Rivers Baptist Church - Christ alone - and Him crucified

I would like to thank you dearly for your support through prayer leading up to my mission trip. There is less than 17 days until I leave and at the moment everything is being finalised and I’m gathering everything I will need to pack. Since I believe prayer is such a vital part of this ministry, I ask that you please continue to pray for me and the rest of my team the entire summer.

I realised that you don’t really know much about where I an going or what I am doing which is what the purpose of this letter – to inform you exactly what I will be doing while I am away.

I leave on the 23rd of December to go to Tewantin (in Noosa) for a 10 day boot camp. This will involve training in practical classes such as carpentry, care of tools, painting, concreting, building layout, music, drama and puppets. We also receive training in classes such as bible memory, servant hood, attitudes, issues in society etc.

My team is made up of 3 leaders and 11 youth from around Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. We will be away for a total of 5 weeks. Just over 3 of those weeks we will be overseas for.

The team flies out of the country on the 3rd of January to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. There we will be working with the Free Methodist Church of Phnom Penh. Seven days later we fly via Bangkok to Athens, Greece. While there we will be working on renovations to the Evangelical Old People Home. After 6 days there we head to the USA via Zurich and Washington to Florida where we will be working at a Youth Camp. We remain there for 6 days before heading back to Tewantin for debrief. I return home on the 27th of January.
In all three places we will also be doing presentations using puppets, dramas, songs and testimonies.

Please pray as I get ready to leave and everything is being finalised. If you feel the need to write you are welcome to write to me C/O the church office.

When I first signed up to go on this trip it started out being a cool thing to do. One of my friends is on the team with me and in 2005 we decided that for the end of year 12 we would go on a mission trip together through Teen Missions because it seemed fun and exciting – something you don’t do everyday. At the start of the year God didn’t really have much to do with the whole thing – I didn’t feel called to do missions – I just wanted to have fun. It’s only been over the past few months that I have really being feeling God’s presence in my life. I went through a lot of rough patches where my faith struggled but when I look back now I can see how God worked in my life and how my prayers were answered. I have some pretty awesome stories of how God has bought people back to him through me preparing for this trip.

We have to wear 18cm leather construction boots – they were hard to find. Eventually I found some at a small store I started talking to the lady who was helping me try my boots on – she was really nice. We started talking about why I was going on this trip and she shared with me practically her whole life story. By the end of the conversation you could see the desire in her to learn more about God. I went back to that shop a month or so later to buy shoe polish and the same lady was there, she still remembered me and she started telling me how she now goes to church and everything. It was really encouraging to hear.

I’ve need to buy a lot of equipment and everyone that I have bought equipment off has been so open to hearing God’s word from someone so much younger than them that it’s been so awesome. I could sit here and rattle off a dozen more stories but I won’t. If you want to hear more just ask and I’d be more than happy to share. Over the past few months I have had so many opportunities to share the love of Jesus Christ with people and have come to realise that it doesn’t matter whether your going on a mission trip or involved in church, God will present you with opportunities everyday to reach the lost.

I’ve learnt so much over the past few months that I can’t wait to go away and learn more. I started off not being sure whether I should be going on this trip but now there is no doubt in my mind that this is what God wants me to do.

Once again I would really like to thank you for your support. I really appreciate it and look forwarding to updating you on how everything is going.

Thanks a bunch!

God Bless,

Stacey Slack