Preparing for the Future while Being Present in the Present

For the last month, I have quite honestly just been watching as God puts into place the pieces for the coming nine months. So many exciting things I wanted to share!

First, I have been given the opportunity to return to Sonshine this summer, this time serving as Director at our Lake Shasta location. The prospect of leading a 50 person volunteer staff and hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment can be daunting, but when I look back on how faithful the Lord has been to provide every past summer, my fears are relieved.

Leading up to the summer, beginning in January, I will be working as an intern with Sonshine Ministries. Along with receiving training for my position this summer, I'll be helping with all sorts of behind the scene's preparations for this summer, including maintaining equipment, recruiting staff, etc. I will be living at the Sonshine house in Lodi, CA.

While in Lodi, I hope to mentor the local FIRST robotics team, the organization I have been a part of for nearly ten years now. The Lodi FIRST team is based out of Jim Elliot Christian High School. Unique to this team, they travel to Israel to compete with their robot versus the FIRST teams in Israel. While in country, they stay for a few additional days and do missions work with a few of the local ministries. I am on board for traveling with the team and leading the students as they serve God in this totally awesome way.

If that wasn't enough, God has given me a chance to return to West Africa and continue serving the people there! I will be traveling to Guinea (just north of Sierra Leone) in February to perform more assessments of government hospitals. I hope that this second trip is just a fruitful in the work God does through our team.

That's what I have to look forward to!

So what am I still doing in Colorado, you may ask? There's still work to be done here! We're in the final stages of compiling our hospital assessment report for Mercy Ships. Once that is sent out in the next week or so, I will begin preparing for the trip to Guinea. Since this will be the second of as many as twenty West Africa hospital assessments, I hope to develop a standard template for future EMI project teams to use. Having a template to follow when assessing and writing will greatly increase team efficiency, as they won't have to "start from scratch" ever time.

So there is still plenty to do for the remaining month I have here! Time has flown by so quickly, I will definitely miss the relationships and experiences He has given me while out here.

God is good.

-Mike