This Friday marks the departure of two of our student summer mission trips, and then on July 3rd we’ll be saying goodbye to our third team!  With destinations like Ukraine, Maine and Chicago, and 62 students and adults participating between the three, communication is a BIG deal!  Here are the ways that we’re keeping parents and church in the loop:

• Text message updates.  Yup, I’ll be blasting out updates from the Maine and Chicago mission trips.  We tried this out last year and it was a big hit; it enables me to let parents know we’ve safely arrived, we’ve departed, etc., immediately!  I use SimplyTXT to do the mass messaging, which I can do right from my phone.  If you’re a parent and you want to sign up, just follow this link:  Maine/Chicago TXT message alerts
• Twitter.  I’ll be posting updates and photos throughout the day, every day, to my twitter feed.  This also goes to my facebook status update, so you can get snippets of updates throughout the day on either; Matthew’s twitter feed, Matthew’s facebook page.
• Email.  We will be sending out a few email updates to everyone on the list – if you’re not, or you don’t think you are, let me know and we’ll get you plugged in!
• Blog.  I’ll be trying to post some blog updates every few days to let everyone know what we’re doing, how we’re doing, and some fun stories!  If you’re reading this post … you already know where my blog is!

What I love is that with technology what it is today, I’m able to do all four of the above from my cell phone!  It really does make communications easier.  Even just a handful of years ago going on a mission trip meant going off the grid – which there are compelling arguments for that actually making it a better experience, but at the same time, as a parent I love the idea of a constant flow of information.