First Two Weeks at CIT

On Saturday, June 4 we left Callahan, Florida headed for North Carolina and our pre-field training. Nine hours (and one flat tire!) later we arrived at the Center for Intercultural Training in Union Mills. We just finished up our first two weeks here and are loving it! We are receiving this training alongside other missionaries bound for Indonesia, Scotland, Malawi, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and just about every part in between.

While we are in class Ezra, Thea, and Hosanna are also in class learning about different cultures and how to make a healthy transition to the mission field. (Thea has also learned to greet people in about ten different languages so far and spends much of the day singing "God is So Good" in Swahili!) They love their classes and the new friends that they have made while living here.

We are currently in the "Equipping for Cross-Cultural Life and Ministry" class. We have addressed topics such as spiritual warfare, animism, cross-cultural communication, and worldview. We also thoroughly examined our own personalities and the way that each of us thinks and how that impacts our life and ministry.

Over the last two weeks while our minds have been full of new thoughts and new ways of looking at the world and culture, our hearts have been learning what it looks like to rest fully and completely in Jesus. A culturally adept missionary is of little use if his heart does not rightly treasure the grace of God in the Gospel. The heart work is the most painful, but the most rewarding and the most needed. God has surely met us here over the last two weeks.

Please continue to pray for our family while we are at CIT. Our desire is to get everything that God has for us while we are here learning from Him.