Four More Sleeps!

"We only have four more sleeps!" The leader of my upcoming mission trip within a mission trip wrote this in a recent email she sent to the team. I am truly amazed to think that the trip I heard about almost three months ago is finally here! For those of you who haven't heard, I will be participating in a ten-day bush exposure trip with a group from my church. There are six team members participating and we will be joining two of the missionaries Alice Baptist supports, Norm and Karen Roberts. The Roberts have been serving in the bush communities northwest of Alice Springs for over five years now. They are great people and I cannot wait to get to know them better and hear more about their journey into missionary life.
So a little about the why of the trip. We are going because we want to support the work that is being done in these three communities to spread the gospel of Christ to the Warlpiri people. We will be starting our journey in Willowra.

This small town with an estimated population of 350 people has a small community of believers and a church building. The building is in need of a fence to keep out wandering critters. We will be working on this as a team with the assistance of a builder and his father from our church. We are really excited to be able to help in such a practical way!

After that we will be moving to Ali Curung, another small town North of Alice. I think we'll be helping to clear the area in and around the mission house due to the rainfall the grass has been growing like crazy and so we will be mowing and cleaning up the yard area. We will also be spending time in the community building relationships and spending some time with the locals.

After a couple days there we will be headed to our third community, Yuendemu! This is one of the larger towns in the area and we will be spending time out in the community there too. Who knows what we'll wind up doing while we're there but, I think it's going to be a really great time.

When we've finished our time in Yuendemu we will be headed back to Alice! There are going to be some challenges ahead and some great experiences too. I know that God has been working in the hearts of me and my teammates as we've been preparing for this.

We would really appreciate your prayers as we head out for the next ten-days. Special prayer requests would be:
-Safety in travels
-Speed and efficiency on the fence building as we only have to professionals there for a few days.
-That each of us would have a heart that is open to learn and a spirit that is sensitive to the words of God.

Thanks for reading and for praying!
Shannon

Here's a map of our Journey!
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=115871408322241677933.000485496906df8b42d7a&ll=-21.983801,132.879639&spn=4.043883,7.064209&t=h&z=7