Jesse's Announcement

Greetings. I wanted to announce on our journal that I will no longer travel with Latreia full time after our Christmas break. I will still remain a member of Latreia and serve with the team for a few weeks during the next 8 months but my role is changing.

This change is not what I had set out to do when we left in August. I am not homesick nor am I “staying back” because of other such frustrations; this is what I feel called to do. During the past months I have had many conversations on "God's call" and I am well aware that the idea of God's call does not set well even among Christians. I can best explain my decision with a quick story: Seven months ago I wrote a letter to family and friends saying that I felt called to do something crazy and quit my job to join 3 others and travel the US. I am here now saying that I feel called to do something crazy and end my travels before they are finished. Please, read on...

As Latreia continues to grow and move into the future we would like to send out more teams to travel and serve under the Latreia name. These teams will travel as we have with the intention of continuing to spread Latreia’s mission and connecting more volunteer sites with our database. We hope to send out one or more teams starting in September of 2005. During the next few months I plan to travel to churches, colleges and universities in and around Iowa to raise awareness for Latreia and recruit and train individuals for future teams.

The Latreia traveling team is still at 4 members. A wonderful fellow by the name of Josh Meinders will be joining the team in January. I had the opportunity to work with him for our week in Iowa and am excited for what he will bring to the Latreia team. I will save further introduction because you will be meeting him for yourself in due time as he is added to the website and begins to report from the “front” via our journal.

I would like to thank everyone for their continued support of Latreia. I have been blessed many times over by numerous people and experiences. I wish Josh and the girls many more blessings with their travels and look forward to the times that I will meet up with them (Mississippi, New York and Maine as of now). I encourage you to keep reading the journal entries to find out about travels on the east coast and how recruiting is going.

Happy Holidays and God Bless

Jesse