Every year at Base Camp students and parents buy iGo shirts to support the ministry and to show off some really cool designs! Now, for the first time ever, you can buy them online!! Check it out: http://igoglobal.bigcartel.com/ The proceeds from these shirts go toward helping us send more students to unreached people groups across the globe. Show your support by purchasing one today!
We’re on iTunes!!!
It’s official - iGo is now on iTunes! Search for us and listen to the sermons from Leader Retreat a couple weeks ago. They’re ALL really good. We’ll be posting sermons from Base Camp and other events, so check back periodically!
If you don’t have iTunes, use this direct link:
Warrior Dash Pics
An estimated 18,000 people proved their warrior status at the two day event this weekend in Forney, TX. Among these were six of our staff and several friends.
“It was the craziest freaking day of my life,” said Shu. “We all looked like new born giraffes out in that mud. You could NOT stand up. The coolest part was how every part of my body was hurting until I stopped running and then I felt fine.”
Ky said, “The coolest part was the mud slide - you get cooking on that thing. It was just like going down a water slide. Another fun part was when you swam over the logs and got out of the water and felt refreshed - ready to go again.”
“Hopefully we’ll make this an annual tradition and more friends and staff can join us next yaer,” said Allison.
Below are some of the pics Allison took during the event:
Warrior Dash
Wikipedia cites the Random House Dictionary to define the term warrior, saying a warrior is “a person who shows or has shown great vigor, courage, or aggressiveness, as in politics or athletics.”
Tomorrow, May 1, many of the iGo staff will go where no iGosian has gone before; we will become WARRIORS! We will face a 3.51-mile course with 14 obstacles standing in the way of VICTORY. Some of these obstacles include running through gale force winds, running down a river, climbing up a muddy incline, climbing over a giant mountain of hay bales, climbing up and over cargo nets, crawling through the mud under barbed wire, and jumping over fire. That’s right - I said FIRE.
Why, you might ask? Well that response would be different for everyone competing. My reasons:
Letter 1 – Have you ever met the people I work with? I decided to participate mostly for the opportunity to see some of them participate (sadly I am signed up in a different wave and will not get to do the challenge with them). There are some positives to not being in the same heat as everyone else - I can get some really good/embarrassing pictures of the rest of them competing.
Number e – I like a good challenge and it is going to be crazy, ridiculous, fun, and if the Lord wills it we might just make it through the craziness.
So I decided to ask everyone participating to give me their reasons on why they want to become a warrior.
Ky – “I have a (what’s the word I’m looking for) a great need for affirmation, what could be more affirming than achieving the status of warrior, and having a fuzzy helmet with horns to prove it.”
Crystal – “I want to be a Warrior because I shouldn’t be able to do this. 2 years ago I would have never even attempted anything that involved running or obstacles. But with God’s grace I plan to enjoy every minute of the challenge.”
Lance – “I am a warrior and I have been looking for an opportunity to make that information public. I’m also looking forward to using all of my knowledge from The Unit and putting that into action.”
Brad – “I’m a warrior because I’m not going to be a part of your system. I will throw the Warrior Dash on the ground.”
Kent – “I already am a warrior, I just have to prove it to a few of you.”
Elizabeth – “Why not?”
Look for a future post with pictures of us all becoming WARRIORS!
Discouraged?
One of the best things I was ever told was, “Sarah, God’s not trying to trick you.”
I sighed in defeat as I scanned the apartment stuffed full of cardboard moving boxes. It was only 8 in the morning and I could already tell that this was going to be a long day. Matt (my husband) and I had made the decision to move to sunny southern California and now here I stood shoulder deep in our belongings crammed into our new miniature apartment.
Why California you ask? For a job? For family? For fame?
To all of these I say no, except for maybe the last one…if we’re lucky. 
We’ve moved to California for Matt to continue school. Somebody has to be the smart one in this family & I’m just glad God didn’t ask me (I get to be the cool one). Seriously though, with Matt going to school I am left to do the unpacking and so here I stood, in basketball shorts & an old tie dye shirt, surrounded by boxes. As I began to work on the boxes one by one my mind began to work back to how this all began and the faith we never thought would be tested, faith in our call.
Matt and I began to gain a grasp on the fact that God wanted us to move to California for Matt to go to school shortly after we were married. You’d think realizing this was a call God had given us would be enough to spark the courage we lacked, but it wasn’t. Our hearts were too tied to the obstacles that were in front of us to see clearly the faith God desired to build in us. We began to stress and fret. We didn’t see the solutions coming and we were running out of time! We were defeated, or so we felt.
