training // a double weekend wrap-up & a birthday

We are loving Colorado and our time spent in community with fellow missionaries about to enter the field so much that we wanted to share about some of our other great experiences here outside of class while you wait for our "part 2" portion of what we're learning about at training. This Saturday marks the end of our training and the end of our cross-cultural training portion of the training. Be on the lookout after that to hear from us on all that we have learned from this second half of training soon!

Our second weekend in Colorado, we went on an adventure out to the Garden of the Gods -- a spot that everyone had told us was a do not miss! We went with our close friends we've made here, Casey and Keri. It was such a beautiful day and the sun was so warm coming down on us. The rock formations were awesome and we saw a lot of registered rock climbers enjoying the park, and even accidentally happened upon a wedding! Here are some pictures of the beauty: 

Then after lunch, we headed to this little town called Manitou Springs just to explore. We were quickly told by a local townie that there were 7 naturally carbonated springs full of different minerals that we needed to try while we were there! People have been drinking from them for hundreds of years because of the health benefits of the mineral contents, and each one of them tastes completely different.

Pictures from three different springs that we found & tried!

Well, since we were just along for the ride of whatever this town had to offer, we went off to find them! They were truly very different from each other just as had been described to us! Thankfully that sweet lady had also given us some little cups to use so we didn't just dunk our faces in. :) 

Lesley's birthday was on the following Thursday, but we can still count it in the double weekend wrap-up, right? Well, it was the deepest, most stressful day of our training but Jamey made sure we still celebrated it well! He had a surprise cake brought out at our community lunch AND took Lesley out for a dinner date complete with an ice cream run! It was so great to get our own little alone time away from the training center. 

Our new friends at MTI also helped make Lesley's birthday extra special as well! It was so amazing. They decorated our room door with signs, balloons, and gifts and were so, so gracious to us and showed us that they have been really been paying attention to things we like! They thoughtfully stocked Lesley up on her favorite candy, tea, a Spanish gift bag, AND got her a new Camelbak water bottle for Honduras since her's was breaking. It was such a blessing! She also got mailed cards and gifts from family, including a beautiful arrangement of flowers! She felt so loved and at home for our first birthday away from Virginia.

This past weekend, we intentionally spent time having a more calm down time since our lives will be getting much crazier and more fast-paced as soon as we leave training. On Saturday morning, Jamey spent time with 4 other friends tackling a really difficult 1500 piece puzzle, and Lesley had a ladies coffee & tea morning with her small group here to share our life stories with one another. 

We then went out to Red Robin for lunch to get Lesley's free birthday burger (and endless fries!!) and something wonderful happened.... 

...... our HOKIES were on the tv right in front of us! While we were in Colorado! It was wonderful! 

Later on that day, Lesley spent the afternoon babysitting for a couple she's gotten to know here that has four kids so that they could go on one last huge shopping trip to get everything they need to move to Niger. Jamey got invited to go play mini golf (where he got completely beat!), and we spent the rest of the day just resting our bodies and minds. 

We were overjoyed on Sunday when we found a church that we really loved with awesome biblical teaching. We and our friends left feeling so refreshed from the sermon; it was exactly what we needed, especially after the draining week we had. Then for the rest of the day, Jamey went on a hike with a bunch of the guys from our training class, and Lesley had re-doing nail polish party with some of the little girls & their moms, and painted a lot of tiny little polka dots on tiny little finger nails. :) 

We having been SOAKING in the wealth of knowledge we are receiving here, and we are so excited to share it with you in just few short days! Please be praying with us that our last days here will go well, as well as our goodbyes with our great new friends. 

training // another busy weekend wrap-up

Our weekend started like this:

Rain, rain, and lots of it. And LOTS of football too! The Hokies played Marshall and came out with a win after 3 overtimes. We were so excited and completely soaked and left re-energized in our Hokie Spirit!

We then went to church on Sunday and spent the rest of the day hurrying around to finish everything that had to be done that day. The hours went by so quickly and suddenly it was past time to go to bed so that we could catch a few hours of sleep before we had to wake up at 4AM to head to the airport. (And thanks to Jamey's dad for waking up that early with us to take us.)

That Monday morning we flew from Roanoke Airport to O'Hare in Chicago to Colorado Springs. Everything went off without a hitch while flying, thankfully, and Jamey got the experience of his first domestic flight. All of his many other flights he had taken were international!

Jamey very excited to be flying, apparently! 

We finally arrived through a shuttle van to the training center here at about 2:30PM, Colorado time. We unpacked, went through orientation, received our HUGE training manuals, and ate our first dinner with the 39 other adults and 16 kids that are here at training with us.

So far, we've already been able to completely understand the sense of community that forms here. For once, we are not the minority by being missionaries, but the norm. People here are going out all over the world, but we all have this common ground on which to form relationships because we are all moving to a new country & culture, all learning a new language (or more than one), our lives are all changing, and much is still to be determined for us, or revealed to us. We've already in just 2.5 days have had incredibly awesome and interesting conversations, and even have had the opportunity to share about our common feelings... and we haven't even met everyone yet! Not even close. :)

Our beautiful views at the MTI training center. 

It is incredibly beautiful here, both the people and the views. We began a bit overwhelmed, just because we had been working on getting everything in order right up to the last day before we came to training, but we are definitely already able to see God's blessings in us being here.

