Technical Evaluation with MAF

These past two weeks our family has been in Nampa, ID at the MAF headquarters going through technical evaluation.  TE is basically a two week long job interview.  It was pretty intense, but I am happy to say that we passed!  (Well Mike did most of the work).  We are not officially with MAF yet, but at this point it is about 99% certain that we will be.  It is very rare for a couple to pass TE and not end up serving with MAF.  

The next step in the process for our family is to come back to headquarters in July and go through a candidacy class.  In class we will explore in detail what MAF is doing at each of it's bases.  We will then interview with a committee and go over the different options for service and at that time voice some desires or concerns that we may have.  The committee will then decide where they believe our family will best "fit" and at the completion of the class we will be given our country assignment.  

I am not going to lie the the thought of being assigned a country to go live in is a very scary thought!  After meeting the staff at MAF though and seeing that they truly want to see our family succeed and really strive to seek God's will in the situation has calmed my nerves.  God has really given me a peace about the situation too and I know that I just need to trust him because he is much wiser than I am.

Living in the MAF apartments was so much fun.  We got to meet a bunch of really neat people in all stages of the process of serving with MAF.  We met a family that was headed out to the Congo in a week, a family assigned to Hati, a family on furlough from Indonesia, and a couple serving in central Asia.  We bonded over chicken wings one night with a few of them and listened to each other's stories.  It was very exciting to hear what God is doing through MAF in these different parts of the world and it is cool to think that we will be a part of that soon!

We would just like to take the time right now and thank everybody for the support and encouragement that has been given to our family to get us to this point of our journey.  We could not do this without you!  The generosity that has been shown to us is very humbling and in helps us tremendously to know that our friends support our family and are behind us in this crazy adventure. 

It is an MAF tradition to take your child's picture in front of this turtle every time you are on furlough to see how much they have grown.  They actually moved this turtle up from the old headquarters in Redlands, CA even though it is HEAVY to carry on this tradition.