Ready! Set! Wait…
You know those times in life when on one hand everything is changing, yet at the same time everything feels the same? The past few months have been a little like that on our journey towards missions. Anna and I have been doing some more paperwork with both JAARS and Wycliffe Bible Translators, and we officially join both organizations. We have an upcoming orientation week at headquarters in April, which we are both excited for. While we are at orientation, we will get assigned a partnership development coach (basically a money-raising motivator) and figure out the budget we will need to raise in order to go on our first assignment. We have received our first official (temporary) assignment. We will be stationed at headquarters in North Carolina for a few years. Anna and I are actually really excited for this assignment for a few reasons. Firstly, because I will be able to get some further training from maintenance personal who have been retired from the field longer than I have been doing maintenance altogether. I am going to learn so much from the fantastic people there, and I feel confident that I will be an even grater asset when we are sent to an overseas assignment. Secondly, being stateside for just a bit longer will give us the flexibility to continue and finish our embryo adoption process, which we wrote about in a previous update. Having easy access to the medical facilities we need for this will allow us to complete the process and be truly free to go wherever the Lord calls us next.
Though we have been waiting for orientation in April, we have not been sitting on out rears. We had the opportunity to take the sub 30s group that we lead at church on a backpacking trip last month. We took 13 people in all, of which 75% had never camped before. I am happy to report that all survived the trip and all enjoyed it. We hiked to a place called Hidden Pond in the Ocala National Forest. It was a mere 4 mile hike to a small but crystal clear pond where we swam, ate s’mores, had a fire, and got rained on. It’s a joy for me to see those who have never experienced the wonders of nature in a way that so uncharted as a backpacking trip have an amazing and memorable time as they seemed too. These small adventures encourage us as we wait for the initiation of the big adventures to come, as do your support and prayers!
