one day till blastoff

Hey Everyone!

{prolouge (or however you spell it). I am saying sorry ahead of time for my poor usage of the beautious english language. I dont know how much time i will have to edit this or posts to come, so bear with me. And here's a smile for along the way :)}

[Now for the normall proceedings]

I just woke up and am about to run into town to drop by the Bring Me Hope office and to get an Hepatitus A shot. Hopefully i make it throught the shot without wringing the shot-giver's neck; im not that good at taking shots.

Besides that, my day looks like this:

#1 Pack all my junk (it's good junk, dont worry) into my "suitcases". My suitcases are ending up being two Large Blue Rubbermaid Roughneck Bins.

#2 look at my list and realize that i still dont have a lot of the things i need, as well as realize that i need to return some stuff to the store

#3 Go shopping (i dont think iv'e ever been shopping as much as i have this last week; i think i counted about 7 times)

#4 Think constantly about tomorrow, worry, get more excited, etc.

#5 do something with family and/or friends tonight.

On another note, i wanted to say thank you again. There have been so many times in the past few weeks where i felt like either dancing or screaming or crying or all three. This would happen when someone would say they were praying for me/us, and i knew they would. It would also happen when we would learn that someone had donated more money. I never ever ever even hoped to recieve the support you all have chosen to give us. I can't tell you how encouraging and humbling it has been. It makes me want to use my time and the money well, and to never waste any of it. Even now, thinking about it, i feel like crawling into a hole and then at the same time i feel like jumping up and down and running around wildly giving people hugs. i think im gonna do that now...

there, i did it, minus the crawling into the hole part. My little Bro and Sis were kinda surprised. :)

And so, we say thanks, as tomorrow the first part of us will leave (that would be me, Swammi). Actually, correction: early Wednesday morning at about one-ish o'clock am, i (along with the bolts and kristen and others) will be departing from LAX. But we will be leaving our home base here in Fallbrook tomorrow evening.

I'll try to post tomorrow; perhaps as i am waiting at the airport i can snap some pics of the first wave from san diego.

Your fellow servants,

samuel and tricia (and pete)

p.s. As many if not all of you know, peter has had a change of plans and will not be able to make it to china this summer. It's sad for tricia and I and all of us but we are excited at the same time for him.

this is about where you can stop reading unless you want to

p.p.s. As probably almost none of you know, just for fun, peter, a cou8ple of my other friends, and i havent been eating sugary foods or anything sweet or deserty or chokolaty (i know i spell chokolate wrong, its just one of my things) for a few weeks. SO, this all ends tomorrow, and we will be celebrating our freedom to eat all things chokolate by eating something really chokolatey.

The first post

I am sitting here thinking about how to write this. I could start it with the traditional “dear family and friends, etc”, or I could make it super informal and all.

But since I’m really not all that talented at writing, I’ll keep it simple.

As you probably know, Peter, Tricia, and yours truly (that’d be me, Swami, Samuel, Sammy, Sam; whatever you please as long as it starts with an S and is masculine) are going to the People’s Republic this summer with Bring Me Hope (their website is bringmehope.org). I’ll give a quick preview of the broad happenings that will hopefully occur.

Pete and I will be leaving on the second of July, missing Independence Day here by a couple days. I guess we’ll have to watch the fireworks in China (I’ve heard they have fireworks a lot over there).

Anyways, Pete and I will swing through Beijing airport and take a left turn down to Nanchang. We’ll spend a couple days there and go to Harry and Mary’s wedding (Harry’s one of the translators from last year). Then we’ll hop back on the jet to Beijing and hang there for the remaining 6-and-a-half weeks.

Midway into July, the first gang of kids is going to show up in Beijing (the first camp in Nanchang will have started the previous week). I’m sure I’m not going to be able to handle it all; I guess that’s why we trust in God, right?

The last week of July, Tricia is gonna pop out of that 747 along with her traveling companions and join the club. For 2 weeks she’ll be buddies with orphans.

After Tricia leaves, swami and Peety are going to hang out there for another couple 3 weeks. I (it’s still me, Sam) am going to be zooming back here on Saturday, August 16^th, the day after the last camp ends. Pete (as far as I know) will take off a few days following that.

As I learn details, I will put them up here so you can swim through my messes of words more often. J

Like I said above, I personally really have no idea how this is going to impact me. I just hope I am able to be what God wants me to be through this trip. Peter has been to china twice so far, and this is Tricia’s and my first time.

Thank you so VERY much all of you who are supporting us financially and through your prayers. It has been immensely encouraging and exciting for us to begin this experience along with you all.

Again, thanks and we’re gonna be putting way too many pictures on here. Get ready!by the way this is my family up at a cabin this last december- we kinda have weird faces in this picture