We'll have more of an update toward the end of the week, but we wanted to be sure to let everyone know that we made it safely and happily! We would also definitely appreciate your prayers that we would just be like sponges, able to absorb everything possible from everyone & everything (from the program to the staff's experiences to the fellow missionaries in training) that we can.

For now, we're spending the reminder of our evening hanging out with our dear friend Kenny, who was previously in Honduras at the same church we're heading to, since he is ALSO in Colorado currently attending the other program that MTI offers, which is a reentering the U.S. debriefing time. We were so blessed that this one week lined up that we would all be here together, and that he had the opportunity to come join us at our training center!

highlight // weekend wrap-up

When we do a "highlight" post, we love to feature someone in our lives that is making a big impact on us, on our ministry, and so forth. Maybe even just someone that we think deserves a little spotlight. Well, with a weekend (plus Monday) so jam-packed with people, seriously wonderful people, this post needs to love on more than just one person this time.

Here's a little more about our extra BIG weekend!

Saturday:

On Saturday, we finally got to see something that we have been planning for months come to life! Jamey and I joined forces with his mom to throw a super special surprise party for his dad for his retirement. Now when Jamey's dad retired from the local school system, he at one point in his career held the title of each the P.E. teacher, the tennis coach, the much-celebrated varsity basketball coach, and the high school guidance counselor... all of which made just about everyone around know him by name. And he still holds many other various positions! Yet he tried to quietly & quickly retire on the Tuesday before our wedding last year, so that no one would make a big fuss about it. Yeah, right! Like we weren't gonna do that!

The invitation to the surprise party!

So in conjunction with his 60th birthday this year, we decided it was time to celebrate both occasions and throw one amazing surprise party. And the most amazing part is that it WAS a surprise and we got one over him! Anyone will tell you that getting something past Jimmy Smith while being right under his nose is one very difficult task!

The party was themed towards his varsity basketball coaching days, with everything decked out in Alleghany HS colors, and with all of the pictures, yearbooks, newspapers, and awards he had collected over the years all pulled back out for everyone to see. And of course, you can't forget yummy food and lots of cake!

First, Dad's surprise as he came in; Second, his cake with the phrase he coined for his team;
Third, one of his best friends rolling out a wheelchair for the "Old Man". 

Jamey and I put it a lot of work over the past few weeks to help his mom get everything ready: I designed the invitations, we both addressed them & got them out, we did lots of running errands and shopping trips, even a DIY project or two. Lots of staying up into the early morning to work on things after Dad was in the bed. But the biggest amount of work that Jamey and I put in before the party was our birthday present for his dad; we went through all of his old newspapers that he'd saved but never been able to really look through because they were stored away in a box downstairs and created scrapbooks for him of all of his games and seasons in order so that he can enjoy them, and so that they are safely kept for him now. Needless to say when Jamey presented his dad with the gift at the party, there were tears from the both of them!

Thank you so much to everyone who came out to celebrate Coach Smith with us, and for helping us surprise him with a great night night full of memories and friends. We can definitely report back that he absolutely loved it and keeps talking about it!

Sunday:

And then if we hadn't had enough excitement for one weekend, it also just happened to work out that we were throwing another event on the next day! We hosted an Open House for our ministry team members and close friends to come and visit with us one more time. Since we will only have about a week at home between Colorado and Honduras, we have had to say all of our final goodbyes to everyone except our immediate families before leaving for Colorado. The Open House idea was great for that, so that we could bring everyone to one place and serve them so yummy food, too! 

We wanted to say a huge thank you to the 35+ people that came out on Sunday, and for those who couldn't make it that sent their thoughts & prayers. We felt very encouraged and rejuvenated afterward, and loved getting to see each of you again! We have SUCH an amazing group of people on our ministry and prayer team!

In case you missed it, here's a little peak of Sunday's Open House. The weather was absolutely beautiful, and an almost mountain Fall-like feeling, so we pulled together the lawn furniture to the front yard and hosted the party on the front porch. Aside from having an excuse to try out this adorable cheese and grapes sunflower, I also served a double batch of my family recipe for Yum Mexican Chicken Dip straight from the crockpot, and there wasn't a spoonful left to speak of at the end! 

Monday:

On Monday, my best friend Caroline was sweet enough to spend her day off from work driving all the way from Lynchburg, VA to come see us in Covington ... and help us PACK! That's what I call a great friend!! Caroline spent the day catching up with me, then first helping me decide on what to pack for our training in Colorado (since the temperatures will most likely be between 35 and 75 degrees any day, it was a hard decision!), and second helping me inventory and pack up some of the piles of things that is already laid out to go to Honduras with us. And on top of that, we also found the time to try our hand at making homemade cheez-its (um, awesome) and make a yummy dinner of fajitas & homemade queso dip!

Homemade Cheez-Its! And only 4 ingredients :) 

Bonus... today, Tuesday, Sept. 17: 

Today is Jamey's dad's actual birthday, and he is currently enjoying his homemade cinnamon sugar covered pecans his coworkers made for him, and is about to enjoy a homemade crust chicken pot pie we're making for his dinner tonight! Can you tell we love food around here? :)

We also just ended our "sending" phone call with GCM, GCLA, and NLCF to discuss our final expectations and preparations... more on that later!