In the Past Week

I'm not keeping up worth he blogs very well but I'm doing okay...ish with the vlogs. Enjoy the latest on the last week if ministry.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=c4-feed-u&v=ghEgHjRvadY

An update at last!

I'm so sorry that the blog updates have stopped. I must say doind a 5 minute vlog update is a lot easier than writing out everything...and quicker.  I can't remember what the last blog entry was so I may repeat myself bit bear with me :) 

At the moment I'm living with a host family that has 2 host brothers and 2 host sister and well as a mom and a dad.  Their house is huge and so beautiful (see the house tour vlog to see for yourself) and I can guess what some of you are thinking. "I thought she was supported to be on a missions trip and she's living at a house with a pool." But you have to understand that the reason that we are staying with people from a local church who are wealth is because we are supposed to bridge the gap. By telling our host families about our day in the squatter camp 15 minutes away from them hopefully they will see the need and opportunity to get involved. I think it's also preparing me for coming home. Going from sleeping in luxury to working in Olievenhoutbosch where the houses are made of tin and wire will help me when I go home to a Christmas season that the western world has made  all about gifts and food and excess.  So let me reassure you that I am on a missions trip. 

Working in Olieven has been very different from Pomfret but not in a bad way. When the team was in Pomfret I was the head of the work team. In this team we would find things that needed done. We helped in the vegetable tunnels, we cleaned up garbage and tried to fix the broken things around the Echo base, children's home and the house we were staying in. It could e rather challenging do to our lack of materials. In the last few days we made a connection with Pedro, a man who was trying to start a clinic (the only on for km in the area).  We were able to help him the first day by making and pouring concrete to make a platform for him to put his water tank on. The next few days we helped him out up the ceiling in the clinic. It was hard work but supper rewarding. I wish we could have done more to help but sadly we ran out of time. In Pomfret we were much more IN the community. We could walk to the store at 9:30 at night. We would walk the streets and play with the kids in our front yard. In Olieven we stay in the gated areas of the community centre, old age home, disability center and school. Which is different but again not bad. My first two weeks in Olieven I spent at the disability center and I loved it! We did crafts with buttons for hours at a time and got to play with the kids. I met this one girl names De. She's blind and has a mental disability. Because she's blind when the other kids go by she hears them and would grab on to them and get a very strong hold on them. They would cry and push De to make her let go. So one day I wet and sat with we and held her hands. Then I started to shake her arm while going "dudududa" and she loved it. She would laugh and if a stopped she would try and get my hand to shake again. By the last day she would recognize my voice. I could say "hi De" and she would get all excited. This little girl truly stole my heart and it was so hard to leave her on that last day. The school was a change of pace. The days go so much quicker. In the morning I would teach class when the teacher didn't want to then we would have break and go back to the classroom for half and hour. Following that u would leave and got to the kitchen for devotions with the after school care staff. Then we would prepare for the afternoon, setting up what would need set up and have lunch. We would then play with the kids till it was time to go home. This week there was a lot of Christmas parties and activities. It was so much fun! I could tell you a million stories about this week alone. Sadly I don't have time for that :/ we also got to have a Christmas party with the grannies at the community centre and we got to have some good conversations and singing with the people at the old age home. I can't believe I'll be leaving South Africa in 15 days! And I'll be home in 20!! I really do miss my family. I can't wait to sit with them and tell them all my stories. I can't wait to give them a hug and share meals with them again. There have been some hard days were all I want is a hug from my mom but even those days don't seem so bad in hindsight. God has been doing some amazing things in my life. I feel like I understand His will for my life and what my "career" is meant to be. I've grown so much closer with Him even though at times he seemed silent. I'm more in love with Him than I've ever been in my life and I can't wait to love Him more. Well there we have it! An update at last!   

A Greeting from South Africa

After around 26 hours of traveling and a 17 1/2 hour flight the whole team is staff and sound in South Africa. Everything about this Country is beautiful! I guess the romance of it all will wear off sooner or later. It's so nice to be in a country that uses Celsius and Kilometers for starters. I can actually tell you what the temperature is and know what it means! (at the moment it's 26 degrees) Today is our day of rest to fight off the jet lag before we start training tonight and all of tomorrow and the next day. On the day after that next day we will be traveling to Pomfret and stay there until mid November. I have added two more blogs to Youtube but it's so hard to get them uploaded at all that I will not be putting all of them on the blog. To see all my vlog videos y'all (a term I'm picked up from the Americans on my team) will have to go to my youtube channel. you can find my youtube channel by typing "chewieImaon" into the youtube search or by using this link: http://www.youtube.com/user/ChewieImaon 

The October 4th Update

http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=em-upload_owner&v=AZJ199XXGC0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DAZJ199XXGC0%26feature%3Dem-upload_owner

Another vlog. This ones longer than most. I did this one last night and today is my last full day in North America for 84 days or something like that. Hope you enjoy the update.

