Ground Rules for Comments

We want to hear what you think about our blog, and to answer any questions you may have, so we've opened it up to comments from "everyone." You can comment as "anonymous" but we request that you put at least you first name and the first letter of your last name at the end of your comment, like a signature, so that we'll have an idea who we're talking to. Comments will go to us for approval before they are published as we reserve the right to filter out any comments that we deem inappropriate.

Introduction

This blog was set up for a group of travelers from the midwest U.S. to describe their activities on a mission trip to American Samoa during May 2010. The mission is to repair homes damaged by a tsunami on September 29, 2009. The trip is a joint effort by the Christian Reformed Church's World Relief Committee, the Church of the Brethren's Brethren Disaster Ministries , and the United Church of Christ's National Disaster Ministries. We will use the acronyms CRWRC, BDM, and UCC to represent our parent organizations in future posts. We will also be working with Mennonite Disaster Services and FEMA while "on island."

Our group consists of 5 people, Phyl and Richard Grevenstuk from the CRWRC, Dave Piper, Steve Schroer and John Muskopf from the UCC. Support from the mainland is being coordinated by Zach Wolgemuth from the BDM. Mission work has been a large part of our lives and we are looking forward to learning about and working in a country with which we are not very familiar.

Those of you who, like us, know little about American Samoa may want to check in from time to time to learn along with us. We'll be there for a month.