The final countdown!

Here it is, just about 8 hours or so before we depart for the Barnabas Project / Mexico Singles Mission trip. Hopefully, all 4 of us are packed, and will get a decent (but short) night's sleep.

If you read this before then, I want to encourage and remind everyone to please meet at the Greensboro airport tomorrow morning (Tuesday, July 27), at 6:30 a.m., near the US Airways ticket counter for a time of prayer. Lynn Everswick, Westover's Pastor of Global Missions, will be leading a group of folks in prayer for our team.

Also, we would love for folks to greet us at the Greensboro airport upon our scheduled return, on Wednesday, August 2. We are scheduled to arrive at PTI airport at 7:44 p.m. on US Airways flight 7154, operated by United Airlines, from Washington D.C.'s Dulles Airport.

In case you've forgotten, or you were not aware, I just want to reiterate the purpose of our trip.

In southern Mexico lies the greatest concentration of unreached people groups in the Western Hemisphere. These people have never heard the name of Jesus Christ before. Recently, God has opened up a very unique opportunity for Westover Church to be involved in partnering with national missionaries working to plant churches among the unreached Mixteco people of Mexico. We are calling this, The Barnabas Project.

We will be traveling down to this remote area to establish relationships with Mixteco village leaders. Each village has its own rules for allowing visitors in . The overall purpose of this trip is to gain access to Mixteco village, begin relationships with local leaders and determine what specific needs we can meet on future trips. Because of the difficulty of working among the Mixtecos, we'll also spend a lot of time in training with the local missionaries in order to prepare for leading future teams. We are also hoping to work with the children in the village. the Barnabas project is still in its beginning stages, which causes us to have to be more flexible than normal.

I want to share with you a verse that was read during both services at Westover this past Sunday:

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body,
(2 Corinthians 4:6-10, NKJV).

The next blog update will possibly be on Wednesday from Thaliaxco, the village where we will be staying with one of the missionaries.