Congrats Tess and Lindsey

Congrats to Ember Guides - Tess, on the left, and Lindsey, on the right, on graduating from Eastern University last weekend.

I first met Tess in the summer of 2013, when as a high school junior, she had returned from a missions experience in Europe with lots of energy and passion for serving in that context. Ember was a good fit for her to get involved and she's been one of our longest serving Guides, helping run the 2014 X, 2015 Prague, 2016 Italy and 2017 Italy teams. This year's team already feels a little strange without her.

Lindsey and I met through Tess - our first time hanging together was in Chinatown in Philadelphia seeing the sights after we had given a group some instructions on cultural navigation. Ah the fun of leadership. Tess and Lindsey also invested at the highest level of Ember Guides last summer when they were our Summer Send, being sent to Poland for 6 weeks to work with a church plant. I could not have imagined a better fit for them and they turned a great idea into an awesome experience.

The Ember Cast will miss you two. We will miss the way Tess can recite the Ember mantras by heart and how Lindsey looks just like Hillary Duff. But go do some amazing things in a world that desperately needs passion, beauty, and character and we will throw fire with you.

Summer 17 Financials

We've reconciled most of the summer expenses so maybe this will help you with your future planning or give you a baseline for comparison. This is all the big stuff even though there are some small incidentals here and there. Some notes below since this is The Ember Cast and nothing is ever straightforward around here.

11334 - Italy Airfare
3160 - Poland Airfare
1685 - Italy Lodging
1200 - Poland Lodging
~1500 - Poland on the ground costs including food, excursions, incidentals, etc.
~2200 - Food, for 2 weeks for both teams
350 - Insurance
1032 - In Country Transport
1900 - Future
58 - Bank fees
2577 - Ministry
~27200 - Total

Italy
- team of 6
- 13 days long
Poland
- team of 2
- 44 days long + 7 days in Italy

+ Two teams that overlapped in both time and locality means that some of the costs are shared and were not easily categorized.
+ We used two Airbnbs which were extremely inexpensive. Our team also felt like it gave us a better flavor for living like a local. I was a fan of Airbnb even before this trip - this is the definitely the way to go.
+ We had two people drop last minute so there was both a credit for airfare and some much smaller sunk costs due to one of the flights being non-refundable.
+ In country transport included a rental car, subway/tram and taxi fares.
+ We purchase overseas medical insurance for each person. We have a great insurance person - let me know if you need an intro.
+ The best way to get cash is to go to an ATM in country. My credit cards do not charge foreign transaction fees but my ATM cards do. Annoying.
+ Ministry costs included costs to do the stuff as well as some monetary funding to our partners.
+ In the case of the people that dropped last minute, when we can, we like to hold the money they raised to be applied to something they do in the future, whether it is with Ember or another 501C3 nonprofit.
+ Spending $27K in 13 days... Make no mistake, spending this kind of money every summer always gives me pause. When it comes to short term missions, we should always be asking whether this amount of time, money and energy is worth it but ask it with a 500 year horizon.

Ember Poland Has Returned

Our second team, the Poland ladies, landed yesterday afternoon after 2 months in Poland and one week in there with our Italy team. By all accounts, it was a grand success and I'm proud for how these ladies worked, served and represented Ember.

We had intentionally set this experience up with elements of cultural engagement, history exploration and startup ministry and probably our best decision was to give it a very light tempo. It was not a 40 a week job. Instead, it gave them lots of room to experience this global city as cultural explorers first and summer missionaries second.

Ember has wanted to grow this type of summer send for a while now. This is a great alternative to the 10-15 day summer team we usually do, helping give the right people an extended field experience with some great hosts being creative and innovative for the Gospel. Maybe you'll dream with us about this kind of thing in 2018.

