our summer plans!

family and friends,

we have spent the last six months praying that God will reveal what will be next in our endeavour to serve Him. as most of you know our current job with Camfel Productions ends in may which will leave us jobless, homeless, car-less, and free to move on to God's next ministry. we have not, very surprisingly, been stressed or bothered by this fact. this is definitely uncharacteristic for minda and myself. i am someone who needs to have a plan, know my goals, and execute those plans to the best of my abilities. well, the past 6 months have had some parts of that equation, but have definitely been lacking in the forethought part. we usually don't know where we will be 3 weeks ahead of time, what people we will be working with, the type of facilities we will have at our disposal, heck even the weather has been crazy over here on the east coast! i am not saying this to complain at all! this job has been an amazing time of growth between arminda and myself! we are so blessed by our family, new and old friends, co-workers and our team manager, this has been such a perfect way to learn how to trust in God to provide for us spiritually, mentally, and physically. i have had to trust the Lord, to take care of us, instead of relying on ourselves for provision and strength.

all this to say that the Lord has truly answered our prayers He has literally dropped the answer to our prayers in our lap. over the past few months, Nate Hughes, an awesome missionary who works in the Czech Republic for Josiah Venture, he is in charge of getting summer interns over to the Czech to help run english camps for the summer, among many other things. he has been very adamant in encouraging us to pray for guidance from the Lord to determine if we could possibly come to the Czech this summer to be a part of teaching english and spreading the love of God to the students of eastern europe this summer. i have been to the Czech with Josiah Venture on 2 different occasions; once with moody bible institute for a short term trip and second for a 3 months as a summer intern. honestly, the students have captured my heart, and returning to the Czech has been on my heart since 2009.

i brought this up as a possibility to minda last august, but it didn't seem a likely possibility. we have been praying ever since and we truly believe that returning this summer 2011 is what the Lord is desiring of us in this time of our lives. Nate would like to bring us on as Summer Intern Leaders. it would be a whole lot more trusting Him to provide for us; when i went it was easier, cause i was a "semi-solo" adventurer there, now that we are married there is so much more responsibility and stress; that being said the thought of working with students this summer side-by-side with minda is an idea that literally makes me giddy. wow, that sounds lame, well, it's true!


we are submitting our paperwork this week and will begin raising support soon after. this is definitely the most stressful part of preparation this summer. raising support for one person is tough, but for two, we are entering into this summer with faith that if this is truly the Lord's will he will provide. provide in ways that i am currently uneasy about. because of our tight budget and very limited personal time we are going to try to raise as much support as possible through word of mouth. we ask that after reading this, you would tell your friends and family about us. anyone who reads this blog definitely knows us, thank you for your continued support despite the lack of my diligence in updating.

according to our information we approximately have to raise $8400 for the summer. over a fourth of that is used to pay for our plane tickets to the Czech and back. the rest of that number will be used for travel, lodging, and food costs. we want everyone to know that this is strictly a missionary endeavour; we will NOT be receiving any of that money as payment. we appreciate your potential gifts beyond your comprehension, but even more so we would like to ask for your support through prayer first! we need strong prayer warriors praying for:

• the Lord to prepare our hearts
• the Lord to prepare the hearts of students
• for funds to be provided supernaturally
• for our trust and faith to be in the Lord

we currently unable to begin raising official support through Josiah Venture until we have our account setup, but as you might of noticed there is a "donate" button at the top right of this screen. If you feel you would like to give directly to us through paypal, feel free. 100% of your donation will go towards our trip this summer. although, once we get our JV account setup you can send your gifts to them and you will be able to get a tax rebate. once again please pray for us, we NEED your prayers!

we will be updating soon letting you know what we will be doing this summer, but for now here is a short video of a guy i worked with in summer of 2009 and he came back summer of 2010!


Summer Camp Internship from Josiah Venture on Vimeo.

and later on the six o clock news...

so this week went extremely fast, after last week's craziness, it should seem fast. we had one school a day except for thursday where we had two schools. the two school day was not much of a time issue seeing that they were only about five minutes apart; but they were both our hardest stage setups yet.

the first stage was too small to set up on so we set up on the floor in front of the stage. our second school wanted us to use the stage which barely fit one screen across it, so we had the two side screens coming off the stage onto the floor. this was a very complicated setup and if it hadn't of been for the students (camea, carolin, ben, and isaac) we wouldn't of been able to setup on time. they were all in eighth grade, and really fun, shy-at-first students. they were eager to help and very good at following instructions.

the second school was also exciting because there was a fight between two students. and when i say fight i mean both stranding up on their chairs thrashing at each other with closed fists. they were both jumped on by teachers and escorted out of the assembly. i guess my intro was pretty bad....just kidding! neither of the students were hurt, and the situation was dissolved very quickly. this incident happened right before the start of the assembly, so minda and i gave a pretty awesome intro and conclusion touching on how it takes courage to say "no" to yourself; like starting rumors, getting in fights, ect. and how participating in those activities actually makes you a weaker person.

