God's Word. Every Child.

Hello! Hope this finds you well. It is getting to be the end of our training week here in Fort Lauderdale and we are gearing up to leave Tuesday afternoon for Johannesburg!! One more day here at the office~ We are all very very very excited. :) This week has been pretty full. Our days start around 8:30am with breakfast and usually end around 9pm.... followed by some hang out time. So yes, it has been quite busy, but I'm still enjoying every bit of it.

Yesterday we got a tour through the BoH home office where a little over 100 employees work in your typical office-cubicle environment. I was surprised to see how similar BoH is structured to your average company.... HR, Finance, Global Relations, Communications, etc. The office is full of pictures telling the story of BoH~ from the very first child impacted in El Salvador, to the 100 millionth child, to the 250 millionth child, to the 500 millionth child. This year BoH is gearing up to touch 70 million more lives with the Word of God. I'm excited to play a role in reaching this goal!

We have been meeting with many Book of Hope leaders- hearing stories, experiences, and learning the heartbeat of this organization.... sharing Jesus with children around the world. Probably my favorite part of this week so far was a night out with the BoH Pres, Rob Hoskins, and his wife. What an amazing couple! Not only were they inspirational people - but also genuine, down-to-earth, funny, normal people. Rob had me cracking up most of the night... while his wife Kim wanted everyone's email addresses and was jotting down notes to herself during dinner of things we enjoyed (in a non-creepy way- haha). It was precious. I asked Rob how many countries he had traveled to and he answered that he stopped counting after 150. So yes, we heard quite a few incredible stories.

Well Tuesday is the big day. We fly out of Miami to Atlanta where we will board a 19 hr direct flight to Johannesburg. Yikes. Once we get to South Africa we will have remote internet access, so my updates may be spaced out. So please don't worry if it's a week or two in between. If you're in Fort Wayne, take my mom out to Starbucks for me. She is such a trooper!!!! :) Love you Mom & Dad!

Lastly, I just wanted to say a big thank you! One of our leaders yesterday spoke at length about her supporters... how thankful she was that she had a team praying, encouraging, and financing the work she feels called to do. The entire time she shared her appreciation I was holding back tears. I could not be more grateful for each one of you. You have encouraged me with notes (which I brought with me), emails, hugs, prayers, gifts, borrowed books/swimsuits/video camera!, and graciously given financial support of this mission. I truly could not be here without you all. Thank you.

Now let's go to Africa, shall we??? Awesome. See ya there!