Creating Something from Nothing

On our second day in Italy, our host RH was the mastermind of a 'day out' for the refugee boys. This entailed renting two coach buses and bringing all of the refugee boys out of the city from two different camps to a community gathering spot that one of the partnering churches had owned. After the boys arrived, a few different US based teams such as ours hosted some games and hung out with them. Lunch was served and after that, everyone got back in vehicles and went part way up Mount Etna. Dinner time was back at the gathering spot where this partner church's volunteers cooked brick oven pizzas - this is Italy after all - for everyone - about 100 people. Like the parade of American and refugee kids on the way to play football last summer, this was the first time this kind of thing had been done here.

In Warsaw, one of the things our team was asked to do was to conduct cultural surveys with Polish people. This survey included questions like "What do you like most about Warsaw?" and questions about priorities in life and if they were connected to a church. If you are like me, you basically push people running these surveys away like the plague. However in Warsaw, once you told them you were learning about Polish culture, they loved answering these questions and conversing about these kinds of topics. Our host TC was the instigator behind this because his startup church is English speaking and interested in what the younger generation thinks is important. To his knowledge, this was the first time any of this kind of data was ever collected in Warsaw.

These first time 'things' are important to The Ember Cast and are the basis for one of our distinctives when we run summer experiences - we want our high school teams to work side by side with people doing these kinds of things. There are a unique set of skills for a leader trying to execute something from nothing: raising money for the untested, embracing risk, building a network from scratch, logistics, budgets, casting vision, learning from failure, catalyzing others, etc. this list could go on and on and can be taught and modeled. This is where we bank our investment - the global leaders of tomorrow should be learning these skills today. RH and TC both embody these skills, they are creating something from nothing. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that our Italy team worked side by side with both of these men and their teams.

Poland Saturday

Church planter TC giving instructions on exegeting a neighborhood/decoding/navigating culture. Vital tools for emerging global student leaders which is part of why we are here.

We See Warsaw

Last week, we did a little send off with Tess and Lindsey - dinner, DC monuments, final details, budget review. They landed over the weekend in Poland where they will be serving with a church plant for the next 2 months. Tess has served with Ember every summer since 2014 and this is Lindsey's first Ember outing although she has a background with lots of cross cultural experience.

I'm thrilled that these two are part of our tribe - they are kind, they care about what kind of change they can make in the world, they are willing to risk trying new things because the Gospel is worth it and they laugh at my jokes. They also represent a pretty big milestone for Ember this summer. Although we have sent a number of students for the summer within the US, these two are our first overseas. And when Italy flies, we will have two 'teams' in the field at the same time.

Thanks to those of you that have helped support these two with your prayers, encouragement and financial support. And a few hours before they flew, some of their lodging costs dropped which enabled them to be 100% funded. That's always fun. Be sure to follow their blog.

Photo: Tess, Lindsey, moi. June 2017.

2017 Support Letters - #2

One non-negotiable of Ember's summer teams is that support letters have to look beautiful.

2017 Support Letters - #1

One non-negotiable of Ember's summer teams is that support letters have to look beautiful. We want them to look like someone took a lot of time and energy in putting them together and that the readers are hopefully impressed when they open them.

Tess has taken all the responsibility for multiple years for helping guide students to not only write good letters but make them beauuuuutiful.

Ember Summer Send 1

Every other year or so, someone that has spent a lot of time with The Ember Cast asks to dream with us. This usually takes the form of what we call a 'Summer Send' and represents some of our best opportunities. We get to play recruiter between someone we know well and partners that we admire, doing interesting things, and able and willing to invest in the emerging generation. Summer Sends usually last most of the summer and are the next logical experience for people like this, most of whom have done a one or two week experience with us.

This summer, our first Summer Send we are working on is sending Tess and Lindsey to Poland for part of the summer. While there, they will have the opportunity to work with the staff of a brand new church plant, do some cultural analysis and observation to help this staff, and do some exploration of their city and culture on their own.

Tess and Lindsey are uniquely perfect for this. They both have been around Ember and short term missions for a good number of years, have experience in navigating culture as well as teaching others how to do it, and have leadership initiative beyond their years. I'm thrilled that Ember can be a small part of their journey in throwing fire. Thanks in advance for supporting these two.