last reading day!

well its our last reading day and last party. Yesterday we went over to Justin's and Kendra's reading station to hang out with their readers and play card games. we had cokes and it was tons of fun, then today we have a Canada theme party. We made certificates of appreciation to give out to our readers. Its hard leaving our readers but we are excited for the Church to take over and continue to meet with our readers. For the last few days we are going to Church, going to a childrens bible academy school to see all the kids there and the work they are doing, also meeting with the Church leaders for an end meeting. Tuesday we fly out so please continue to pray for us and that our flights will not have any problems. Thanks so much guys for all your support and encouragement!!! We will see you soon!
love team gambia

1 week left!

So this week has gone really well. We have all been getting to know our readers really well. Yesterday we were able to go to a village on our day off. First we had to take a van,then a boat and then another van. It took along time to get there, but it was really worth it! The village was beautiful and peaceful and the people were amazing!! They just want to learn about Jesus so bad but they do not have the resources to do it. So we gave them some of the bibles that we brought with us to give to people. This was the village that we were going to go read at for a couple of weeks. But it was still amazing to go for a few hours because it was basically in the middle of no where!

Today we had another party and some of our readers came and we just hung out and talked with them for awhile and went to buy cokes with them. Then one of our readers climbed a coconut tree and get us a coconut. It was super cool and we got to drink coconut juice!!

So this week was good! We can't believe we only have one more week of reading. The time goes by so fast. Thanks to everyone who is praying for us!!
See you all soon!!
love gambia team

May 29

hey guys! we just finished up week 4 of reading. Reading sessions are going great, some of us got a couple of new readers and its been a blast getting to know them. Tomorrow we are going to a Church that meets at a children's school where Corinne and Trevor read. Some of Corinne's readers are going to the Church with us tomorrow! we had a party today and we roasted some hot dogs, played soccer of course, and made the kids sing some camp songs! it was a blast. We also were able to go to one of Corinne's readers house on our day off and met her family.
Thanks for your prayers and please continue to pray for us!!!!
love team gambia

Second Week Done

So we just had our second party, and finished our second full week of reading. So far they have gone very well! It was nice to finish our first week at the locations we will be reading at for the remainder of our time here. Trevor and Justin both switched reading locations so that we are in groups of two, Corinne and Trevor, Kendra and Justin. The move meant that some of our first-week readers could not continue reading due to distance, but we have picked up more and continue to be finding even more to maintain as many hours reading possible.

The party also was more organized this week, as it was a balloon theme. We had children draw on balloons, the readers play a few balloon popping games, and finished off with a game of football because people here can't seem to get enough of it!

One adjustment we've had to make, which is both a blessing and a struggle at times, is dealing with and having so many children come to us wherever we go. In the compounds we read at, children are always wanting to come and just see us and talk to us, as well as at the party. While it is cool to be able to play with the kids and show them we care and love them, it is difficult to have to make them leave when we need to be with only our readers.

We also have a good combination of readers between all of us. We read with young and old, girls and boys, people from big families and people from small ones, strong Christians and faithful Muslims... It is such a blessing to be able to talk with and hopefully have an impact on people from so many different backgrounds!

Thanks so much for all your prayers as we near the halfway point of our mission, the time has flown far too quickly!

First Social Gathering

After a good week of reading, we had our first party on Saturday. It was a nice get-together and we got to meet and talk to each others readers. That was pretty cool. Two of Kendra's readers are originally from a village right near the village that is the setting of the first part of the book Roots. We got to learn about farming in The Gambia too!

The event was full of conversation and activities. We played soccer and frisbie. We had to teach some of them how to throw a frisbie. And since being here, we have had to associate the word football with soccer. After seeing us playing, a bunch of community kids came to play frisbie and soccer with us. The kids also brought and showed off a fish they caught.

