Summer

It is definitely summer in West Texas now, we broke 100 degrees the other day and it is staying in the nineties for the rest of the week.
I finished at A&M on May 9th which was a lot of fun, that Sunday May 11th I spoke at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in College Station and got a great response. On Tuesday I drove home to Abilene, after a few debacles including a walking stint for gas, I made it in time to meet with the Heavenly Rest Vestry. Wednesday night 3AM found me in the Greyhound Station on my way to Lubbock. I arrived around 8AM and my girlfriend Oree Walkup picked me up at the bus station at which time I went pack to the Walkup homestead and slept for a few hours. That afternoon I got to visit with our bishop for about an hour about my mission and what life had in store for both of us.
Oree and I drove down to Abilene on Friday after a good visit with her family. On Saturday she headed to North Carolina with my sister for their inaugural season at the Nantahala Outdoor Center. Oree is going to be a raft guide while Katie is working in the reservations office.
Since then I have been in Abilene talking with people about my upcoming journey, avoiding packing, and riding my mountain bike at the Buck Creek Trails. I have raised almost half of my required $10,000 mission budget, I will be speaking at Heavenly Rest on Sunday, and I would like to go visit some more of the churches in our Diocese before I leave for the mission conference in New York.
Thank you for your interest, I will be updating more frequently in the coming weeks. I appreciate the support I have gotten and look forward to sharing with you as this journey unfolds.

Progress

Things are moving along here. I have been officially assigned to the Asian Rural Institute (ARI) in central Japan, you can find there website in my links section. It is an ecumenically (multi-faith) run training farm. They teach grass-roots community leaders from Southeast Asia and Africa how to work the land in a sustainable manner and empower their communities. Everyone on the farm participates in the daily chores and "foodwork" and 80% of our food actually comes from our farm. I am really excited about this opportunity it coincides with my current interests and I think it is a healthy and empowering way to work in the world.

My fundraising efforts are making a slow but promising start. I have raised $1500 of my $10,000 missionary budget so far, with appointments to talk to the congregation at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in College Station and Heavenly Rest in Abilene. I hope to make stops at a few smaller churches in Albany and Calvert to extend an opportunity for them to take part in my mission.

This afternoon I am heading down to a little spot on the Brazos River called Hidalgo Falls to do some whitewater playboating in a kayak with a few friends. It is a really neat little bend in the river that drops about 6 feet over a quarter of a mile. When the water is up we can spend hours surfing on the waves.

Thanks for you interest.