The Tour of the House

http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=no9TRxmoqHY&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dno9TRxmoqHY%26feature%3Dyoutube_gdata_playerhttp://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=no9TRxmoqHY&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dno9TRxmoqHY%26feature%3Dyoutube_gdata_player

Day 2 in Fort Wayne

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xq4W-VcZxFE&feature=c4-feed-u

Here it is! A video straight from Fort Wayne, Indian (not Illinois) hope you enjoy feel free to leave a comment about what you want to hear about. Sadly the video will not upload so you'll have to click a button to see it, work I know but it's SO worth it! ;)

35 days till departure.

So I've discovered I'm not much clearer in explaining things over video either.  Oh well. So the communities I mentioned are Olievenhoutbosch and Pomfret. Another thing I forgot to say in the video is that when in Olievenhoutbosch I will have access to Internet once a week so I'll be able to keep you updated but while in Pomfret Internet access will be rather limited so you won't hear from me all that often. Also just to clarify on the part of the video I thought was most unclear in Olievenhoutbosch we will be staying with host families outside of the squatter. The reason why we are living outside of the squatter because of the dangers that are inside of the squatter camp. And other thing to clarify we will start out in the States for a few days then go to South Africa, spend about 4 weeks in Olievenhoutbosch, about 4 weeks in Pomfret, a few days back in the Olievenhoutbosch area, a few days in the States and finally home on the 20th of December. Also I realize that a hospice is not an old age home, oops. Oh and for all those wondering it will be a 20 hour flight to South Africa.  

The first of the Vlogs

Here it is the first of the vlogs...Hopefully this is better than my writing :)

Making Connections

Today my team and I had our first conference call and it was great! I'm so excited to get to meet these people in person because hopefully it won't be so awkward. I feel like when your on the phone and can't see the people's faces it's much harder to tell when people are going to talk, therefore less overlapping voices and awkward "wait for it" pauses. Anyways, got A LOT of information about where we'll be going and what we need to have prepared before we South Africa. Most of the info we were told was about travel and medical stuff. So far their are 10 people on my team, 7 girls, 3 boys. We're all coming for different walks of life, there are 2 married couples coming, a few people taking a semester off from college and others coming straight from high school. In 59 days I'll be leaving and get to meet them all in person and I can't wait! But while I'm waiting I'm keeping busy by babysitting 40 hours a week and working on becoming a certified Lifeguard. In the next few days I plan to book my airplane tickets to and from Fort Wayne. I'll be leaving on the 29th of September and coming back on the 20th of December. That's an 82 day adventure!
More to come when more happens

The Moon in June

As I end my last week of school as a high school student the idea that I'm really going on this missions trip is beginning to become real. I have 84 days until my full amount of money is due and I'm so close! Just a few more dollars and I'll have enough not only the $7,000 for the missions trip but for the added expenses of travel insurance, flights and such as well. What else is there to say? I'm preparing for my final diploma exams of high school and gearing up for the summer. I don't have a official job for the summer and in all honesty I'm so happy. Instead I get to help out at both Salem Acres Bible Camp as well as Crowsnest Lake Bible Camp for the month of July. In August I'll be nannying for one of the kids I currently babysit on a regular bases. A few weeks of summer are still up in the air which is a new experience for me but I'm positive I'll end up where I need to be. Some sad news is that one of my dear friends was planning to come with me to South Africa but she was not accepted into the program. The whole situation could have been handle better by Experience Missions and for the first time I started to doubt whether this missions trip was the right one for me. I even went as far as to look into what steps could be taking for me to choose a different missions organization. But after I took time to calm down, God and I talked it over I know that even though the organization didn't accept my friend and got her hopes up before they told her she couldn't come I know that this is what I'm meant to do. Finding God's will has been one of my big struggles in the past months. I'm the type of person who likes all her ducks in a row. I like to know where I'm going what I'm doing. No surprises. When all my ducks aren't in a row I'm not a very patient person. So when I'm told to "wait and pray" It's often very hard for me. I want to take action and have everything decided and in place. I'm all for spontaneity when it's something that's a small potato like going out for a movie last minute. But when it's a big potato like whether or not to quiet my job I find I often try to give God a deadline. So I'm working on that and God's teaching me some good but hard lessons through it.
No Q&As for this post, but feel free to leave a comment if you've got a question about anything.
-Naomi

Yard Sale

UPDATE: At the Yard Sale today I made $786.04 which is so much more than I expected. I want to give a big THANK YOU for all those who helped out today. As cliché as it is I couldn't have done it without you. Thank you to all those who donated and came out today. It was a beautiful day.

