Gettin' Real Real Close!

We apologize in advance for the long post... we just have so much some major stuff going on that we would like to share with you! Lots of pictures, lots of info!


This past Sunday we started our Missions Retreat, which was established to help us relax from the stresses of school and to be focused on our upcoming journey! The retreat, which included all of the mission teams, actually started this past Sunday at the A&M church building. We started at 3 p.m. with a couple of hours of group time devoted to anything that needed to get done. Since we'll be hosting a three day kid's camp for all of the missionary kids during the Peruvian Missionary Summit we needed to complete our materials for the kids since we will be having them for most of the day . Luckily, we had the genius of Sara Davidson and Jenny Christian who are experts in the field of anything kids. They gave us great insight and practically spoon fed our plans and materials so that even we couldn't mess up the upcoming summit! After that, we went to the Sunday night chapel service and had dinner with the church elders and their wives. One awesome thing about the dinner was that the meal consisted of red beans, rice and tortillas. This helped us open our eyes since that is mainly what the rest of the world lives off of. After getting a blessing from the elders, we devoted a couple more hours to kid's camp prep and had a good night's rest for the next day. Monday morning, we gathered back at the church to start a mini camping trip to Bastrop State Park, which is about 80 miles away. With great spirit, we "hiked" with all of our gear, including tents, lawn chairs, and our team food, which Trent and David so greatly coordinated for the next three meals to our camping site. We were in the perfect spot since it made it seem like we were the only ones there and since it had recently rained, the burn ban had been lifted which meant campfires and smores for us! The rest of the day was filled with great bonding activities. There were games, such as "Dragon Tag" (Traci was definitely the best at this) and one where we had to keep a balloon up in air with only our breath. By far the most amazing and unforgettable part (although everything was pretty amazing) was late Monday night when our team sat by a campfire, surrounded by God's creation and under the stars and sang some of our favorite songs and shared our faith stories, or our Christian walk in our young adult lives. God really showed us His love and how truly blessed we are to have this team that night. On Tuesday morning, we had breakfast and packed up. Two of the teams (Thailand and yours truly), went to another state park not far away to go kayaking for a bit while the other two teams (Africa and Cambodia) stayed behind. The trip concluded with a stop at the famous Roadhouse Restaurant across from the state park. Here are some highlights, copyrights to Kelly Davidson and his awesome new camera!

Prep Time with the great Jenny Christian

Our team campsite. We're pretty sure everyone was a bit jealous that we had enough lawn chairs for each person.

Beautiful.

This picture will attempt to explain Dragon Tag. Think of the games "amoeba" and "capture the flag" mixed.

One of the two balloon games.

Aggies For Christ- Summer Missions '11

Alex and Enoc helping out with breakfast.

Part of the gang on our way to do some kayaking! Not pictured: David who was our driver, and Traci, who probably took the picture.

We're ready and pumped for South America!

At Bastop's famous Roadhouse Restaurant.

Trenton.


While mostly everyone left to go home, Alicyn and Enoc ended up staying in town. This was perfect since we actually still needed to pick up our passports with our new Brazilian visas. If you can recall, we went a couple of weeks ago to the Brazilian consulate to get the visas. After we left, we got a call telling us that they were done. Seeing as they only do visa pickups from noon to 1 p.m. on weekdays, we couldn't find an opportune time to go until now. When we went, the same nice lady who attended us remembered us and told us how she was actually worried about us since we had not picked up our passports! We were in and out in a flash. Here's a pic of Alicyn inside the Consulate with our Brazil-ready passports!

To the right of her is the Brazilian flag and to the left is President Dilma Vana Rousseff.

Since our plane departure is early early Tuesday morning, we've decided to leave from College Station after dinner on Monday evening and spend the night at the airport since we have to check in around 2 a.m. We are so blessed to finally be at the start of our missionary journey. Thank you all soooo soooo much for your prayers and support! Please tune in to see what God has in store for us and the people of Peru and Brazil.

With love,

The Few