Malawi!

So I'm starting this blog in preparation for my mission trip to Malawi, Africa this summer! For those of you who don't know, I'll be going there in July for two months through SIM.
 

SIM is an international, interdenominational mission agency that works in 65 countries in Africa, Asia, and South America. The purpose of SIM is to glorify God by planting, strengthening, and partnering with churches around the world by evangelizing the unreached, ministering to human need, discipling believers into churches, and equipping churches to fulfill Christ's Commission.

My time spent there will be doing a Communications Internship. I will be spending most of my time in one of Malawi’s main cities, Blantyre, and my work will be to help cast the vision and share the story of missions and the church in Malawi. To do this, I will be visiting the ministries on the field, capturing human interest stories, and then helping to organize and send out this information in creative ways such as through journalism, website development, and other forms of media. This work will help engage various audiences, including the SIM Malawi field, the people of Malawi, SIM sending offices, publications, sending churches and supporters, and secular groups and media, in how God is working in Malawi.

To go on this trip, I need prayer support more than anything. Whenever you think of it, please pray for me and for the people and missionaries in Malawi that I will be interacting with.

Thanks so much to all of you who have already begun to pray and who have generously supported me financially! I am so blessed by each of you. I have only a few days to raise the remainder of my funds (about $1,000). My funding deadline is June 9. It seems like a big amount, but I know that God is a big God and that He can provide in big ways! It has been a huge blessing and growing experience to see how He has provided so far! If you feel led to partner with me through prayer or financial support, I would really appreciate it. Giving can be done online through SIM's website, www.sim.org/giveusa, or checks can be made payable to SIM USA with my STA #038324 on the memo line and sent to SIM USA, Attn: SIM Receipting, P.O. Box 7900, Charlotte, NC 28241. SIM will send you a receipt of your tax-deductible contribution.

I will provide more updates as they come. I was in Charlotte, NC at SIM USA's headquarters a couple weeks ago for short-term orientation and it was such a blessing. I got to meet several other women who are going on short-term trips this summer to other parts of Africa, and I got to meet many SIM missionaries, a couple of whom had spent significant amounts of time on the mission field in Malawi! SIM had cool signs up on their campus of all the different countries where SIM is located. I got my picture taken in front of the Malawi sign. Lord willing, in just a few weeks I'll be 8,156 miles from where I was then!