Carpenter File 1: Starting Out

Greetings everyone!
I hope you are all doing well at the start of a new semester! The purpose of this blog is to journal about my semester abroad in Europe for my family and friends. It is also going to be a way for me to share prayer requests with my brothers and sister in Christ. I would love it if you would also share with me your own needs as well so that I can continue to know how to pray for you too! I am going to try my best to keep this blog current and well updated. But sometimes my ability to access the internet may be patchy. Regardless I hope that through this we can all keep in touch. If you would like my actual snail mail address feel free to e-mail me and get it. I will miss you all greatly and look forward to seeing you soon.

Journal Entry 1:
Well I leave in about 13 hours. I still can't believe that I'm actually going to be living in Europe for 3 1/2 months! I feel like I've been waiting for this my whole life! I have all these expectations but then when I think about it I really don't know what to expect. All I know is that God definely worked it out unexpectedly that I would be able to go to Austria this semester when I wasn't planning to origianlly so He has to have something special in mind.
I arrive in Frankfurt, Germany on Sept. 3rd and for the next 6 days I will be traveling with the entire group from my college throughout Germany. It will be a wonderful bonding time with the other students and I'm really hopeing to find some kindered spirits amoung them. There are only 20 other people in the program this semester. I am excited because I enjoy small groups but I REALLY wasn't expecting it to be THAT small!!! Please pray that I will be able to make some close friendships with people in the group and that maybe there will be another Christian in the group with which I can fellowship with.
Also pray for me as I have had a sore throat and been acheing today and fear being sick for the entire first week during the field trip.

I will be in the air or in an airport for about about 18 hours tomorrow! So I'm going to head to bed! Love you all SO much!!! My next entry will hopefully have lots of germany pictures!!!