Here we are, halfway through January already… it’s been a very busy month for us, with Christmas break, travel, seeing friends, family, and supporters. On Thursday we did a biiiiiig, loooooong drive of 12 hours and about 800 miles. It was tiring, but I’m so glad we did the extra hours. The last couple of hours before we arrive in Camdenton is on little wiggly country roads… so we made sure to stop before then so we could tackle those during daylight hours. 🙂
Yesterday we made it back to our home in Missouri at the Ethnos360 Training. It was snowing and very very cold, but the roads weren’t bad! We stopped on the way in and got groceries so we didn’t have to go out again before classes start on Monday. We got unloaded, unpacked, laundry started, and Lucy Mae even took a nap at a normal time! Then it was time to play in the snow. If you remember from our time in Wisconsin at the Bible School (8 years ago!) — I am decidedly not a snow bunny, but it was fun to see the snow through Lucy Mae’s eyes. We warmed up with hot chocolate after that! Now we’re on the watch to see if our snowmen will melt.
We’re ready to get back into routine… even if it means homework. This semester we have classes Church Development, Literacy, Missionary Tech, Maturing Church, Practical Spirituality; and then we change gears after Spring Break and do a Safety Seminar, Scratch Cooking, Pre-Evangelism, Field Health, Practical Skills and Teamwork (also called Simple Living), and Missionary Partnership Development. Somewhere in there we’ll also do an orientation for New Members of the Mission, and have our final interviews to make us officially official career missionaries with Ethnos360!
I also wanted to ask you to pray for a big group of missionaries — both new and returning — heading to PNG this Sunday! They’ve had to go through the wringer to get all of their tickets, approvals, Covid tests, finances, and weird luggage allowances set so they can go. The field has gotten special permissions to allow them to quarantine on the home-base, and this time (because there’s 68 of them!) they were able to charter a big commercial plane to get them all to their quarantines safely in one go. Pray for smooth, uneventful travels, health and safety, and peaceful quarantines on the other end.
We want to say a big thank you to you all for all of your prayers and support through these years. We really couldn’t have done it without you being part of our team! If you have any questions about anything, or want to know more about how you could be a part (maybe so you can come too!) please, please just write to us!
Here’s to a new year and a new semester! 😘
Erin Verdonck 