Visas and a Place to Live

We have had an eventful week and it is only Tuesday! Yesterday we received our visas and reached the 97% mark in our ministry support. Josh received his diploma from the high school in Quebec also. It's mainly a souvenir, since it is only recognized in Quebec, but he thinks it is cool. It's also a reminder of all he accomplished in his ten months in Canada. He grew up a lot and made many friends, survived his first year in public school, and ended the year on a positive note. In Quebec the kids graduate after the 11th grade, so he will finish his senior year in Africa and will end up with two diplomas from two different continents, which he thinks is really cool. There are three families here for standardization right now, and yesterday afternoon the wives enjoyed a cooking class. The focus was cooking from scratch because we will be cooking that way overseas. I've had some experience in cooking from scratch already, so that wasn't too new for me. I did learn some interesting substitutions. For example, we used manioc in place of potatoes. Manioc is the staple starch in DRC. Manioc root looks like a tree branch and is about as hard to peel. I think it resembles potatoes when you boil them too long and they get sticky, but it tasted pleasant enough. This morning we received word from our program manager in DRC that they have found a home for us. I don't know what I was expecting, but I'm pleasantly surprised. For one thing, it has 1 and 3/4 bathrooms, so for the first time since we left Florida, we will have two toilets. It is within walking distance of another MAF family, which will make carpooling easier and we'll already have friends in the neighborhood.

It's A Date!

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We have a tentative departure date! We are still raising ministry support, but we have already raised 96% of what is needed, and if all goes well, we will leave the U.S. on October 10th and arrive in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, on October 11th. Please pray for our support to reach 100% quickly. We are very excited, and yes, a little nervous. Visa applications have been submitted. There is one more vaccine to go, the last of a three-round rabies vaccine, which I am not looking forward to because the side effects seem to increase with each round. I am busy trying to tie up loose ends and sort through our stuff. Our team in Kinshasa is looking for a place for us to live. Mail works a lot better here than there, so one of the things I am trying to do before we leave is write letters and thank you notes. I remember when I was a child, if someone gave me a gift my mother would strongly encourage me to write a thank you note. Being a child, I didn't want to stop playing and write a note. That felt too much like homework. Now, though, having a list of people I need to write thank you notes to is an opportunity for me to count my blessings, one at a time. Each note is a reminder that God loves me and has blessed me, and an opportunity to let God use me to bless someone else. So, I'm going to stop blogging and go write some thank you notes.