We are feeling very encouraged, inspired, and refreshed after a long weekend filled with connecting with missions-minded people just like us.
On Thursday morning I met with a friend that I met at a vendor fair last year. She introduced me to an amazing company called Trades of Hope, and I have been interested ever since. Love their handmade, fair trade jewelry… love their mission as a company… literally everything about this company makes it so perfect for me. I’m SO impressed with them! You will be hearing more about them later on this blog. 🙂 If you’re nosy like me, you can check out their story, products, and more here.
On Friday, Luke took off work and we volunteered at the Christian for Worldwide Evangelism (CWE) Golf Tournament for the second year. We sat at one of the holes and watched for a hole in one… the prize was a car! (No one made it, but someone almost won the Harley on the hole right before ours!) Sitting at the same spot for 4 hours got kinda boring, except for the short joyride we took on a golf cart for a couple minutes. 😉 The church we attend is heavily involved with this organization, with several church members serving on their board and other leadership positions. (Funny story, but I’ve known about this group from my childhood church, as a member who went there used to live in the area we live in now and was involved with them up here. He even took a couple trips when I was younger.) We have been talking and praying a lot about possibly pursuing this organization as one that we could work with. It seems that God has been directing us towards it more and more as time as gone on, especially since we are planning to move to the Tampa area (their headquarters are located there). We were able to make some good connections while at this event, thanks to our friends at church that introduced us to some of the leadership. We were given some recommendations as to where to park our camper down in FL and some churches we should check out when we get down there. On Saturday, we attended a BBQ hosted by CWE at Camp Bayouca, where they completed their first domestic project last summer. We were able to see the brand new ladies’ bathhouse they built, and it was very nice! Luke spent several summers working at that camp, which is where he was encouraged to attend Davis College by some of the camp counselors.
*All of these photos are cellphone pics so excuse the quality.
My artsy shot of the hole we were watching. Also, you can see the car in the background that people were hitting for!
Channeling our inner hipster.
CWE mostly does building projects, but they are also offering medical and agricultural trips. They team up with local churches in the US by having them supply people for trips, and partner with missionaries and nationals in other countries to help them build churches, schools, clinics, and more. No matter what the trip is, they find jobs for men and women, ages 13-100. They had just approved some potential trips in their board meeting Saturday morning which include Grenada, Bolivia, Hungary, and their second domestic trip in Florida. Luke and I hope to at least get to dip our toes in the water this fall in their Florida trip since we’ll already be down there! We would also love to go to Grenada because, well… it is a tropical Caribbean island after all. 😉 Can’t wait to see how else we could get involved with this awesome group, and of course I am already trying to figure out how we could involve English Teaching with them somehow. Luke loves to do construction projects where he can do more of the behind the scenes work, so CWE really gets him excited. Finding a group that aligns with our passions so well gets us fired up and ready to just get going! But, it’s all in God’s perfect timing. If you would like to hear more of the details about CWE, visit their website here.
It is their 25th anniversary this year so they put out this special edition magazine. We were very impressed by the design of it!
Here’s a little sneak into some of the countries they serve/have served in.
We ended our Saturday by attending a graduation party of one of Luke’s childhood church friends. Here are some pics of us at the photo booth….we’re cute. 🙂
Sunday was a work on the camper day, and we kept our Instagram up to date with a live video on there of our progress! Follow us on Instagram to stay in the loop.
It was such an exciting weekend! We love making progress in our lives, talking to people about our future plans, and having goals to work towards. We also love that we are able to be world-changers, even from right here at home. We want to be out there travelling and directly impacting lives, but that’s obviously not God’s plan for us right now. In the mean time, we will do all we can to support ministries like this.
How was your weekend? Do you like posts like this? We’re thinking of starting a Weekend Recap series that we do every week… we do usually have crazy weekends!
