8/27/07

SPLICE

our SPLICE group

your prayers were answered! thank you so much! i was blessed to take part in this SPLICE training. i came away from this experience with a better understanding of what i will encounter as i prepare to move into a new culture and more importantly these weeks of training helped me to get back to having an intimate relationship with God (it took getting away from "ministry" for five weeks to realize how spiritually dry i had been over the past six months!). i am thankful for getting to experience God in some special ways during this training. praise Him!

SPLICE was a very emotionally draining three weeks. i made a lot of good friends and that is what made saying goodbye to this loving community so hard. as a community we had developed a common bond because of our shared experiences and understanding about what we were about to partake in as fellow missionaries in different parts of the world. we also witnessed how God had worked mightily in our three weeks together. here are a few of the pictures from SPLICE;

this man changed my life (robin allen, the director of SPLICE)

mike & i on top of pikes peak

a few friends from SPLICE (from right to left; fletch, ashley, candace, sarah & mike)

goodbye to my SPLICE family. it was fun. you all will be missed.

8/12/07

60%

a few people have asked me what percentage i am at for monthly support... well, i added it up a few days ago and i am at around 60%! more than half way there...

also, the past few days i have been working on my prayer card. here is a rough version of the one that i will be sending out to my supporters;

8/6/07

PILAT & moose hunting

the MTI training center

well, the first half of my training is over. PILAT has helped me to learn a lot about language and as a result i feel better equipped to take on the daunting task of learning the latvian language. (pictured below: mike, fletch & i with the director of PILAT; dwight gradin)

mike, nick and i were blessed to have the ulman family who allowed us to live with them for the past two weeks and i know we were all blown away by their hospitality. (pictured below: maici, erin, gavin & david ulman)

on friday afternoon after PILAT ended, we got the chance to drive up to fort collins for the weekend and visit with our fellow JVLV missionaries, kelly and donna hargan.

it was a nice chance to connect with them again. kelly took us out four-wheeling on his birthday and it was quite an experience! as we were driving to where we were going to go four-wheeling we had a chance encounter with a MOOSE!

it came out of the bushes and out onto the road and cut off our jeep!!! i got so excited that i felt like that annoying kid in Jurassic Park....

i could not believe my eyes, this thing was huge and it could move! we kept asking kelly to pull up next to the moose and to his better judgement he decided not to. we later realized the wisdom in this decision, because there was no roof or doors on this jeep for protection and apparently moose tend to be very aggressive animals.

on sunday morning we drove back to colorado springs and went to new life church. overall, it was a very nice relaxing weekend. on to SPLICE....