Post Charlotte

Well we've been back for a week and a half now but we haven't posted about our trip to Charlotte. We were at SIM's USA headquarters in Charlotte for two weeks of training (called SIMCO by SIM). They were two busy weeks of 8:30AM-5:00PM+ classes and meetings about life in the mission field. Classes were on subjects like spiritual warfare, making disciples, contextualized theology, serving on multicultural teams and how not to get electrocuted in countries that don't really follow the electrical codes that we do in the US.

Our schedule was pretty hectic and didn't leave much time for play. The boys were not happy that we were less than a mile from Carowinds and never had the time to check it out. Even the weekends were filled with some classes. We also used the time to visit with Steve and Carol Kejr who spent 25+ years in Liberia. Steve worked in a similar role to what Rusty will be doing so it was great to talk about the nuts and bolts of the ELWA compound (and cons of not taking your anti-malarial meds!).

Another highlight was meeting the other 40+ SIMCO attendees. We enjoyed hearing their testimonies and getting to know them and their kids. One family was leaving for Niger the day after we left and another left two days ago for Nigeria. The rest will be fanning out across Asia, Africa and Latin America over the next year.

Here are a few pictures from the 2 weeks:

Here are the boys with the myriad of other kids.

Here is the new (moved from another location and just finished this past spring) MK house. The boys spent most of their time either at the MK house, computer lab or on field trips.

Every SIMCO they have a volleyball game of SIMCO vs. the world (the SIM staff). This year was a rare victory for the SIMCO team. We had a good batch of young missionaries this year that led us to victory.

And last but not least Kobe was excited to find a Praying Mantis (ironically the first one he's seen in the wild, and found on the SIM campus who's motto is By Prayer). The Mantis was cool, but we spent the two weeks being serenaded by a good brood of cicadas. We've never been exposed to these noisy bugs before so it was pretty interesting. North Carolina won't see this brood again until 2025.

So now we have until January to finish our reading and preparations. We found out about lots of other things to prepare for over the past month. Things like Mango Flys, Giardia, Mefloquine and Mice... (Pictures and text stolen from a SIM missionary in Liberia)

Mouse runs up ramp to first niblet of peanut butter, follows trail of more niblets onto the wire across bucket, goes for big gob of peanut butter on the pop can, can spins, mouse loses footing, SPLOOSH!, mouse goes for swim. Patent Pending for my good friend, Gary Dunseath.

New project: Mouse enters tunnel, mouse goes for gob of peanut butter with "bony" (dried fish), tunnnel tips off counter, mouse goes for swim. Patent Pending for my good friend, Eric Thibodeau.