Wednesday, July 23, 2008

It's official

Well everyone, it's official. I purchased my flight to Costa Rica last night and got a fabulous deal on it. Brian and I will be flying together on September 20. This is a little later than I'd originally planned, but it will give me extra time to save up money and take care of business in WI.

In addition to some teaching in English and math, we'll be helping to coordinate with short-term mission teams from the U.S. to come down to the project and serve. I'm really looking forward to this portion of my service, not only becasue the people from the U.S. will speak English :) but also because I know that God prepared me for this role. By leading me to organize the mission trip from Hopkins in January, God taught me what goes into planning such a trip and exactly what responsibilities fall on the team leader. I will be a better contact and facilitator for having planned a trip myself.

August 1 is the closing date for the house I grew up in. We've been very busy packing, selling, and moving things to relatives' houses and storage units.

I currently work at a pump manufacturer in Hartland, WI called Hartmann Controls. I'm an engineering intern and I do whatever they ask of me! I've been learning how to put together pumps, how to run some of the different machines, and how to package, label, and ship the pumps. I'm writing "work instructions" (powerpoint files with step by step instructions and pictures) for some of these tasks - so that in busy times they can hire temps to help out.

On Tuesdays I go to a class at Mt Zion Lutheran on apologetics. It's one of my favorite things to learn about because of how trendy it is to be an atheist in academia. Apologetics teaches how to defend the gospel (the death and resurrection of Christ for our sins) against the attacks of the secular and pluralistic world we live in today. The truth is, the historical and archaeological evidence is insurmountable. To deny that Jesus did and said everything in the Bible would require one to deny so much history that by the same arguments persons such as Julius Caesar could also be "proved" not to exist. It's extremely interesting and makes me with I could pull out my copy of "Mere Christianity" right now.

That's all I have for now. I'll update at least once more before I leave for Costa Rica.
Could everyone also please pray for my dad?

Thanks for the love and support!
-Julie