Hello! A lot of you know from the roleplay characters that I play on Xanga. This is just a little bit about my upcoming mission trip to Australia and New Zealand this summer.
This trip is with Teen Mania's Global Expeditions. Some of you may have heard of Teen Mania from their famous conference Acquire the Fire and they're recent Battle Cry campaign. They have been going on mission trips for exactly 20 years this year.
This is my second mission trip with Global Expeditions and I'm looking forward to going again. I will be leaving for Global Expeditions' base in Garden Valley, Texas on June 10th. There I will be trained for ministry. Our ministry will consist of drama, school programs (Anti-Drug, Suicide Awareness), one-on-one evangelism, skate park ministry, service projects, and partnering with the Hillsong Church youth group. When the training is complete I will travel to the beautiful country of New Zealand where we will begin our ministry. My base city will be Auckland, but I will travel all over the North Island for ministry. After one month of ministry in New Zealand I will then travel to Sydney, Australia for another month of ministry before returning to Garden Valley for debriefing. I will then return home on August 4th.
Now onto the boring financial stuff! The cost of the entire trip is $4,443. I currently have $1,104 in my account and I need $1,117.50 by April 30th. I will then need the remaining cost of $2,221.50 by the day I leave (June 10th). This does not include my plane ticket to and from Garden Valley so it will be extra money for that as well. I would love it if you could help me out in any way. There are two different methods by which you can donate. #1 would be through the Global Expeditions web site and #2 would be through PayPal. When you donate through the Global Expeditions web site you'll need to enter my account number which is: #2287479. This donation will be tax deductible while PayPal will not.
Since that was a bit boring I'm going to give you some fun stuff on the two countries I'm going to!
New Zealand
Area - Comparative: About the size of Colorado. ((Isn't that cool?? It'll be like I never left home!))
Languages: English (official), Maori (official) ((Yay! No trouble with language here!))
Time Zone: 17 hours ahead of Central Standard Time ((AHH! How will I ever cope??))
Climate: The South Island is cooler than the North Island by a few degrees. Winter in New Zealand is from June to August and summer is from December to February. ((Doesn't that suck? I barely even get a summer!))
Government Type: Parliamentary Democracy ((Um...what does that mean?))
Age Structure: 0-14 years: 21.7% (male 443,211; female 422,507)
15-64 years: 66.7% (male 1,337,383; female 1,325,683)
65 years and over: 11.6% (male 203,084; female 261,949) (2004 est.) ((More boys than girls? What is that??))
New Zealand was the first place in the world to allow women to vote. ((Dude that is amazing!! NZ rocks!))
New Zealanders often refer to themselves as Kiwis. ((You want to know why?? Because of the bird...duh!))
Australia
Government Type: democratic, federal-state system recognizing the British monarch as sovereign ((Okay, at least I understand that!))
Area Comparative: slightly smaller than the US contiguous 48 states ((Wow, I'm really not leaving home. Oh, except for maybe different culture and accents...))
Language: English 79.1%, Chinese 2.1%, Italian 1.9%, other 11.1%, unspecified 5.8% (2001 Census) ((Dude, what's with the 2001? That was 6 years ago!!))
Age Structure:
0-14 years: 19.6% (male 2,031,313/female 1,936,802)
15-64 years: 67.3% (male 6,881,863/female 6,764,709)
65 years and over: 13.1% (male 1,170,589/female 1,478,806) (2006 est.) ((Still no hope for the girls here...at least it's more up to date than the NZ statistic!))
Climate: generally arid to semiarid; temperate in south and east; tropical in north ((All right, cool. Um wait...what does that mean?))
In Australia, pancakes are served at dinner rather than breakfast. ((Okay, now that is just plain odd!))
The population of the city of Sydney, Australia, is greater than the entire population of the country of New Zealand. ((I can handle that...))
Teenagers end up dropping out of school by the age of 16. The government gives them a choice to either continue their education or let them drop out and work for a living. ((What?!?! Now that's just unfair!))
For some more in depth information check out the below link: