One Month and Counting...

Can you Belize it??
I have just about all of the items I need for the next 5 months and the cost of the plane ticket out of the way, but now I am focusing all funds on my school payments. Thank you for all the support I have been recieving! Tonight I am submitting the first half of the payment for my lecture phase and all of your donations have certainly lightened that load! I still have a long way to go to reach my goal, but I trust that God will provide for my needs with his timing. I hope you all are doing well and that I will be able to see you all before I leave on January 11th. Thank you again for all of your support.

Licking Stamps and Hand Cramps...

      For the past week I have been working on sending out support letters to family and friends. If this is your first time checking out this site, welcome! As you scroll down, on the right side you will find quick information about my fundraising goals, a fancy donate button, and more information about YWAM and various links! Thank you again for all of your support and be sure to check back often for updates as I prepare for this incredible journey!

     Special thanks to Peter. Though I barely know you, you have greatly affected my life tonight. Thank you and God bless you.

First Fundraiser!

      
        For my first fundraiser event I put on an interactive follow the leader type event where participants downloaded a free Mp3 file (that I created) onto their iPods, and then met on Western Washington University's campus on a thursday night and pressed play at the same time. The Mp3 file was a mix of music and funny instructions to do fun and silly things together as a huge group. About 50 people came and everyone had a lot of fun! Some friends even traveled all the way from Seattle to support me! I worked for about a month on it and there was even a reporter from WWU's newspaper who did an article on it. Overall, it barely made a DENT in my fundraising goal... but it was a lot of fun and helped to get me one step closer   to Belize! You can check out more details on my event on this site.

So What Exactly Am I Doing?

         From January 11th through May 27th of next year I have the opportunity to take part in Youth With A Mission (YWAM), one of the largest missions organizations in the world. There are currently over 15,000 full time YWAM members serving in over 160 nations, but through much prayer I have decided to begin my adventure at Destination Paradise, a discipleship training school (DTS) in San Pedro, Belize.
           There are three different phases that I will be completing within the program over a span of 5 months. The first 12 weeks will be the lecture phase where we learn about global ministry from first class speakers that come to the base in person; challenging us to grow in our leadership roles and our relationships with God and helping us develop our SCUBA diving skills. The outreach phase spans over the next 8 weeks, where we put the principles and learning gained during the lecture phase into practice through means of a long-term mission trip. I have chosen to do an international outreach which means that I will be doing mission work outside of Belize. The final 16 weeks are the internship phase where I will journey back to Bellingham and intern for The Firs for my third summer and apply my new skills. YWAM will be an exciting, intensive, and challenging way to exponentially grow in my faith and get ready to put my talents and passion to work for the Lord. The programs are tough, for it is both a school of the head and a school of the heart, but I am excited to put myself outside of my comfort zone and to put the verse in Matthew 28 in motion and "go and make disciples of all nations."

My Life Must Fit in This Bag.

After a glorious hunt at REI's huge garage sale I found the backpack that will hold the 50 Lbs I can bring for my 5 month journey. Special thanks to the sales lady who I vented to after they gave away the backpack I had on hold in REI and Scott from Back Country.

What to bring, what to bring...

Fundraising is on...

Special thanks to Everett from Ribbon Printers Unlimited.
http://www.ribbonprinters.com/
Also, my Mp3 Experiment fundraiser event is a challenging work in progress.
Check out my event site here:

http://brittwithamission.yolasite.com/

I've been working on this event for weeks now, I hope it turns out well!

Ready Set...

After making a quick, very long distance call to Belize for my phone interview with Alyssa the registrar at DP, I am pleased to announce that I was officially accepted into YWAM Destination Paradise's Adventure Descipleship Training School!

How It All Began...

            I first began considering Youth With a Mission (YWAM) last summer when I had a conversation with Cameron Toney about his experience with the organization. He told me about the YWAM base in Belize that his family started and his enthusiasm inspired me. That night I went home and did some research online and came up with two realizations. One, that I really wanted to take a part in global ministry, and two, that there was an overwhelming number of Descipleship Training Schools (DTS) across the world. So many in fact that I became disheartened in knowing where to begin. I prayed to God for direction and my prayers were answered when I went to Creation Festival a few months later. It was there that among all of the other merchants and college recruiters that I glimpsed from afar a large poster that stated "YWAM Destination Paradise" in large letters. It was one of those classic movie moments where the crowd parted and I moved forward in a zombie like state to the booth where I confronted the student recruiters saying... "Tell me EVERYTHING!" I quickly realized that they were from the same base that the Toney's ran, what were the chances!? They described their experiences and gave me the information that I was searching for and prayed for my planning process. I expressed my desires to my family and although my mother was rather uneasy about my passion to venture the depths of the sea and my father was concerned about different health hazards, here I am a year later in the middle of my application process with my family's full support behind me and I couldn't be more excited. Now comes the long 4 months of fundraising and growing anticipation!