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checks made payable to Global Teams, with "Jason Mehl" on the memo line can be mailed to:
Global Teams
PO Box 490
Forest City, NC 28043
phone: (828)248-1377
website: www.global-teams.org
my US phone: (912) 617-4017
my email: mehljason@yahoo.com
Let’s not talk politics.
I’m in a living room in Bakersfield California on a couch next to a bag of my clothes and junk, looking at the sliding glass door that’s reflecting me and my junk because it’s night out. Earlier, before it was night out, my junk was out on the picnic table on the other side of the glass door and I was floating in the little round pool just beyond the picnic table, opening and closing my eyes to the clear blue 100 degree sky while a breeze cooled my chlorine dried and cleansed skin from it’s former four hour car-seat sweat state. Four hours from San Francisco where it was 69 degrees. It’s not the degree’s that’re silly--it was already 100 thirty miles out of San Francisco. The silliness is somewhere in the borderless land where missionaries float in pools in Bakersfield.
I’ve been eating lunches and dinners with folks all over America and they’ll ask me how my summer’s been and at some point I’ll tell them I haven’t been in one place for longer than a seven-day stretch. I think that’s true--it might be eight.
The first month back I was traveling around with Grace. Since then, it’s been Wheaton, Grand Island Nebraska, Wheaton, Ashland Ohio, Washington DC, Pittsburg, Washington DC, Brunswick, Tallahassee, Brunswick, Tallahassee, Brunswick, Columbia South Carolina, Atlanta, Toccoa, Athens, Springfield Illinois, Peoria, Wheaton, somewhere in South Dakota, Butte Montana, Seattle, Bend Oregon, San Francisco, now Bakersfield. In the next month it’ll be, L.A., Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, maybe Birmingham, Brunswick, Columbia, Athens, Brunswick, Seattle, Bend, Brunswick, then back to Uganda.
The most significant stop of the summer was the one in Tallahassee. Minus the weekend in Brunswick, two weeks of missionary training with Global Teams (formerly Episcopal World Mission)--the group who’s sending me back to Uganda. I could say one million great things about Global Teams--they all stem from a genuine understanding of the Great Commission and a genuine commitment to fulfilling it. I’m very excited about working with Global Teams next year in Uganda and in any way God allows in the future.
Since Tallahassee, most of my stops have been planned around asking for support from individuals and churches. I need to have $13,000 in either cash or pledges by August 28th. Of course I don’t have it yet. God is providing in his way and I’m sure he’ll continue to do so and I’ll be on a plane to Uganda September 1st, thinking with closed eyes about the happy and sad silliness of the whole world, and thanking God for letting me work for him in it.