Chicago

Monday, the 10th, I took a 25 hour bus ride down to Chicago to surprise my girlfriend. I was able to stay with some friends in the area from my highschool years in Ecuador. They live in the area. Ashley was at International Teams headquarters in Elgin, IL for her training to get back to Ecuador. I spent most of the time that she was training working on editing a video and then we spent the evenings together. The first evening we got together with seven of my classmates from Ecuador. It was a really great reunion. The whole time was great for us as a couple because we had only been together dating for a couple of days until I had to return to Canada. I have now returned to Ontario and tomorrow I head out to Calgary where I hope to meet with supporters and a few friends. My time in the Chicago area was also profitable in another way. One of the friends I connected with offered to support me as well. I am excited to see who God is bringing forward to help me!

Back in Canada Update

Greetings everyone. I have been back in Canada now for about three weeks. Here's what that has looked like. I arrived on August 12 in Toronto and my parents met me and drove me west right away to my uncle and aunt's place. We visited there for a few hours and got caught up. That evening we went to Elmira, Ontario where I proceeded to go through my two weeks of training. Nothing like hitting the ground running! Since then I have been working on putting together a presentation and I've put together a coffee table book of some of my better photos from Ecuador. I ordered 25 of them and plan to sell them as a fund raiser. Still ahead on my list of things to do is putting together a short term teams promotional video that I'll use in my presentations.
Training was one of a few reasons I came back to Canada. Now I'm on to the other two main reasons. I wanted to connect with everyone back here in Canada. I will be spending the majority of my time in Belleville, Ontario in my parents' church. I will also fly out to Calgary, Alberta for a while and spend time with my supporters out there. My tentative dates for Calgary are the 17th to the 27th although I haven't bought my tickets yet.
Finally, the last main reason I came back is that I need to raise full time support. Please be praying with me on this subject. This is my least favorite part of being a missionary. As I have mentioned before, full time support will look a little different than it has in the past. I have been able to live based mainly on generous one-time support. Before I go back now though, I need 100% of my budget to be covered by monthly donations.
Anyway, before this gets too long, I look forward to being able to meet with a lot of you. Let me know if you are in Calgary and would like to get together. I really appreciate all of you.