It was a wonderful way to end a week of reading.

first week in gambia

we started our reading sessions.. it has gone pretty good so far, we have 47 readers in total!! which is awesome! the people here are very nice, some of the readers already have a familiar knowledge of God others are still learning. Justin is pretty pumped because he gets to read under a tree! haha Kendra and Corinne got their hair planted (braided) and its pretty nice. trevor is enjoying the little kids and he always starts beaming when a little kid comes up and talks to us. The little kids call us tubab which means white person, so where ever we go we hear "tubab tubab how are you tubab!" haha its quite adorable.


our host family is amazing!! they are very kind and love God. The mother can cook soooooo good! and the kids are nice and they help us get around the village. Yesterday was Corinne's birthday and we had a nice surprise cake and ice cream which was great!!

thanks again for all the prayers and for the encouragement you guys have been giving us.. we love you all!!!

Love Team Gambia

Getting Started

Well we've been here for about 4 days now and are starting to get somewhat used to the culture and living here, as much as possible I'd say! Our host family has been amazing. Isaac Daye, the evangelist here, has opened us his home for Corinne and Kendra to stay, while Justin and Trevor stay just down the street at another church members house. We eat some amazing food cooked by Fatu, Isaac's wife and that has been a huge blessing. They have shown us around the area so we know where the markets are, money exchange, internet cafes, food, etc. Them, along with the team of church leaders have made our transition as smooth as possible. Saturday night we had our information meeting for potential readers. There were about 50 people there with at least 25 that didn't show! Each of us has our schedules set for this first week and we begin reading sessions tomorrow. All of the people at the meeting seemed excited to start reading, and coming to parties which will be held Sunday nights.

We think the Gambia is a great place for LST to come. The people here are extremely friendly, and they consistently stop us on the streets just to chat and welcome us to The Gambia. It is also nice to feel as safe as we do walking around by ourselves. The church leaders have also been very helpful, organized and flexible to make our stay efficient and worthwhile. As well, there is a huge need for English and the word of God in the are. While the official language is English, many who attend Muslim schools, or drop out, know a little English but are not fluent. The only problems we seem to be facing is there is too much need and not enough of us! So we hope and pray that through our time here and with the help of the church leaders we may have an effect on as many as possible in our area.

Church on Sunday was also a great experience. Nearly 4 hours! Yet somehow it didn't seem quite so long. There was lots of prayer and singing, as well as a great Bible study and sermon. They were as excited to meet us as we were to meet them. Thanks again to everyone reading and all of our supporters!

The Gambia 2010

We are here!!!!!

So we all made it to Gambia, Africa safely! It was a great trip! We were picked up from the airport in Gambia by an enthusiastic welcoming committee! Issac and other church leaders took us to their home where they fed us fantastic food and were very welcoming! Corrine and Kendra are staying at Issac's home with his family and Justin and Trevor are staying a two minute walk from Issac's house in James' house! It is warm here and we love what we have seen so far of the country!

The church is super excited to have us here and they have been anticipating the arrival of their first LST team! So we all feel very welcome here and are excited to see what God has planned for all of us!

Thanks to everyone for their prayers!! We are all really excited! Keep checking back for more blogs from us, The Gambia Team! We feel very blessed to be here! Thanks for supporting us!

Love the Gambia team aka. Justin, Trevor, Corinne and Kendra!

We are here!!!!!

So we all made it to Gambia, Africa safely! It was a great trip! We were picked up from the airport in Gambia by an enthusiastic welcoming committee! Issac and other church leaders took us to their home where they fed us fantastic food and were very welcoming! Corrine and Kendra are staying at Issac's home with his family and Justin and Trevor are staying a two minute walk from Issac's house in James' house! It is warm here and we love what we have seen so far of the country!

The church is super excited to have us here and they have been anticipating the arrival of their first LST team! So we all feel very welcome here and are excited to see what God has planned for all of us!

Thanks to everyone for their prayers!! We are all really excited! Keep checking back for more blogs from us, The Gambia Team! We feel very blessed to be here! Thanks for supporting us!

Love the Gambia team aka. Justin, Trevor, Corinne and Kendra!

Hello Mama Africa!

This will be our last post until we arrive in The Gambia, Africa! We'll be leaving the Regina airport in about 20 hours. We fly through Calgary, Germany, Belgium (where we stay for 24 hours) and then The Gambia! This past weekend we met up with the Estonia LST team in Medicine Hat and went through our final GO Weekend training. We went over travel tips, scheduling, getting new readers, information meetings, party planning and scenario walk-through's. Overall, it was helpful and eased any nerves we had about traveling, parties, readers and last minute preparations.

At this point, we're about as prepared as possible and we are so excited to get working with the church in The Gambia! Next time we write to you, it will be from The Gambia! Thanks again so much for all your prayers and financial support, without all of you we could not have gone on this mission! God Bless!

13 days 17 hours and 56 mins till we leave!!!!

hey guys
we leave so soon!! a few changes have been made since our last blog. We will leave May 4th at 9:25 instead of May 3rd, and we will return June 17th. We are very excited to leave and we cant believe it's happening so fast. It's crazy how five months ago we were all talking about what it will be like and now we are packing our suitcases and getting ready!

Please keep us in your prayers! pray for safety and for our readers that we will meet when we go. Thank you to all who have supported us! you guys are awesome and we couldn't have done it without you!!

Love: the Gambia team

Done Fundraising!

Abaraka!

That means "thank you" in Mandinka, one of the tribal languages of The Gambia. Thank you so much for your support and prayers. All four of us have now completed our fundraising. We have about a month before we fly out, and we're very excited. We leave May 3 and come back June 16. We've been researching about the culture and continuing our training sessions with Andrea.

Here is a little taste of some Gambian music:

Bakau!!!

Hey we got are site information this week!!! We are going to Bakau, Gambia, Africa. It is right on the coast of Africa beside the Alantic Ocean. We are all getting really excited. It is exciting when we get more information about it. Recently we found out what kind of clothes are respectable there and the size of the church.(Which is around 60) But there is still a lot of information that we still have to find out!

We want to thank everyone who is supporting us and praying for us! We are so amazed by how excited and supportive everyone is. All of us have met our half way mark for our fudraising that was to be in by the begining of February, so thank you to all you who helped us with that!

Every week all four of us and andrea get together to train for our LST trip. We have started preparing the lessons and learning what a reading sesssion is going to look like. Some of us are going to start friendspeak to gain experience and help people in our own city with their english. A couple weeks ago during one of our training sessions our team created our mission statement:

"We want to share the message of God’s grace in order to fulfill the Kingdom of God by sowing seeds in others using the Word as the teacher. We will also live our lives as representatives of God’s Kingdom in hopes of shining like lights to all people who see us. In doing this, we hope to encourage fellow Christians and learn to grow our faith as well as others."

Next week for our training all four of us have to go shopping for food and cook for six people. But each of us can only spend three dollars! So that should be a challenge. We are doing this because while in Bakau we will have a budget for food and we will have to prepare our meals for ourselves. So hopefully all goes well!

First Training Weekend

Hey Everyone!

Well this is our first blog I suppose, and I guess I should make sure everyone knows what this is all about. A group of 4 of us from Regina (Corinne, Trevor, Justin, Kendra) formed a Let's Start Talking team about 2 months ago. We intend to travel to The Gambia, Africa in May-June for a 6 week Mission Trip with LST. For those of you who are not aware of what LST is, here it is. LST sends teams all around the world to countries where English is not the predominant language working with Churches to help teach locals about the life of Jesus and conversational English. We will be using a workbook that uses Book of Luke from the Bible to work with people. We hope and pray that by hearing about Jesus' life and through hearing our lives, the people we meet with will over time develop a belief in Jesus.

This blog will hopefully serve as a means for you to keep up-tp-date on how our training is going from now until we leave in the beginning of May, and the mission itself once we arrive there.

For the past month, we have meeting as a team with Andrea Muirhead training and learning about the mission. More recently, this past weekend the 4 of us went to Moose Jaw for an intensive training weekend in which we learned about travel, how to function in other cutlures, how our team functions together, our weaknesses and strengths, how to talk to totally random strangers, and about reading sessions. For one part of the training we had to find 4 random people who were born in country other than Canada- somewhere in Moose Jaw- and interview them. We found those people in McDonald's, Superstore, a bus driver from Montana, and a sushi restaurant. It was an awesome weekend in which we became closer as a team and learned in a lot more detail what our mission experience will be like.

We will try to update this blog every week or 2 until we leave for The Gambia. Hopefully you'll enjoy it! Grace and Peace!