Two Weeks to Go!

Well, we have 2 weeks to go! While I should be excited about that, it is also a sad statement. We are learning so much and making such good friends, that to think about coming home so soon is a bit of a downer. That being said, we have two weeks left and we are excited to come home to our wonderful family and friends!

I feel as though our brains are so very full and cannot imagine stuffing more into them. Our second wind seems to be coming though. I do not know if that is because we have begun to forget the first week or if it is finally being filed away properly. In any case, we are excited about the classes we have in our final weeks.

Now, for some updates. We are recovering a bit from illnesses. I had a sinus infection a couple of weeks ago and Jana had bronchitis last week. After trips to a doctor, we both received antibiotics and we are back in good spirits. That was a miserable 2 weeks. Thank the Lord that we are healthy again!!

Since our last email, we have covered a lot of ground. We would like to give you a couple of highlights. We mentioned a few on our website, such as our Marriage sessions, which were very helpful. Along those lines, we mentioned in our previous email that in week 3 we would discuss Raising Children overseas. There is a lot to that issue and during our time, we only scratched the surface. Fortunately, we are staying with the family that heads a ministry called MK2MK (missionary kid to missionary kid). We have had many conversations outside of our class time with them about benefits of raising kids in another culture, as well as pitfalls to look out for. Later this week, we will be tackling some of the issues of education (for example, putting children in missionary schools or nation schools). Many of these topics are ones that we have thought about but we never knew where to start. We now have a starting point and much more!

One other session to highlight is Transitions. This session emphasized the importance of different stages in transition, from leaving home to entering a new culture and finally engaging in our new city and culture. With recognizing these transitions, we will better be able to identify stress points in our lives and be able to work through them more effectively.

As we mentioned, these are just a couple of highlights, for it would take a novel to tell you about all of our sessions (you should see our training manual!).

We apologize for the infrequency of our updates, but we assure you that our minds have been busily engaged in learning as much as possible!!
Again, we would ask for your prayer in a few areas:

• ability to process all the information we are receiving


• good spirits in our final two weeks


• continued improvement of our health


• safety in driving in and around Orlando

Thank you again for your prayers. We have been abundantly blessed during this time!

Thankfully,
Thad and Jana