BUT, the most exciting part of our week was that we were on the news!! so we were at norristown high school, which had the biggest stage ever! it was amazing, like heaven! it also had a giant orchestra pit which was great because our projectors were able to sit inside of it, out of harms way. the school had around 2000 students and they apparently have their own in-school news channel, which also airs on local channels. we were interviewed by two students after our second show. they asked us questions about the presentation and what our job is like. it was a fun interview that we both really actually enjoyed!

weekend with tyra

so it is the weekend, finally! it has been a very, very long week full of 2 school days, in all we have presented the show 18 times! we are extremely tired and we are super pumped to get a couple days to kick back and rest our bodies and minds.

the other day was a very stressful day for us, we had two schools, which were very close in scheduling. the first school's multi-purpose room's stage was extremely small and we couldn't fit our screens on the stage, so we had to reconfigure the seating to fit the screens on the floor. on top of that we started over half an hour behind schedule which meant that we ended up being half an hour late to our next venue.

at that next venue we could not get the line up exactly right because we had to set up our projectors in the rows of seats and how the seats were made it was truly difficult to line up our projectors. so it ended up being slightly off. now when i say slightly off i mean it was pretty bad, but the thing is, is that no one but minda and i could see the difference. we were even thanked by our contact for making the screens look so good, we almost started laughing.

at the end of the day even though we were both basically at our breaking point, we were able to agree to put the day behind us, and we were both able to laugh at our ridiculous day.

today we had what was supposed to be our "stressful day" because we had a super tight drive in between our two schools. the first school decided to begin their second show early which gave us the extra time to arrived at our next school 3 minutes ahead of schedule. both the set ups went very well, and at the second school we had the entire stage crew to help us set up and tear down. it was awesome. btw we had to set up our projectors in the seating at both shows and the line ups were killer!

at the end of our crazy week we (Minda) decided to finish it by watching an entire season of America's next top model.

a night of three of our favorite things!

1. Pittsburgh Steelers/Football
2. Each Other
3. Heinz Ketchup

 don't judge us.

on thursday night minda and i had the unique opportunity to see a pittsburgh steelers game live! it was a blast and minda was pretty much like a kid in a candy shop that was going out of business and having a liquidation sale.

being that it was a pre-season game, we found great seats online for less than half price! we were sitting dead center, lowest level, steeler's sideline, only 26 seats from the front. minda was able to see the facial expressions of "her boys", she was elated to say the least.

we were also sitting right behind some high school guys that were very into supporting their home team! they also helped lead some great cheers!

the game was against the carolina panthers. apparently they did not bring their a-game as the steelers pretty much were running circles around them! it was the icing on the cake to have them win by a landslide on the game we attended! we also took some great pictures after the game. remember you can click the pictures to see a bigger version of them!

at the end of the day we had a wonderful time! it was a perfect date.

hollywood, not all it's cracked up to be...

ok so on sunday, our day off, we decided to go to hollywood and see a movie.


but, before we left we (minda, steve, ashley, and brianna) went to the apple store close by where we are staying. the reason we stopped by was because brianna (another tech) bought an iphone, it was broken, so we went to get it fixed. short story apple is awesome and with no questions asked gave her a new phone to replace the broken one. cool deal.

anyways, so we got back to base camp and then left for hollywood. only bri, minda, and i ended up going in our van, but it was such an amazing time talking with bri and learning about her life and sharing ours with her. she is truly a gifted girl with an amazing heart for God; and she has a Minnesotan accent which is just awesome.

after encountering about a half hour of famous californian traffic, we arrived in downtown hollywood. parking garages were plenty, but very expensive. after a few parking tips from our local friends that are also techs, we got ourselves parked!

hollywood was pretty busy, and honestly it is about one block long and packed with people. we stopped by the most famous spot in hollywood, grauman's chinese theater. we hung out in front of the theater and took some pictures of the cement blocks there signed by famous celebrities!

minda got her picture taken with harrison ford

and i got my picture with morgan freeman

we also took a picture of the hollywood sign, as a side note you may click on any picture to open a higher resolution picture!  

