Two weeks into mission training, two weeks from leaving

4:30 a.m. on Monday- drive out to the ATL airport for our big month long Colorado adventure at Mission Training International.  As we sat in the plane still on the ground  in Atlanta, my eye was drawn to the air traffic control tower windows with taped in jumbo letters.  Our flight was delayed for a mechanical check, and while waiting an extra 45 minutes to make sure all engines were go, I knew we were going to miss our 45 min connection in Houston.   But which would you prefer: fly under mechanical uncertainty and depart on time, or wait for mechanical clearance and run like the wind with small children through the terminal to connect with a closed door and rebook in customer service?  The window in Atlanta ATC tower was prophetic.  The sign says “OWN IT!” Yes, I want the air traffic controllers and the mechanics and the pilot to “own it” when I fly with them. 

And after missing the connection in Houston by 30 seconds, we rebooked to Denver instead of Colorado Springs, begged a merciful old friend to drive us from Denver up to our destination at Mission Training International.  Inconvenient.  Time to spare go by air.  And yet alive because someone was doing the job right.

The first 2 weeks here we did a program  The main idea behind language learning in a new culture will be: “OWN IT”!  We have been equipped with tools for entering a new language (for us it will be Kiswahili and Kipsigis) and the kids too have a corresponding class every day that helps them prepare for cross cultural living.   While it takes extra time and effort and unearthly amounts of energy, it will be important for our new context that we enter well.  Language has an almost magical power to access people in their context.  For example, does the name Pavlov ring a bell with you?

called Principles in Language Acquisition Training.

While we may feel like a nursing home resident with no keys to our name,  (house and cars all gone) language learning will be the symbol of responsibility in our pocket.  It will take more time than we’d like if we choose to do it.  It will be frustrating too.  But no one else will own it for us.

Now a word from our children:

Man-Cub Josiah loves living in this “hotel with a school inside it”.  We have a door that goes straight to the playground from our room!  He has mastered the monkey bars in his 3 a day workouts and will soon be ripping out of his t-shirts.  His class took a surprise field trip to the Garden of the Gods in the first week to help them understand expectations and surprises as a missionary kid.  He liked visiting the Manitou cliff dwellings of the ancient Anasazi Indians.  He liked it especially because he got his first bow and arrow there.

Little Miss Annie has been the most homesick one of us.  She transitioned into a big girl bed right out of her crib.  When she cried for her old bed, I cried too.  When she said “I wanna go hoooome” Josiah lovingly replied to her “Annie, we don’t have a home.  We just live free in the wild now”.  Annie does get to play with more friends here than she ever did before.  The older girls dote over her and the little bitty ones provide companionship she has needed for a long time.  They make mulch pies daily on the playground after class.

The children’s teachers here really study our children and help us learn their strengths and weaknesses.  We are living in a community of 30 adults and as many kids.  It’s a bit awkward at times. Our family  is adjusting to a new way of living and preparing for an even newer one.  We have our ups and downs with attitudes and with bodily function mal-functions (Daktari says it’s because we all have immunities to bugs in our home state but not to each other’s).  I’ve been out of class a few days when a child of ours needs to recover from something or another grotesque.  We like spending time together though so I’m usually glad to do it.

The trainers and staff here also comfort us with the stubborn fact that there is no perfect family.  When we pretend to be that, we become religious whitewash tombs full of dead men’s bones.  Woah. 

But if we learn to say “I’m sorry” to one another, we learn to be forgiven people.  And Jesus told us in Luke 7 that whoever is forgiven little will love little.  So we’ve been growing in love, you might say…