Exciting News

Yesterday I was commended by my church, Northside Bible Fellowship. Basically what this means is that they support my decision to go to South Africa and will be accountable to me just as I will be accountable to them. They will support me both financially and in prayer. Northside has set me up with a prayer partner and expect me to keep them up to date with what's happening in my life in regards to South Africa. At first the reason I was getting commended was so that there would be a way for Canadians to donate to me through Northside and still get a tax receipt since I'm going to South Africa with an American organization, but now it's grown into something much more meaningful. When this whole process first started I googled what it meant to be commended by the church and this was one of the coolest descriptions:

 A commending, which is distinct from ordination to church office, is the solemn recognition of a person as set apart for a particular work of ministry.

I believe that in this description they are talking about commissioning a pastor rather than commending a 'missionary' but it still stuck in my mind. I like the idea of being 'set apart' for something specific. I don't know if I'll be a full time missionary when I get older or not but I believe that all of us are 'set apart' for work in ministry where ever we are, whether that means going overseas or simply going to the office. Everyday we can be ambassadors for Christ representing him in the way we live our lives.

Some more exciting news is that I might have a good friend coming with me to South Africa! She is still in the application process and has run into some difficulties already but hopefully she'll be able to come as well. That would be so amazing. Though I'm fine with going by myself it's always nice to have something familiar with you, that and this friend is such a blessing to my life it would be magnificent if we could share this experience together.

So I know that I'm not following the normal two question format but I really can't think of anymore questions so I'm going for a new format. I will still have questions each entry but they may end up being the same questions each time, so here they are:

1. How far away are you from your goal?
Well, physically I'm 15732.6 km away from South Africa. Financially I'm $2,173 away for my goal. Compared to the original amount it seems small but it's still a lot money left to raise. If I had 217, 300 more pennies I could reach South Africa financially. physically it would take around 82,803,160 pennies laid out flat to get from here to South Africa.

2. How can I pray for you?
Some prayer request would be:

• That my yard sale on May 4th would be successful in raising funds
• That my friend will be able to come with to South Africa as well
• That the team that ends up going to South Africa bonds really when and is unified.  

Well, that's all folks. More to come I'm sure, just stay tuned in.

The April Addition

Well, I'm not sure what other question I could answer. I think I've covered my 5 Ws so I just I'll just come up with a question...Okay I've got one or two.

5. What are you going to do after your trip?

I will be getting back from my trip in December 2013. I plan to work until summer then I'm open to anything. I've always thought that I would become a nurse but now I'm not so sure. I dream of mine would be to do the COLTS program at Crowsnest Lake Bible Camp next summer, but again I'm not sure. It's God's call, not mine and right now I'm don't really feel that He's pulling me in any one direction. To answer the question, after my trip to South Africa I plan to work and then go into college or university for some program and maybe do the COLTS program in between.

6. Tell us about how you're preparing for this trip? (but feel free to go off on random tangents)

At the moment most of my preparation for this trip consists of raising money and praying. At first my big income was people buying my crafts but now that has died down so my main income for this trip consists of babysitting money as well as my salary from my job at Target. I have also applied for a summer job at a camp which I'm really excited for assuming I get the job. Another (hopefully) big source of income will be from the yard sale I'll be having in May, which I am also excited for. As for prayer, I'm praying for anything and everything for this trip, mostly I've been praying for unity in the team that is going. I've been on a missions trips where there was discord between some of the team members. I found it was really hard to show God's love when there was little love within the team. I've also been praying for the families we'll be staying with and the people we'll meet and so many other things.

There we have it. Two more questions finished. But I'm seriously running out of questions, I don't know what you guys want to know about (assuming anyone is really reading this) So let me know if you have a question for me no matter how random.

How to Donate

For those who don't know and would like to donate this is how:

A) Step 1: Go to www.experiencemission.org and click on the Donate link located in the top navigation bar.
Step 2: Select the large Sponsor a Volunteer box.
Step 3: Select one of the two options to Sign In.
Step 4: Complete the Sponsor a Volunteer process. (You will need my User Id which is NHIL1002.)

