Departure Date Confirmed!

Much has changed since I wrote the first blog. Details have come together, after quite an emotional week last week, I was informed of my arrival date in Tanzania today. I will be leaving Monday October 20, 2008 and will arrive in Dar es Salam to spend a week with Margaret who is staff of CRWRC. She will orient me to the culture and learn more about what the organization is doing in Tanzania right now. Then we will fly to Mwanza, which is where I will be volunteering and meet up with the partner, African Inland Church of Tanzania, to arrange accommodations and finalize details with my work permit.

After much prayer from family and friends, I begin to prepare with confidence in the Lord. I have three weeks to get final details accomplished and say good bye to close friends and family. The encouragement that I have received over the last few months has been overwhelming especially in relation to my support raising. I was blessed to have a job this summer and I got to know many of the staff and residents at the retirement home I worked at. The last week I was there, they had a raffle for my trip, raising several hundred dollars, Praise the Lord! One situation while I was working touched my heart and I will never forget it. There was a resident who had take a lot of time since he moved to Sunrise earlier in the year to become involved in a spiritual way. He was actively involved in the Bible Study and always interested in how people were doing. I shared my fundraising profile with another resident and she passed it on to this man. The Lord worked in an incredible way that just a day before this resident suffered massive haemorrhage in his brain, he donated to my trip. I was working over the weekend and we were supporting him through palliative care and comforting his family. I went home and received an email update on my funds and it showed that he donated. I was in shock to see his name on the list and that he gave, supporting my efforts in going overseas. He would never know how he affected my trip, what an inspiration he had been to so many people and now one more. I was able to say thank you to him in the last hours of his life as he passed away just a week after his stroke, and know that he is going to be watching over me and supporting me while I am gone. Thank you Jim.

This picture is of the sign that the staff at Sunrise created to raise funds for my trip. Thanks everyone!

Please continue to pray that the next several weeks will be filled with good memories, good conversation and good worship of the One who controls it all. The One who hears every prayer and every cry. Our Father who provides in every circumstance.

“I love the Lord because He hears my voice and my prayer for mercy. Because He bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath ... And so I walk in the Lord’s presence as I live here on earth,” Psalm 116

Please email me or give me a call before I leave, I would love to connect with you. If you are available to come out we will be having a Farwell Party on Saturday October 11th, 2008 at 5pm in Markham at our new house. If you want more details and would like to come to send me off, please email me asap.

God bless and farewell.

Erin