Iceland-Part I

Last summer (‘07) I travelled with a friend from high school to Ghana in West Africa. For three weeks we lived in the Lighthouse Children’s Home mission compound, got to know the children that live at the Lighthouse, and explored Cape Coast and Abra Inside. I fell in love with the children there and when I got back to the States, I decided to pursue returning to Ghana to teach in the school Lighthouse was starting. It soon became evident that that was not going to happen. In a way, I was grateful because that would mean putting of college yet another year and I was already losing my motivation to continue my education. I did not, however want to spend another summer working at a mundane job. I wanted to do something fabulous before starting college.

So one particularly slow day at work, I googled “summer mission trips.” The very first link was summermissions.com. I clicked on it and found that it seemed to be a perfect way to spend my summer. Over the last year, I have discovered that children are my heart. It seemed that God was affirming this love as I read over the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) website and found that I could spend an entire summer ministering to kids. I read over the application and when I got home from work, I talked to my parents about the idea of a summer mission trip. They gave me their blessing so I started filling out the application.

When I first went on summermissions.com, I had looked over the list of destinations and decided on Iceland as my first choice, Ireland as my second. They had a whole list of African countries but it is my dream to return to Africa for an extended period of time in the future. Not to mention the fact that I had just been there. I’m not a huge fan of South America so I checked out the European destinations. There was Iceland. When I researched Iceland, I read that it was settled by the Vikings, has a huge waterfall (I think it’s the biggest in the world), volcanoes and glaciers. With CEF, I would be teaching Bible school at a summer camp in the mountains of Iceland. It sounded fun to me!

I have since been accepted to go on a summer mission trip with CEF. I have begun to raise funds and thanks to the many people who gave financially, I reached the April 10th goal deadline of 25% of funds raised. On June 6th, I leave for two weeks of child evangelism training in Missouri. From Missouri, my teammate and I leave for four weeks of ministry in Iceland.

I am very excited about this summer. Already, I have seen God working and providing for my needs. I can hardly wait to see what He will do next.