Teen Missions Teams
Teen Missions Teams
As with all ministries there is a main area of focus. So it is with Teen Missions....teams! And now they have also added bases around the world, which operate similarly to the main one in Merritt Island, FL USA. Hence the way we ended up in their Cameroon base in the village of Nsongwa. But, that's getting ahead of the story.
So we arrive to our new mobile home dwelling soaking wet, but happy to have arrived safely (we drove through some ice storms to get there). Tim, Christi and Suz stay…..Sara heads back to a Maryland to finish up a contract at her job at Westat. Christi has surgery to remove her wisdom teeth and Tim does most of the moving in. The next month was spent with Tim going back and forth between Maryland and Florida for the things that didn’t fit into the moving van (we sold most of our stuff and thought it would fit into a smaller moving van…we were wrong…haha) and Sara working 100 hour weeks while living in a hotel room finishing up her contract.
Finally March comes and we are all together in Florida, Christi has recovered from surgery and we are settled into our new home (mostly). We start our “support jobs” and off we go into our Teen Missions adventure. There is so much that goes into running a ministry…who knew. We definitely didn’t! It takes many people to set up the teams, run the base, handle the monies for team members and the ministry, create and send out all of the publications etc…. It is an amazing amount of work and requires great dedication on behalf of the (self-supported) staff and volunteers to run it.
So we head into the summer of 2004, to lead our first Teen Missions team (you can read more details about each team on another page). From there we led a 2005 backpacking team to Cameroon.
Tim and Suz stayed in Cameroon while Sara went back with the team to help our daughter Christi. She had major reconstructive surgery on her jaw and Sara stayed with her until she was fully recovered. Sara returned to Cameroon in Nov of 2005 where we stayed until we came back to lead our final TMI team….the 2007 Cameroon backpack team. We loved our time with Teen Missions but know that our times and seasons are in God’s hands. We still visit the base, have good friends who continue with the ministry there and our orphans attend the summer program. We love how God has so many ministries that meet different needs. How even though those ministries can be so different, yet from time to time, they come together (partner) to meet some of those needs. We see it happen here in Cameroon all the time. What a blessing to be a part of what the Lord is doing to help meet these needs!!
Big top time...one of the main boot camp events Christi rode with our team to the airport to say goodbye