B) Order a toque, crocheted item or one of the many other crafts I'm making to help raise money.

C) Donate your stuff you no longer need to my garage sale which will be on May 4th at Northside Bible Fellowship Church (2911 Edmonton Trail NE, Calgary, AB)

D) Ask me to Babysit

If you have any questions just send me an email at naomi.hills1@gmail.com

Another Day, Another Post

3. What makes you think God is calling you on this trip?

If I could answer this question in one word it would be peace, but I'll expand on that. I know that God is calling me to go on this trip because I feel peace when ever I think about going. The first response I usually get when I tell people I'm going to South Africa is "be careful." South Africa is known as a dangerous place. I was told that Johannesburg airport is ranked as the most dangerous airport in the world, I don't know if this is true but I find that I'm not afraid either way. I've heard my 'horror' stories about South Africa. I've heard about how people will slice open your backpack and take your things or just kill you for your backpack. I've heard how if you stop at a red light there is a high chance that you'll be car jacked and so many other stories. But I don't feel any fear about going. I feel complete peace. When ever someone mentions a story like that I simply think well if that happens to me it's God's will. I know that I'm meant to go on this trip because of the peace I feel in this decision.

4.  What will you be doing for the three months that you will be in South Africa?

To be honest, I couldn't tell you. This program does has a set schedule. The goal of the Immersion Program is to develop leaders who ask the hard questions about God, themselves and humankind. As cultural lines become blurred and authentic friendships are formed, they hope that every team member will get a clearer picture of Gods unique purpose for their life and how they should live out this mission in a way that serves others. In other words for three months I will be serving others. Whether that means getting involved in children's ministries or building a house we will be there to do it. We will move from community to community and serve them in what ever way we can. This is one of the things I loved about this program because I believe that God will take us to amazing places because we're letting Him lead, not a set schedule.
 

The First of Many

I find this a little weird writing about stuff in my life that anyone can read. I mean I'm used to writing letters where I know who I'm writing to so I can be silly or sarcastic and I know they'll understand it even if it's on paper. I guess what I'm trying to say is bear with me in these next few months as I get excited about my trip and eventually go on it and that I find it weird to be writing to no one and everyone at the same time. Throughout these months I plan to answer two questions with each post (so I can acutely have something to talk about) but once I'm in South Africa I'll probably foprget the questions and just tell you what's happening. So, question 1...

1. What is worrying you the most about this trip?

Well, there is always fear of the unknown so that’s a minor worry right now, e.g. what will it be like, who will be on my team and other factors like that that I'm in the dark about. Another worry is the danger of the country, many people have warned me about the crime rates of South Africa but I trust that God will keep me safe or teach me something when I'm in danger. A more major concern is money; with only 75 days until $1400 is due for the missions trip little pockets of doubt are beginning to pop up in my mind about if I will be able to raise enough. I'm always amazing at the generosity of people. I know that I'll have support and have had support. But I also feel like this is going to be a lot more work than the past mission trips. I'm not complaining, I'm willing to put in the work to be able to go, but it's a lot of money to raise. You see the $7000 is the cost I have to pay the organization, it doesn't include my flight to and from New York (where I'll be flying out of and into before and after the trip) vaccinations and other things that I'll need to take with me. So that's a...well not really a worry but more of a concern. Needless to say a lot of prayer is going into and has gone into this trip. I know that if God wants me on this trip , which I feel he truly does, the money will come.

2. Why this trip?

I knew that I wanted to take a year off before jumping back into school. I also knew that in this year off I wanted to go on a long term mission trip so I started looking around. First I looked at the well-known organizations, such as YWAM and OM, but none of them really fit. Either they would start before I turned 18, which is the required age for most long term missions, the date wouldn't work or I wouldn't like the program. I then started Googling mission trips and I came across a few great organizations, one of them being Experience Missions. Slowly after reading into the organizations and getting more info I had it narrowed down to Experience Missions and one other trip. After praying about it for a while I felt that Experience Missions was the trip the I was being called to, I then applied and after an interview I was accepted. So to answer the question I choose this trip because it fit with what I wanted to do, I didn't just want to go into 'the field' each day and come out I wanted to be immersed in the culture and this program lets me do that.

Okay, two questions down! I'll be sure to continue to answer questions and update you on my progress in the coming months before I leave for South Africa. If you have any specific question just comment below and I will try to answer them.