names of the woman picking me up, or any idea of where I was staying. They finally decided against deporting me and let me pass after making sure my story was fully written down on my immigration card. The rest of the team arrived this morning and apparently had similar problems. I don't think the UK believes that we will be here for 2 months without getting paid and were especially suspicious because we were so uninformed about everything. Anyways we are here and just got back from a nice breakfast with Lois and Graham who both work for PCI.

This week is an orientation week and we are meeting with many of our leaders at different camps. We will have some time to tour Belfast this week and then we train down to Dublin to begin our first camp! It is cold here! We are hoping it will start warming up but were informed by many people on the plane that Ireland has about two weeks of summer where it might reach 70 and then it disapears before you know it!

Anyways there is our quick little update!

Kelly

Hey ALL!! Kelly is going to give an update, but just saying hey we're here in Ireland and loving it!! Thanks for all your prayers!!