Final Training and the Home Stretch

Phew!  Whirlwind.  That’s the only way to describe the last few weeks and the next to come.

Seven weeks from today we *should* be boarding a plane to Indonesia.  Please pray that our visas get processed and approved soon.  We turned all the paperwork in on March 14th….

I wanted to hop on here and document a few of the things that we learned in our final week of orientation and what we’ve been up to.  We had such an amazing rich time of fellowship and learning in Idaho.  We love MAF!  While we know our organization is not perfect, we can tell there has been a lot of thought, love and growing that has gone on throughout the 75 years they’ve been around.

Orientation week two consisted of:

• Learning to work on a multi-cultural and multi-generational team
• Embracing our adopted culture
• Individual families visiting an ethnic church and reporting back on our experience
• Keeping ourselves spiritually fit and managing stress
• A session with someone from your country’s team for Q&A
• Wrap up of our Bridges study and a live testimony from a former Muslim on how to communicate kindly
• Processing goodbyes in a healthy way

Our last day and a half at headquarters was Friends and Family Weekend.  This is a time set aside for any friends and family who would like to come and learn more about MAF and get their questions answered about our upcoming departure.  I may write a whole separate post about this at some point but for time sake, I will list the highlights.  Our friends and family that attended participated in:

• Our commissioning chapel and prayer from the staff at MAF headquarters
• Address and testimony from our MAF president, David Holsten
• Devotion from our VP of Personnel, Gene Jordan.  He grew up an MK, became a missionary and now has children in the mission field.  A very unique perspective.
• Two private sessions without Jack and I to learn about their own grieving process of letting us go and also a no holds barred Q&A panel with all the VP’s of MAF.
• Round table discussion within our own group of everyone’s expectations during our separation and also setting goals and plans of how we can stay connected.

We were beyond blessed to have so many people make the sacrifice to travel all the way to Idaho to attend this.  We are also blessed to have amazing donors that continually support MAF and we were able to house all of our guests in the apartments on campus to save that expense.  That also gave us the chance to cook meals together, play cards and laugh in the evenings.

We arrived back in Indiana on May 18 and it has been go, go go ever since!  Trying to make memories with family and friends, planning a going away party and intimate gatherings with close friends and family.  We’re fitting in every doctor that we need to see to keep up to date before we’re gone for several years.  Including a trip to make sure that fake eyeball RJ sports so proudly is all set!

We leave Monday for our final training, which is in Nashville, TN.  We expand and continue the Bridges study of Muslim culture with a four day intensive seminar.

Prayer requests:

• Our visas to come through
• Grace and patience as we try to do everything that needs to be done in the next seven weeks
• Our family members and friends as they process our departure.  Pray for healthy emotions and freedom to process

I also wrote a blog for MAF on their site a few weeks ago that you can check out if you’d like a more challenging piece to read today ;)  Check it out by clicking here

Thanks for following this journey with us.  The adventure has just begun!!