Home Sweet Home

We are finally home! We spent the last 3 weeks in Springfield, Missouri at Pre Field Orientation. We loaded up the family, and all that that entails, and drove to Springfield on June 12th. The seven hour trip took 8 hours, as we had to stop many times for diaper changes, snacks, and the feeling of going out of our minds if we did not. We finally arrived in Springfield around 3 p.m. and commenced to getting registered for orientation. As missionary candidates, we were required to all stay in the dorms at Central Bible College. I will get to the good times that we "endured" there in a moment. :) One of the first things we did at orientation was go up to medical processing so that Hudson and Olivia could have their blood work done. They took it like champs! 3 large viles filled each, and no tears. Clearly they did not inherit this from me. From there we unloaded the van into our lovely 2 room dorm "suite". Memories were made there that will surely last a life time. We were lucky enough to share the hall with what had to be close to 20 other babies, toddlers, and their equally as enthused as we were families. I don't think there was a time on that hall when at least one baby wasn't crying. Mostly, I was just thankful when it wasn't my own....and terribly sorry when it was. There was much misery in the dorms. As our beds were very loud and springy. At first we had no chairs, but some our friends shared theirs after the first week....when we made our "need" known. :) There was no Internet in our room...this was terribly unfortunate. We felt like we were being prepared for a third world country or something. This made sense for us, considering where we are going...but it made us feel sorry for our friends going to Europe. Why would they need this kind of preparation? Anyway, moving on....that night we had dinner with the legendary Bill Moore and his lovely family. We enjoyed getting to spend time with them, it's always great to talk to veteran missionaries! The next day we got up early and went to a church that had invited all the missionaries that were at orientation to come and be their guests. This church's heart for missions was amazing! They let each one of us share what we were going to be doing in the countries we were going to. They also gave us gifts, and prepared a wonderful lunch for us. They blessed every one of the family's children with an individual gift, and had a drawing for family prizes. We won a dual dvd player for the van! Their out pouring of love was unbelievable! Thank you Life 360 Church!



The next three weeks, for Randy and I, were filled with cultural studies, dental visits, forums, dinners, area director meetings, educational specialist meetings, U.S. relations meetings, church services, a class on how to fill out an IR, choir practice, and the list goes on and on. The kids' three weeks consisted of physical exams, dental visits, swimming, cultural studies, bowling, camping for Hudson, going to the zoo, barn swinging, Silver Dollar City, a Branson show, making crafts, and meeting lots of other missionary candidates' kids. They had a little more fun than we did, but really, we greatly enjoyed getting to spend time with all of the other candidates, veteran missionaries, and our area directors. We love the people that we are working with in the region of Africa, and the people in the South Africa area are just icing on the cake! God has blessed us with so many new friendships....we are overwhelmed! In a good way. :)



Thursday night we had our official commissioning service. It was beautiful to see all of the missionaries as their names were called to serve in places all over the globe. So many of them had become dear friends over the 3 weeks we were at PFO. It was hard to say good bye to some of them...as we know we may never be with them on the same continent again. Fortunately, we live in a day and time when Facebook can keep us close....cyberly speaking of course.



Thank you so much for praying for us over the last month. We have been so blessed in so many ways...we stand in awe of our Lord. He is good and He is faithful. We are honored that He loves and takes such good care of us.