I have less than 12 hours left in the USA....

It's been a crazy time of packing, packing and repacking and cleaning and more cleaning. My leaders led the entire DTS to my room this evening to show everyone an example of a not clean room. They pointed out everything that was not clean; the refrigerator was hanging open and askew in the center of the room (the major ice chunk of a freezer was being defrosted, and unfortunately resulted in Noah's flood all over the floor), my bag had exploded (I needed to get something out from the bottom of it).... But hey, in my defense, who wants to clean earlier than they have too? They wanted us to have the entire dorms spick and span by Saturday morning, but we wouldn't be leaving until Monday. That's all of Saturday and all of Sunday I'd spend making more messes and cleaning them, only to make more messes and then cleaning those too, and ultimately making even more messes and then waking up early Monday morning to finally, ultimately, superbly clean the place spotless.

Why not just clean everything spotless Sunday night?

I think its a conspiracy, seriously. Our leaders keep dangling phrases like, "You need to get used to this, because this is how it's going to be on outreach" or "On outreach it's going to be so much worse" or "This is nothing compared to outreach." They've actually done a few "events" to get us used to the idea of whatever this "outreach" is supposed to be. On Saturday, we had to get our fully packed bags (yes, fully, entirely packed... like we're leaving for outreach that day, when in reality we still had two days left) and march down the road to the flag poles and back. Why? Because, "This is nothing compared to outreach."

Recently, our leaders have actually become more and more cryptic when we ask them questions. "Just do it," they say, "because on outreach we wont have time to explain why." Um... if you haven't noticed, we're still in Salem, Oregon. We haven't gone anywhere yet and you have plenty of time to tell me why. Sheesh. Why do people have to practice obscurity? It'll bug me plenty when I'm overseas, so please, please don't start now.

It will be so nice when we actually leave. Practicing leaving and practicing being on outreach stinks.

We're finally heading out tomorrow morning at 10. Our flight to Frankfurt and then on to Baku leaves at 1 pm. I don't know if I'll actually be any happier tomorrow than I am now... and I'm not all that happy now. Honestly, I'm dreading traveling with a team. I'm a bit better now than I was last week, but I'm still pessimistic. My team is young, untraveled, given to fits of immaturity and prone to selfishness. The last two probably describe everyone on the planet including myself.... Hmm... Anyway, I hope we all learn a lot and that this trip is not going to be one continual session on how to get along. Hopefully in there somewhere we can actually do ministry and help others.

It's going to be hard having leaders, too. I've been on my own for so long. The past three months, we've all been pretty much left to do as we want within certain flexible guidelines. But now I'm kissing my freedom goodbye. My leaders will be telling me what do to, where to go and taking the overall wellbeing of us as a team over what I know I could do. It's like going back to kindergarten as a twelve year old.

I need patience. I need to be optimistic. I need to see my teammates for the awesome, powerful, gifted people that they could be and now are, to an extent. I need to believe in who they are and could be. I need to see the best in them and encourage them to be that. I need to sacrifice my own selfishness and my own wants and think about what's best for the team. I need to be wise in discussing my experience and knowledge about overseas living and travel so I don't take the joy of discovery away from them.

It's going to be hard, but I'm excited too. It's another adventure waiting to happen. Another two countries on my list of places I've been. Another culture, another people, different food, different language. Now that's exciting!! When I think about all those things, I get thrilled. Different climate, different smells, different, different. I can’t wait..

But please pray for me. I've listed out four major prayer requests on my ministry blog. I'll try posting more but I'm not sure how available the internet connection's going to be. Hopefully I'll post little progress reports as I go. I'm disconnecting myself from my computer so I'm probably not going to be able to post any pictures as well. Sad but true....

Bon voyage!