Leader of the group formally known as Brooklyn.

PLIA has been a pretty sweet part of spring break for me in college. The short term mission projects have been nothing but growing experiences for me. I Put (ing) Love Into Action in Atlanta my freshman year, and lead a group to Inez, Kentucky, last year. Organizationally (from a leader point of view) things have run very smoothly as well, that is.... until this year.

Since I loved PLIA in the past, I thought it would be great experience to lead a group again, this time to Brooklyn, New York. I partnered with Ashley, a sophmore from Montanta, and we went to work getting things figured out for our group. We even gave a short presentation on what we would do in Brooklyn in order for potiontial PLIA members to find where they would best fit. We contacted the site a few times and got some genereal information from them, which was nice to share with the group as well. (Group makeup- 5 guys four girls)

Things were going pretty well with the site and setup until last week saturday. Ashley got a call from a different contact in Brooklyn. Jon (we'll call him jon) is the pastor of the church, and raised many interesting questions to us about our team. (Jon sounds EXACTLY like Nicholas Cage....it enthralled me for the first five minutes of his conversation). For example he asked if our group members had the faith it took to work in the very dark spiritual place of Brooklyn. Another issue was finding a place for us to stay...they were suppose to have some construction done, but there was only one room for our group. We figured out a way to house everyone be accomodated, then the issue became not kitchen for the guys who would be staying at the church (the girls at the pastors house). After a conversation with the "director" of PLIA, I decided to ask the site if they actually wanted us, or if it was not going to work. Jon said that it would not....thus I am not leading a group to Brooklyn. (they did want us, but apparently couldn't get things figured out)

I contacted the 'director' of PLIA and told him what was up...and by the afternoon I had a list of new sites on my computer. Ashley and I conviened a emergency meeting with the group and gave them the options for new sites. So...I am now going to lead a group to Rehoboth, New Mexico (well.. hopefully, we are not positive quite yet). There is a Christian community (with a school...etc) in an indian reservation there and we will hopefully do light construction and work with the kids from the school. I am pretty darn excited to see what God has for us there...Wherever we go we will know that God had a plan to bring us there that we never would have imagined. word