Spencer is moving to Fiji!!!!

 Spencer is moving to Fiji to do service.  I am excited for  him and very scared at the same time.  I can't believe how much my children have a desire to live outside the U.S.  It scares me to even think it as I already have one child who plans to live outside the U.S. as soon as he graduates.  YIKES!!!!   I don't remember raising my children to have a desire to explore the world so much.  We haven't traveled that much as a family.   I am excited for him, but I have been researching the program he will be doing and all the info I can get on Fiji., but I will still worry, unfortunately. 

Below is what Spencer wrote in his own words about his new experience.
But without further ado I should probably tell you all about an adventure I will be experiencing this summer that for the pretty much the first time in life has gotten me incredibly nervous. This May on the 10th to be exact I will be moving to Fiji. Yeah Fiji that little island in the Pacific ocean way out by Australia. And unless I am told otherwise I will be staying there till August 22nd. Crazy right?  I am not going to lie it scares the crap out of me a bit to just up and move to a place I have never been to. On top of that I have never left the country in my life. So this will be a completely new experience for me, one that I am told is supposed to change everything about me.

So I am going with this organization that is called HELP International you can learn more about them http://fiji.help-international.org/. Basically they are an organization that does not just throw money at a problem in a different country like so many non profits do. Historically speaking western society has this habit of finding a problem and throwing money at it which actually has lead to a lot of dictators taking control of countries. The history of modern Africa is a good place to start looking if you want to see how many western NGO's have utterly failed. HELP is quite a bit different though. The mission of HELP is more about fighting poverty by empowering individuals that are natives to various countries. HELP wants to provide self sustaining solutions to the problems that have plagued countries for decades. It wants to solve a problem through local organizations that once solved will stay solved long after participants have left and finished projects. So that is where I come into this, I signed up to go as what they call a social entrepreneur. My job is simple I go to the country and integrate myself with the locals there and find out what they need. From there it gets a lot harder, myself with quite a few others will create from start to finish the projects that we believe to help the local population. From that point I will direct a lot of the other volunteers in how they can help and making sure the projects get completed on a day to day basis. So basically I get to see what the community needs then try to implement that over a period of 4 months. Suffice to say my blog will pretty much be devoted to his as I probably won't find much else to talking about.