 

moral of the story, we didn't get the chance to watch a movie :(.........o well!

btw, be on the look for a blog post very soon regarding our first show! it went very good btw!

training, training, training

so this week has been a very, very busy week for us to say the very, very least. we begin around 6:30 in the morning and end around 5:00 in the afternoon. our days are spent rotating between four different sessions, each focused on a different part of the camfel job. the four parts are: setting up the different frames to accommodate different stages and ceilings, A/V set up and trouble shooting, and two rotating sessions that focus on different things associated with eqiupment maintince. needless to say, every night we have both collapsed into bed, only to be harassed by our alarms early the next morning.

two days ago (friday), minda had a really, really bad migraine that  kept her in bed all day trying to sleep it off. so i spent the day alone without her as a partner to keep me company :(. but it was ok because she woke up the next day feeling right as rain and ready to go!

yesterday (saturday) was a "half day", but it felt a little longer than that. much to our relief it was more of a laid back non physical day. we are getting excited and also a little nervous because andrew, the team manager, let us know yesterday that we will be doing our first show tomorrow (monday). we won't start our official tour until later this week, but tomorrow is our first show. in fact, it will be the first official showing of this year's new show. the even cooler thing is, is that the entire camfel team will be coming to see the show at the high school!

Team Camfel!

we will hopefully update tomorrow and let everyone know how our show went! pray that:

• God will work through us to further His kingdom.
• He would direct us in our setup
• that everything would run smoothly 
• God would speak through us to students we come into contact with

away we go!!

way we go I wrote this while on our first plane on our way to dallas/fort worth airport. We were a little stressed this morning, because I set my alarm for 2:30 am and it never went off. Luckily mama j woke us up a little before 3:00 when we had to leave, no shower for a while :(, o well.
Our flight has been smooth so far and the flight attendants seem like they are having a good morning. It was hard to say goodbye to the Whitlock clan, it was pretty tough for minda jayne, but it was a great way to be sent off, with loving hugs and encouraging words. Minda is a little worried, because she had to check her guitar. Apparently you are unable to bring a guitar with a hard case on the plane with you, would have been nice if that was posted on the website. O well, we are rolling with the punches and going with the flow right now, preparing ourselves for a California mindset. We are both excited and seriously extremely nervous. Usually I am unhindered by stress until the last minute, and the last minute is upon us.

Minda took some pictures from the plane after we reached our cruising altitude. I love flying, it is super-surreal, it is just one of those things that seems normal, but if you think about it, you start feeling uncomfortable and fidgety. Ok random, but I find it extremely displeasing when I am trying to type out a blog post and the woman in front of me decides it is time to lay her chair back so I have to bend my arms in weird directions to type, grrrrr.

Anyways silas (minda’s youngest brother) hooked us up with some pretty sweet silly bandz that are in the shape of airplanes!! So COOL! We will rock these bandz til they fall off!

My arms are getting extremely uncomfortable so, at least until our next flight I am signing off!

our flight to Cali!

here is an overview minda and my flight to California! feel free to click on icons and lines to discover comments we have made on them! you can also zoom in and out, have fun with our map. we will also be posting and constantly updating a different map that will record our journey through the States!



View Camfel Training - nikandminda in a larger map

t-minus 4 Weeks and Counting

today marks four weeks until we leave for California. furthermore we only have three weeks of Church left at Christ Community Church which we are both really saddened about. we are both getting more and more excited, but we are also getting more and more disappointed about leaving our family and friends. BUT, we are not planning on becoming disconnected while we are gone. we are going to try our hardest to stay connected in a plethora of ways, really attempting to give you a variety of avenues to keep up with us in the way(s) you find easiest or most interesting. these are the ways we are staying connected:

• our blog, duh right? if you would like to spread the word please post this link on your facebook!: http://nikandminda.blogspot.com/ we really would like as many people to know about and see this blog as possible. so please spread the word! also we LOVE comments, so please comment away either at the end of each post or on our facebook profiles!
• Facebook updates of course! we would also appreciate your comments and encouragements on these, we LOVE your personal encouragements and love.
• Twitter updates. if you are unfamiliar with twitter you can check it out at http://www.twitter.com/. it is basically a site completely dedicated to facebook style status updates. if you want to follow us or get our updates texted to your cell phone via text messaging our twitter name is nikandminda
• UStream video blog. we will be broadcasting a video blog that you can watch live while we are recording or later at your convenience when you are free. during the live blog as many viewers as want are able to watch and chat with each other and us without signing up for any service. the link to follow to find the blog is: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nikandminda we will have listed blog times on the website and later on facebook and twitter.                                                                                            

we also just added a "like" button for facebook as you can see below, so please "like" each post you read and get the word out! there is also a small box with the facebook icon below that will share the link to facebook, so please share away!