Support Letter...It's Official...Email Style

After much thought and mental wrestling, we decided that for this mission trip, we would forgo the costs of printing and mailing support letters and go the email route.  While I'm a little nervous that some might think it's lame, I feel good that we are saving money this way and now that people can donate online, it just makes sense to provide them with a link they can click on.

So, here's what our support letter looks like:

And if you didn't receive one by email...make sure to sign up for our email newsletter group in the upper right hand corner.  Sorry that I missed you!

Here's what it said...

"Dear Family & Friends,

As we head into the holidays, it's time for the Suiters to start thinking about the summer.  Greg and I have decided to partner up again and lead a trip back to Pawley's Island, South Carolina this coming July. 

Pawley's has a very special place in both our hearts.  This will be my (Shannon) 3rd time back in Pawley's and Greg's 5th time returning.  We spent two weeks there together the month before we got married and returned for another week the month after we got married.  Last summer Greg took a team of amazing underclassmen to Pawley's to continue the wonderful work going on there.  While in Pawley’s Island, Greg and the team partnered with LeaderTreks to continue the mission of healing the division between the white and African-American communities.   The team helped with the construction of homes to improve living conditions in the neighborhoods as well as ran an outreach program to the children living there. 

We are so excited to continue what the students started last year and are asking for your help to do that.  First and foremost, we would ask for your prayers.  We believe in the power of prayer and need prayer support to help us as we are traveling, working, and sharing the gospel.  These communities are in desperate need spiritually and it will take lots of prayer to prepare our hearts and the hearts of the people in South Carolina.  If you head to our blog - teamsuiter.blogspot.com - you can join our email update list to receive important prayer requests and updates on the progress of our team.

We are also needing to raise $1300 for our travel costs.  If you would please consider donating to our trip, we would greatly appreciate it.  You can donate 2 different ways.  First, you can donate online.  If you go to www.morethan2hs.com, there is a tutorial explaining how to donate.  You can select either Greg or I to donate to, but both go to our account.  You can also donate by check.  You can mail a check to us at the address below.  Please make the check payable to Sun Valley Community Church and DO NOT put our names on the check for tax purposes.  All donations are tax deductible and you will receive a tax receipt at the end of the calendar year.

Thank you so much for taking the time to learn more about our upcoming trip to Pawley’s Island and for considering to support us prayerfully and financially.  Please let us know if you have any questions.

We are so thankful for you all this holiday season and wish you and your families all the best!

Love,
Greg & Shannon Suiter"

First Team Meeting

This afternoon we had our first official team meeting!  It was so great to sit down with the team and start to plan and dream.  Greg and I interviewed two new team members this morning and had 2 more students who were interested in joining the team attend the meeting.  It is really such a great group of students and I am excited to get to know them all over the next 8 months!

As of right now, our team has the following members:

Greg & I

Caleb

Alan

Jacob

Jordan

Nate

Mike

Keziah

Sarah

Ashlyn

Emmalie

Jensen

Lauren

Mariah

We discussed what fundraising will look like for them as far as letter writing and we brainstormed some ideas for group fundraising activities.  They had some really great ideas and I'm excited to see how they pull together as a team to start raising money for our trip.  We'll see how things work out in the next few months. 

We're going back!

 After working on two different teams last summer (Greg with the Pawley's team and me with the Honduras team), Greg and I are teaming up and heading back to Pawley's Island, South Carolina.  We are so excited for so many reasons!!!

This will be Greg's 5th time returning to Pawley's (PI) and my 3rd time back.  PI holds a special place in our hearts.  Greg did his LeaderTreks summer internship in PI, he led trips there a few times, the summer before our wedding he was the site leader in PI, we went back there a month after we got married to serve, and Greg took our freshman/sophomore mission group there last summer.  We love the mission that is going on in PI to heal the wounds of discrimination and segregation and we love the people there.

We are also so excited to be leading together!  Even though Greg was able to come down to Honduras for one week of our two week mission trip last summer, all the training we did was separate.  This time around, we're in this all together.  We almost have our team finalized and all the kids are so amazing!  I can't wait to start this process again to train and prepare the team for their work in PI.

Our support letter will be coming out soon and we would greatly appreciate your prayers as we begin working with our team at our first meeting this Sunday.  Please also consider joining our email update list.  We're so excited to share our journey back to Pawley's with you!