Uncut writing

It's taken a lot of writing, erasing, re-writing, re-erasing, and re-writing again to get this post written.

I don't know why. I suppose it takes a bit to get the stuff in my head out on paper (Er... Screen)... But maybe that's a good thing. Anyway, enough of my dodging.

34 days ago (July 15), I set out to Guatemala with my lovely church for a mission trip. If you've been reading my recent posts at all, you've heard me talk about it a little bit...

Backing up:

Last September, I filled out a form along with 56 other teenagers. It requested my personal information amongst other things. Then, I had an interview with two staff members of my church. I waited in anticipation for a few days and finally, an intern from the church called to say I made the team.

Since then, I've spent nine months serving, training, and preparing to go to Guatemala. And man, was it ever worth it. Even though I had to raise quite a bit of money, and it didn't seem like we would pull through -- which, by the way, I didn't pull through... God did -- and we faced quite a few obstacles in those long nine months, I found myself sitting in my church's student room on July 15th, about to get on a bus to leave for the airport.

I've decided to spend the next couple of weeks posting my journal entries. (Idea credit to my good friend Anna... Follow her at http://standingfirm4him.wordpress.com/)

What?... You can't expect me to come up with all the good ideas. Besides, just think of it as the uncut version of my writing. No editing, no 'cleaning up'. Just pure me (a.k.a pure awesomeness).

My apologies for not writing to you sooner.