Thinking on all of this I pulled out books and placed them on our bookshelf. About midway through I pulled out a medium sized, blue jean fabric photo album. My pictures from my iGO trip to Ethiopia, Africa. Looking through those photos I began to remember the faith that God had asked of me that summer.
The summer of 2008 I not only traveled to Ethiopia, Africa, but also to Alaska. How stressful it had been to raise funds for two trips. I remember the excitement of wanting to go mixed with the worry of if it was the right decision. Because of this internal conflict I began to question my desire to travel to both places. Did God really want me to go? If he had indeed called me to go this summer why was this so hard and uncomfortable? I began to become defeated.
When I become discouraged or worried I find the best thing I can do for the situation is to ground myself. I take a step back and try to separate how I feel from what I know. I felt like God was distant and because he was distant I was in the wrong place with this decision (Which can be true sometimes, but not always). I needed to know the facts. Facts like, God desires for good to come to me, not harm. (Ps. 23) God wants me to succeed. (2 Tim. 4:17) God is not indecisive, he knows what he wants for me. (Jer. 29:11)
These facts ground me into the thought of, “If all of this is fact (which it is) then I can state as a fact, God wants me to go.” Knowing that God wants me to go makes all the difference. When I knew that I want to go AND God wanted me to go, I turned a corner. I realized that even though it may be a hard, awkward, uncomfortable, faith stretching mess, I was going do it. I was going to work hard to succeed all the way up to the last moment.
So as I closed the scrapbook and looked out over the apartment, reminded of the internal struggle to have faith in God’s decisions for my (our) life. I must continuously balance emotions with facts, struggling to remind myself that God believes in me and so I should believe in myself. I can do this. I can work hard and try every option because he’s proud of me and is in my corner, and when I get there I can do well and be a success.
If God has called you to go this summer and it gets hard, if it seems like it’s not going to work or you don’t think you’re ready for it, remember, He will be with you. He is not trying to trick you.
What I miss about Tokyo
I constantly find myself daydreaming about Tokyo. I suppose after spending an extended period of time anywhere, a piece of your heart remains. Quite often I imagine I’m standing on a platform, waiting for a train to arrive, or sitting down to eat sukiyaki, dipping thin strips of pork into a layer of boiling water and tasting the freshly-cooked, tasty meat.
So I’ve come up with this list (which could be exhaustive in my mind): the things I miss about Tokyo. It does not include ALL of the things I miss, but touches on several of the main ones. Those iGosians who’ve spent time in Tokyo hopefully will connect with some of these things. For those of you who’ve never been to Tokyo, or maybe are planning to go in the future, my second list may prove more helpful (see below). Hope you enjoy!
Top 20ish Things I Miss Most About Tokyo (in no particular order):
1. Walking on the left side of the road/staircase.
2. The many smells on the side of the street, especially yakisoba.
3. The brilliant invention of unlimited hot water in the shower.
4. Bowing.
5. Always being greeted when walking into a store.
6. The challenge of trying to survive Shibuya crossing without touching anyone.
7. Rush-hour train rides and thirteen complete strangers touching you simultaneously.
8. The neatness and cleanliness of the streets, people, and culture.
9. Rain (and thus slightly cooler weather) during the summer months.
10. Onsens
11. Taking ALL shoes off at the door.
12. Sitting on the floor.
13. Chopsticks.
14. The way most Japanese are so shy about their English, when in all actuality they’re pretty fluent.
15. Escalators everywhere.
16. Sorting trash.
17. Pink toilet paper.
18. The Elvis dancers, drummers, bagpipe players, skateboarding bulldog, and so much more that can be found in Yoyogi park any given Sunday.
19. Heated toilet seats.
20. Umbrella plastic bags to keep people from tracking water into businesses.
21. The 4am sunrises (yes, I’m an early-bird).
22. Morning jogs through Yoyogi park.
23. Karaoke nights out.
24. Umbrella wars.
And now for those of you who’ve never been, but may be planning to go…
The Top 5 Things one is tempted to do while in Tokyo, and which are usually highly unadvisable:
5. Making no attempt to read the Trashcan labels, and discarding your garbage into whichever one is nearest.
4. Laughing out loud and pointing out to the Japanese all of their Engrish mistakes.
3. Dousing all your food in soy sauce.
2. Increasing the volume of your speech so as to make the Japanese better understand your English.
1. Yelling “Somebody’s touching me!” during rush hour while on a crowded train.
Moose, Meese, Moosen….
