All FYM-ers, myself included, will be leaving for Georgia in 6 days for a week of training before those of us headed for Africa depart on the 19th of Sept.! As the time at home draws to an end I find my nerves and excitement rising and the task of concentrating on anything becomes increasingly difficult. It will be a miracle if I can remember to pack at least half the stuff I need.

  
  For many months I have considered the date of September 12th to be the beginning of my missions trip, but in the last couple of weeks I have realized that this trip actually began March 9th. The day I got accepted to this program. Through Blessings and trials the Lord has been leading all the way.

One of the latest tests that God has brought me through was due to my procrastination and inexperience with paper work. The dead line for all paper work was graciously pushed back to the tenth of last month. I thought I would just make the dead line when I sent in all my stuff on the sixth. The thought of making copies of all those papers never occurred to me until is was about two weeks later and AIM had not yet received any of my paper work! I was freaking out. I was on vacation and had no way getting some of those papers refilled out any time soon. After a few days I calmed down and realized that I needed to put this in the Lords hands. Soon afterwards my package did arrive at the AIM headquarters, a real example of the term "snail mail".

    Lastly I want to share with you a way in which the Lord has taught me a lesson through one of his countless blessings on me. The Lord has abundantly blessed me in the financial area of my mission trip. Within four months from sending out support letters all of the money has come in through many generous gifts. Praise the Lord! So several weeks ago I was explaining this to Miss Eva, an elderly lady in our church, and I told her

    "God is so good! He brought in all the money for my trip so quickly" and she replied

    "God would have been good even if he hadn't have brought it in." The truth of that statement struck my heart and a silent tear rolled down my cheek. I realized just how ignorant I was in making such a statement and opened my eyes to how truly blessed I am, for a sinner such as I is truly undeserving and yet God is good!