Fun times with the Niemeyers

What a treat! We had the opportunity to visit with our friends Mark and Brenda when we first arrived in Colorado. Here are some photos of our trek out to their favorite camping spot in the mountains:

The Niemeyers

Climbing trees

A Conferencing we will go....

Tis the season for conferences in our life. We went to Chicago almost a month ago for Josiah Venture orientation and now I (matt) am sitting here in the airport getting ready to leave for Colorado Springs for 2 weeks.

You see before someone goes out to the mission field with J.V. they are required to go to 3 things which prepare them for going over Eastern Europe. The first on the checklist is orientation in Wheaton IL., which we blogged about a few weeks ago.
The second prerequisite is a 2 week language course called PILAT It is basically a crash course in how to learn another language. Though we won't actually learn any Slovene on this trip we will get the framework for how to learn Slovene.
The third stipulation is a course on cross cultural training to help people in their transition to another culture. Luckily, J.V. has waived this requirement for Sharon and I since we have lived overseas for 2 years.

We will return from Colorado on Friday the 21st and go straight from the airport to a Family Life marriage conference in Portland.

So a high ho the dairy o.

23 Weeks Today

I have to say that I feel bigger than this picture seems to show. Maybe I'll try taking another one in a day or two.
23 weeks and counting . . .

Halloween Fun

My sister Lynn is right - carving miniature pumpkins is the best!






Last Friday we had a blast celebrating Halloween with Mark and Shelley + kids + neighbors + neighbors' kids + Matt's parents.

Shelley was having so much fun with the face paints . . .

. . .that even Matt got into the action.

Though the pictures don't reflect it - the house was packed and filled with kids high on sugar :-)

At the Home with some homies

On Monday I had the opportunity to visit with some very dear people at my mother's place of work. Mom works at an assisted care facility in Tacoma, WA.

Because she knows that we are working on building a ministry partner team for our work with Josiah Venture, she wanted to help us out. And having been a missionary herself (she was a nurse in Ethiopia) she understands just how critical it is to have a team of people committed to praying faithfully for us and the ministry.

So I got to spend a morning hanging out with Alice, Father John, and Fred. They were an absolute delight, asking many questions and showing so much excitement for what Matt and I will be doing. I walked away from our time together feeling very blessed indeed to have these guys praying for the ministry in Slovenia!

Father John, Me, and Alice (Fred needed to leave in time to get a good seat at lunch :-)