One week down, three to go!

Our group consists of 10 single ladies, 10 couples and I believe 23 children all preparing to go to different parts of the world. It has been encouraging to hear all the different stories of how God has worked in hearts and lives to move each of us on to a different Kingdom work.

This week after identifying some of our Yuck Ducks and Yeah Ducks we dove into expectations and the feelings and emotions that go along with them. I related to the visual that the teen leader did for all of us. He had one of our fellow students stand blindfolded in the center then he had these large rubber band like things (think stretchy Chinese jump ropes) he started with expectations positive vs. negative, expectation put on us by others both + & -, reality vs. expectation, then added yuck and yeah ducks and then our desire to go (+/-) vs. our desire to stay (+/-). Each one of these were an added band which were “twanged” (plucked). He then had one of the bands continually sawing back and forth (that was the paradox). I know this probably isn’t giving you a good picture but imagine someone snapping you with a rubber band on all side and then this constant rubbing – that is the life of the missionary in training and exactly how I feel! The facilitator then put a coat around our classmate’s middle to insulate his feelings so he wouldn’t feel all the pain of the hard things but then he had good “twangs” and he couldn’t feel those either. The statement of the day was “The deeper the pain you are willing to experience, the greater the joy you can experience.” It hit home hard! I am very good at insulating…..and to think this is supposed to be the “easier” week.

The book view

The Visual

 

Inter-mingled with all of this is language learning. We do drills every day which are really quite tiring. We are learning skills and techniques to help us learn a language. While here I am learning German. The purposely have you learn a language that you have never tried to learn and will not learn on the field, again it is really not about learning German but about learning how to learn German. I think I am going to be a turtle learner.

The week has been long and emotionally and physically draining. There is a lot of sickness going around here. So far I have managed to avoid it but in this climate and altitude where we are all living, eating and learning together it just continues to spread. I would appreciate prayers for continued health and strength.

Striving to live a life fully abandoned.