Two Months..... One to Go

Our last post was dated May 3rd and today is July 3rd. So indeed it has been two months since we posted about our acceptance to MTC. Life in the those two months has been very busy and full. Full of graduations, good-byes, packing, moving, unpacking, transition, change, adjustments, celebrations and fun.

On May 16th Kent and I graduated from New Tribes Bible Institute. Our two years there were so amazing and such a blessing to us. We learned so much about our heavenly Father, who we are in Christ and how that all works together to help us walk in the Spirit. It was hard to leave but we know, that just like everything else in life, it was time for us to move on to our next step of faith.

Grady also graduated from kindergarten in June. He had an amazing year at Paragon Academy.

As we prepared for his schooling last fall, we prayed that he would have a teacher that would meet his needs. God answered in a way that I could have never imagined. God placed him in Miss Craddock's classroom. She is an amazing teacher, who works hard everyday to meet the kids where they are at. Thank you Miss Craddock for everything you've done for our son.

After graduation we started to pack up and prepare to say good - bye our apartment....

Our beds.....

The Bible School.....

 

Our Green Letters Group....

 

Our Deans and the other marrieds in our class....

To the wonderful friends our kids had made....

 

And to our dear, dear friends who have walked with us through our good times and our bad. Who loved us through good decisions and our stupidity. Those friends that can loving tell you things that may hurt but only do it because they want to see you grow in Christ. We found some of those at NTBI. I'm so thankful I found it in Katie. She and her family are going on with WEC, so seeing her will be few and far between. Making these the hard good -byes.

 



During all those good-byes we packed our things,

 

 



And with the help of some of our amazing friends, moved it all down stairs on June 5th and then....

 



 with the help from my crazy family we loaded a box truck and moved to our "Summer Home" in Bluffton on June 6th.

 

When we returned to Bluffton we were able to move right into the Eicher Mission House. We are so blessed to be the first missionaries to live in Tim and Julie Eicher's mission house. It's amazing, and a little strange, to have our own space.

 

So we're adjusting to life here in Bluffton. We've been here for four weeks and have been enjoying....

 

Packages from supporters even though we are home in Bluffton,

 

Celebrating Grace's 4th Birthday with an amazing cake by my nephew Hunter made and enjoying it with both of our families.

We've been enjoying cousin time at the pool

And Lala's pond.

We've also celebrated our 13th Anniversary. Kent got me an amazing gift! We usually don't do gifts, but this one was very thoughtful. He got me Rasinets because that's the girl that he married. He got me Skittles because life got colorful when we had the kids. He got me tropical Mike and Ikes because the place we will one day call home will be tropical. Lastly, he got me a 3lb bag of Twizzlers because that's what we eat when we travel.... and from now on we'll be doing a lot of traveling.

I love my husband so much. No matter where our steps of faith may take us in the years to come, I know that God sent us to Bible School so we could learn about who we are in Christ, so that in turn I could fall more in love with the man that I married 13 years ago. Praise the Lord that He's never done working on us and our marriages.

In the mist of transitioning back to life in Bluffton, to Kent working a 8 to 5 job, to Grady being out of school, to being with family and friends, we've started to hit our Partnership Development very hard. We've had three meetings already and we plan to have six more before we leave in August. During these meetings we're explaining to people where we are in the training process of become missionaries with New Tribes Mission and inviting them to partner with us in this training. Please pray for us as we do this. It's new and strange but also how God designed it.

So we have one(ish) Month (5.5 weeks) to go before we'll leave for MTC. August 12th is our departure date. Right now in order to make that happen we still need people to partner with us. It's so strange, two years ago I would have been freaking out about the money and the need and how are we ever going to go and on and on and on. But now, well it's still a little scary but it's not up to me. I cannot force people to support us, I cannot beg them to give. We can simply tell them our story, tell them our need and rest. Rest in God, who brought us to this point and who will continue to carry on this good work on to completion.