Chassidy has served on staff with us over the past year and has a great story about her encounter with a moose. If you followed our mascot clues a few weeks ago, you probably heard us make mention of this incident (the pic was taken the day before this incident took place):
Three years ago, I had my first experience with what would later become the iGo Mascot. It wasn’t one of the friendly mascots, like a goat, penguin, or giraffe. It was one of those animals that you want to see from far away, but not close up, because you are scared it will kick you or step on you or poke you with its horns. That’s right, I met a moose. Not just any old moose, I met an Alaskan moose, which happen to be the largest species of moose…mooses…meese…moosen? Whatever. I met one of them, and every time I see a moose shirt on an iGo student, I will remember my first encounter.
In the summer of 2007, I went to Alaska for two weeks to serve with the Alaska Baptist Convention. Driving around Alaska you can’t help but notice two things. First, how absolutely beautiful it is; it really is breathtaking. Second, the terrifying signs reminding you of the “Moose on Road.” Apparently, moose like to walk across busy roads and put their lives (and the lives of those in the cars) in danger. Because of these signs, I was always aware of moosen while driving. I was not, however, as aware when I was running.
About a week after I had been in Alaska, I went for a run in the morning. I had run a couple of blocks in the neighborhood we were staying in, but had run almost a whole block looking down at my foot. I had on some windpants and the zipper was stuck so my pant leg kept flopping around, and I was staring at the zipper wondering how I could fix it. After accepting the fact that there was no hope for my zipper, I looked up. That’s when I saw it.
…or more accurately, them.
In the middle of a busy neighborhood full of houses, people, dogs, and cars, there was a little field with trees. Out of these trees came two moose. Actually, out of the trees came a cow moose and her calf. Apparently this is one of the most dangerous ways to encounter a moose, because the “momma moose” as I called her, is very protective of her baby. So as I look up, I see them walking out of the trees, and hope that they don’t see me. Momma moose, however, looked straight at me, back at the baby moose, and back at me. Her ears laid back (a lot like a dog or cats do) and she started trotting towards me. So I kept running…in the opposite direction, of course. I sprinted as fast as I could, looking over my shoulder every 1/8 of a second to see if the moose was still after me. I was checking out all the houses I was passing and trying to figure out how I could get to the roof, or climb up in a tree, or jump on top of a car. I quickly realized that I was no Jason Bourne and had no chance against a 7-foot tall animal; but she only trotted after me for about 30 seconds, and then veered off into the woods. That was the last time I went running in Alaska.
So…there’s my moose story. Contrary to what you may think, I am in favor of the 2010 mascot, and am sure that I will have a better experience with meese in iGosia than I did with mooses in Alaska.
Leader/JSI Retreat
It’s crazy that Leader/JSI Retreat is already here. We’ve been gearing up for the summer and here we are. The kickoff event. We’ve spent the last 24 hours meeting and hanging out with our Ms - the people you’ve worked with on the field or will be working with this summer. It’s always an exciting time - planning and preparing for our teams to arrive on the field. It’s also incredibly humbling talking with our Ms about their lives and ministry. How huge Father is and how amazing that we get to be a small part of his work in declaring His glory among the nations!
Tonight our Team Leaders arrive and we’ll be doing a lot of teaching, training, discussing, etc. Our JSIs (Overseas Summer Interns) arrive tomorrow and we’ll continue the training.
Be praying with/for us as we go through this weekend. We’ll be posting updates from the teaching times so you can know what’s happening in the world of iGosia!
iGosian Easter Tradition
I love traditions - school traditions, family traditions, and especially holiday traditions. While I was growing up, every year at Easter, my cousins would come over to paint Easter eggs. My husband thinks I’m crazy because I still like to do stuff like that - and I’m almost 28 years old.
You can imagine my excitement when I learned that iGosians have certain traditions that are central to their culture. I got to experience one of them last week as we prepared for our Easter celebrations. It’s quite similar to the traditional Easter egg painting. Check out these pictures!
Drum Roll Please….
This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The iGo Mascot for 2010 is the….
MOOSE!!!
Congrats to Sunny H for being the first to correctly guess the mascot! Sunny, be checking the mail for your awesome iGo shirt!