We have 4 short-termers coming with us on our trip starting October 13th.

Carla (Allentown, PA) - studied with Connie at Northland and graduated two years ago. She taught in India for a year (2005-2006) and came with us to Myanmar last spring. While there, she did a lot of the linguistic work for Connie.  She will be with us the entire trip, other than Christmas time (she will go to India straight from Myanmar and have Christmas there). She will help again with linguistic research, but she is actually coming as a literacy intern. She will be doing what Kristy did last time, studying primer writing, observing workshops and helping as she learns.

Kristy (Pittsburgh, PA) - is in her Junior year of college as an education major. She has traveled with us the last three trips and went to India once on her own. During the last workshop she primarily was a literacy intern. She learned how to do literacy work and assisted Connie. This trip she will be having her own primer workshops and she will be helping Connie with the teacher training. She hasn't had the opportunity to do a basic primer, so she will be observing and helping as she can during those workshops so she can learn how to do them as well.

Staci (Grand Rapids, MI) - is a junior in High School. She usually baby-sits the boys for us when we are in Grand Rapids and does a lot to help Connie keep our lives organized. Her primary responsibility will be helping with the boys. She will also be taking the boys to an outreach preschool in Myanmar three days a week and teaching at the school. Staci enjoys accounting and is really good at it, so she may be helping track expenses for the trip (this is our least favorite part of ministry and usually takes 3-4 days when we return to complete, so it would be a huge burden lifted).

Leigha (Warren, ME) - completed High School a year ago. She will have two primary areas of ministry. The first one is not very glamorous. There will be 6-8 adults plus the boys on this trip. Just preparing meals in these conditions and doing laundry (a load about 1/2 the size of a typical US machine takes 2 hours to do in India, then it must be line dried) is a huge job. Her other job is a little more glamorous. She is going to be the workshop secretary. Many nights we will all be at our computers until midnight trying to get all the work of the day ready for the next. Leigha is going to lift the burden as much as she can. She's getting a copy of the software we use for literacy and learning it before we go. She's also practicing the recipes we've collected that use primarily local ingredients, many of which are not common American recipes.