Mission Trip Prep Time

(When taking care of passports I feel like an international spy who keeps multiple identities in a shoe box under a loose board in a safe house)  

This week my mind has been on our upcoming mission trip.  So I decided that even thought our mission trip is still about 50 days away and with the trip on my mind now would be a great time to work on the trip.

We are traveling to the island of Eleuthera.  Our mornings and mid-days will be spent doing work for Camp Bahamas, helping them with upkeep of the campus.  Our afternoons will be spent at the  park in Tarpum Bay settlement doing outreach with the local kids.



I started with contacting people to join my support team.  In just a matter of hours I have people already joining my support team.  Each team member has to build their own support team consisting of both people who will pray and people who will give financially.

When I got to the office I organized two binders for the passport copies.  Sunday night at our team meeting (meeting about once a month) we collected the passports.  I then made 2 copies of each.  One binder will stay locked in the church office and the other will travel in my carry on.

The passports now have stickers on the back with the individual's first name to make it easy for us to hand them out at the airport and then we collect them later.   When we arrive in Eleuthera we will collect all the passports until the time for the trip home.  Hopefully we won't hear, "I don't know where my passport is."

I created a 6 page document that has all the details the parents and students will need to know:
Travel itinerary
Packing lists
Helpful tips (especially for the newbies)
Expectations
Schedule, etc.

I double checked our airline tickets just to make sure we are good to go.  I then filled out the form that Southwest requires for group travel with everyone's information.  Next I pay the balance on our group rate with them.  Southwest is much easier to work with and a better deal for group travel than the airline we used last year.


I've ordered our pre-trip devotional journals and they should be arriving shortly.  I also ordered our trip journals as well.  Check out LeaderTreks for some great resources for mission trips.

Next up I order Bibles for each person on the team to use on the trip then we will highlight our favorite scriptures in the Bible, write a note to whoever ends up owning it and leaving the Bibles at the camp when we depart.

Luggage tags, craft supplies, snack supplies, game supplies, and food supplies is all we have left to do to prep for the trip but that will wait until another day.