I’m back from Crossings with my middle school girls and it was an incredible week! I really expected it to be a great week for the students and just something fun for me to do, but it was incredible how much God hit me with during the week as well. The message was incredible, all about going “Beyond” your own ability and it was applicable to the middle school students, the high schoolers, and the adults. It was a great catalyst for my summer and my trip!

Everything seems to be coming together well for my trip. I leave for the beach tomorrow with my family, so then when I get back it will really be crunch time. But I wanted to go ahead and post about email while I have a few minutes. I don’t know what the internet access is like over there (my friend Kelly seems to be able to update her blog from Mozambique fairly often…) but they have given me some tips that should help. First and foremost, I have a new email address for the trip- bjohns723@gmail.com Internet access is charged by the minute, so I will be getting on, downloading my emails onto a flash drive, and then reading/replying to them later. So anything that will allow for a faster download is what we are going for here.

- Please set e-mail format to “plain text” rather than HTML or RTF format if possible or just make sure to use a standard font, no color, underlining, etc.
- Don’t hit reply to my emails, just start a new message; same goes for forwarding
- If the email is larger than 40 kilobytes (I have no idea how big that is, it’s just what they tell me)- please break it into two pieces and send
- Make sure antivirus software is up-to-date

I think that’s it, pretty easy stuff. Please, please don’t let those keep you from sending me emails. You have no idea how much it will encourage me to hear from home!

Finally, I have a little more info to answer the most common question "Is it safe there?!" Many are worried about travelers being attacked or the killings when Idi Amin was in power in the 70’s, but I have assured by the FIMRC staff and previous volunteers that the project site is very safe. The current government is much more democratic and civil than the previous, and the country has been relatively stable with little war during the past couple decades. The conflict that has occurred has been in the north along the Sudanese border, but over the past 3 years this has been mostly resolved with little trouble. Plus, I’m going to be in the south the whole time. FIMRC has given us many precautionary measures and as far as disease goes, I have had more shots and pills than I can count. Of course, prayers for safety during my travel and stay are still needed, but hopefully this will set some of your minds at ease. Again, I’ll end with some prayer requests. Let me know if there is something I have left out that you want to know! I’m working on getting this to update to Facebook as well…

Prayer Requests
-That the middle school students will carry what they learned this week into their everyday lives and continue to dig deeper
- My friend, Kelly, in Mozambique working with Iris Ministries for 11 weeks!
- Molly, another volunteer, as she packs and prepares
- My parents
-Travel and preparation- and those from the earlier post!

In Him, Becky