The swing of things

Well, here we go! Jim is now on his sixth day of his sixth school year, I have begun my new MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) year, and we are already in September. Here's what this year looks like for us so far:

Jim is continuing to sponsor both the student council and the environmental club at Woodland Park High School. This is his fourth year of "STUCO" and third for the environmental club. There are quite a few extra-curricular activities that occur between these organizations, but it is also my fourth and third year of learning to adapt around those! When it is appropriate, the kids and I tag along for various activities. It is fun to be a part of Jim's job in that way.

I started my fourth year in MOPS yesterday. MOPS is a program that meets in a church, provides childcare and breakfast (and coffee!) to moms of kids kindergarten-age and younger, teaches them relevant, practical things, and gives them time to connect with other moms in the community. It changed my life three years ago, and I have been on the leadership team for the last two years. This year I started a new "job" in MOPS. I am the prayer and care coordinator, so I make sure the needs of our 60-some moms are being met. The last two years, I coordinated the creative activities, which is a little more of a practical job, so I am excited to have a relational role this year.

We are continuing a small group of four couples from last year, this year breaking into guys/girls small groups as well. I am excited to deepen these relationships together. We were never a part of a small group when we attended First Presbyterian in Colorado Springs, so this has been a fun new aspect of fellowship to participate in.

We just completed our fourth Bible course, which covered early church history. Only six left. We will complete about one a month, so hopefully we will finish up in March. I am taking classes while the kids nap in the afternoon (pray for long naps!) and Jim takes them after the kids go to bed in the evening. We completed our fourth course in just two weeks' time to catch up which was a little hectic, but now we should be able to fall into a comfortable schedule to finish the others.

We are starting a new training program developed by Africa Inland Mission, called "Timothy in Training". It looks at the Biblical model of Timothy, so we pair up with some mentors, and go through a workbook that gives us assigned reading, discussion topics and other things to think about to better prepare us for our move to Kenya. We asked our friends the Cormans to be our mentors. Chad and Nicole spent many years in Malaysia as missionaries, have two beautiful little children, and we are just so excited to have their wisdom and guidance in this stage of our lives.

Africa Inland Mission has created an online checklist for outgoing missionaries to keep our to-dos organized. Between communication, computer/email/website set-up, travel documents, support raising, and other logistics, it helps us complete all necessary tasks on time. Saves a lot of headaches all around I imagine! We keep up on that list every week.

So there's a rather mundane overview of our lives at the present moment, but now you'll know what we're doing if we don't blog for a week again!