Heading down south

Tomorrow I'm heading down to Tasmania to catch up with some relatives and friends and speak about Mexico at a couple of churches down there. I am looking forward to seeing some people who I haven't seen in a while - particularly some of my cousins! I'll be at Hope Christian Centre (25 Tasma St, North Hobart) on Sunday morning at 10am if you are around and want to catch up.

I've had another great week of getting prepared. Today felt particularly busy with lots of phone calls and emails, but everything is moving in the right direction and I'm thankful to God for the way he is opening doors. I sent out a special January edition of amigos on Tuesday - if you're not receiving my newsletter and you would like to, please check out the link to Phil's Mexico Journey updates on the left side of this page and request to join the group.

Have a great weekend and I'll update with some photos and stories from Tassie next week.

Hasta luego amigos!

Freedom!

I finished up my transition training last week and Monday was my first day of free time to get prepared! I made sure that I got straight into it and had organised to have breakfast with a couple of good mates who are involved in mission work. This was a good (early) start to the day which kicked things off well!
It has been really fantastic to have the time and focus to catch up with my friends and my family, to spend some time chatting and journeying together and to drink lots of coffee. My coffee tally for Monday was 5 lattes ;-) I've been praying that God would give me great times with my friends and family before I go and He's done just that - given me opportunities to be with friends and family and have great times.

I've made myself a BIG list of to-dos (which is still growing!) so that I use my time well leading up to when I'm hoping to leave. I found this cool website for organising your tasks, it's called "Remember The Milk" - www.rememberthemilk.com - maybe you could add "Catch up with Phil for coffee" to your task list!?

Over the last couple of days I have been enjoying working through my to-dos on my laptop whilst sitting in a few of the cool cafes we have here in Melbourne and enjoying the vibrance and diversity of the city. Yesterday I sat at Pushka for a couple of hours and today I was in Richmond helping out a friend so I visited Chimmey's bakery. YUM!

God has been awesome in starting to bring together a group of partners to support me in prayer and financially as I go to serve in Mexico. I'm just under half way there in terms of the finances I need to support me each month, so if you've been praying or considering supporting me, it would be great if you could add "Send off partnership commitment" to your task list too.

I had better get back to preparing!

Wrapping up training

A cool photo of some of us at training.
I'm here with my friends sharing about how to use a blog! It's lots of fun and a great way to keep in touch!



Everyone is having fun... except for Bill... he's a bit grumpy this afternoon ;-) Only joking!!

Teamwork!

Check it out! This is our team's winning baloon tower that we built during a team-building exercise today. It was really interesting to debrief the exercise as we had a team that worked really well together. During the course we have been talking about different personality types and have all completed a Myers-Briggs personality type assessment. It was interesting to be in a group that was weighted with "Feelers" over "Thinkers" and had a mix of other personality characteristics. We all looked after each other and had a lot of fun working together! It's really handy to talk about our personality types with others, especially those who you work in a team with to understand how others think and feel. It's not a chance to pigeon-hole people, but to understand more of how they approach life, challenges and how they get their energy. For anyone that's interested, I identify most closely as an ENFP...

Training is going really well and is continuing to provide some new insights as well as revising some lessons I've heard before. I've met a stack of really cool people and I'm excited to see how others are getting prepared to go to places all over the world to serve God.

If you're into it, please keep praying for me as the course stretches and challenges us that I would be able to learn and grow.

Hasta luego amigos ;-)

Off to training

Ok, so lots of posts today, but this one is short... I'm just about to get ready and leave for Transition Training. The course is designed to help build my skills for making an effective transition into another culture. The course runs from the 2nd to 18th of January, so I'll pretty much be out of circulation during this time as it is residential and runs six days per week.

If you're into praying, I would really appreciate it if you would pray for me during this time of training and preparation that God would teach me the things that I need to do to prepare and that I would draw nearer to God at the training. I would also appreciate if you would pray with me for my partnership team to come together to support me financially and specifically in prayer as I go to Mexico. I have had many people express an interest and desire to partner with me, but I need those people to follow through and send in a response form to International Teams so that all the logistics come together.

God bless you in 2008 and I look forward to sharing the journey of life together in 2008 and beyond!

I'm an uncle... again!!!

Yesterday, on the 1st day of 2008, we welcomed Joel James Roderick Dawson into the world! I'm a very proud uncle and had the opportunity to go and visit the little man last night. He is very cute and happy to get out into the world!

Mitchell, Joel, Jenny, Brianna and Rod - the new, improved Dawson family!

A proud uncle - God bless ya Joel!

Merry Christmas!

I had the opportunity to have a few Christmas celebrations with family and friends. On Christmas Eve, we had a family Christmas celebration with my parents and my two sisters and their families who live in Melbourne. My brothers live interstate and weren't able to make it down this Christmas.

On Christmas day, I went to church, then shared Christmas lunch with a group of international students and other who didn't have family in Melbourne to celebrate Christmas with. We had FUN! It was great to share our Christmas celebrations and traditions with some friends many of whom had never celebrated a western Christmas!

Here are some happy snaps...

Decorating the Christmas tree

Happy Christmas!!