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 // want to learn some more? here's four extras.

If you can't already tell from our first post about training, we're absolutely LOVING our training at MTI in Palmer Lake, Colorado. Just so that we can share in the love with you all, our ministry team and blog readers, we wanted to give you four "extras" in this blog post to learn more about our time here! 

1. // Here is a video from Lesley's language learning techniques practice group using the Hindi language, that we explained in that first post. Bonus points for anyone who can translate it into English!

2. // Here's some other perspectives about our language learning from some sweet friends that are at training with us. Please be praying for their language learning & ministries as well!

From our sweet friend Keri, pictured above, who just served her first year working with orphans in the jungle in Ecuador & is about to return for another year: For her first post, click here and for her second post click here.

And from Alexis, about to go serve in Africa as a doctor to street children in Nigeria: click here to see her post.


3. // Here are some other ways we spend time having fun & getting to know each other! The ladies of our training group love to get together once each weekend for a themed get-together.

Our first ladies night was a nail polish party. Almost every one of the ladies here came out for this one! Jamey got lovingly "kicked out" of our room so that we could turn it into a nail salon, full of a range of nail polish colors, painting stations, even lavender foot soaking stations!

My henna partner was our great new friend, Sonia, who is moving to Tegucigalpa, Honduras!

The second party was a henna party! We watched a video and learned about how women are using henna as a way of sharing the gospel around the world. As they are doing henna with their house guests, they draw little symbols into these intricate designs to help them remember the story of the gospel that they tell them while they are drawing on their henna. It was so cool to see how people are taking an existing cultural norm and using it to share the most amazing news the world has ever known. We celebrated with them by drawing our own henna designs! We loved it!

My pretty henna designs! (and my favorite fuzzy blanket in my lap that
my sweet husband packed for me to bring to cold Colorado.) 

4. // Here is a teaser photo for an upcoming blog post. Can you even tell what we're up to during this training session from today?

training // what we're walking away with, pt. 1

The first half of our training at Mission Training International is complete, and for two weeks we've been learning about language... but we haven't been learning Spanish or even about Spanish. Wait, what?! After we say that, most people are completely confused as to why we are here and why we're even doing this. People want to say, "Why can't you just go right into Spanish school? Wouldn't that be faster?".

Well, at first we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We knew that this training had received a lot of praise from past missionaries, and that it was required of us by our mission organization. But, we also knew that there must be good reason that GCM, along with numerous other organizations, require that their missionaries attend. AND there had to be good reason that each training session was filling up at least six months in advance. We were definitely very curious!


We came to learn a lot about language over these two weeks that we had never even thought about concentrating on. We first got a huge overview of phonetics -- we learned about how we produce sounds and how to use mouth position, tongue placement, vocals (or the absent of), etc. to make a myriad of different sounds that are found in languages all over the world. We definitely broke open the box of 44 sounds that we typically use in the English language. We even learned things like that we only use low "l" sounds in English, but in Spanish, there is only high "l" sounds. If we tried to learn Spanish with only the sounds that are comfortable to us, that we are used to using, we would be literally hurting Spanish speakers ears! Our Spanish accents would be so far what it should be that they may even be unrecognizable to a native speaker. We are so thankful for being taught to make different sounds, and even taught a language of how to explain them, instead of blindly trying to figure out how to produce them later on in our Spanish learning.

Our training classroom at MTI. 

The second portion of our language training involved us being provided with tools of how to pick up on language, make what we are learning applicable to our real lives (for example, not learning a list of verbs all at once, but learning verbs in contextual phrases that we would actually use!), and how to make language learning our own responsibility, instead of simply relying on a teacher to do all of the work for us. Through this training, we have developed a plan, complete with very specific and practical activities & ideas of how to go about our language learning as part of our daily lives, incorporating it into everything that we do. The focus of these techniques is truly to consistently draw the language IN in multi-sensory and multi-entry ways. Sometimes we "do" to learn and remember, sometimes we associate, sometimes we speak, sometimes we just listen. It's awesome!

We had the great opportunity to practice a number of the learning activities with language tutors of various languages. Now, before you get the urge to ask, let us explain that we were not able to practice in Spanish specifically because it is practically impossible that they could find tutors for every target language of each missionary here at training! So we all got to try our hands at the languages of our helpers that are at MTI: Chinese (Mandarin), Bulgarian, Hindi, Russian or French. Lesley really felt like she picked up Hindi really quickly and Jamey had fun with his group learning Bulgarian! We also just felt like the activities really came off the page and into "life" by getting to practice them together as a small team. They are extremely effective and it is very encouraging to us to have these!

Lesley's Hindi language tutor. 

During this time of exploring language learning techniques, we have also been implementing weekly times of "Growth Groups" (small, intimate groups of about 4-5 people of the same gender) for smaller community & accountability, weekly times of personal coaching with previous missionaries, daily times of quiet personal reflection time (completely unplugged), and daily times of bringing our joys & thanksgivings to God. It has been really wonderful to work these new specific & intentional times into our lives as things we hope to continue doing even after we leave here.

Could you ask for a more beautiful homework spot?!!

Our weekends are times of free time, rest and sabbath.... and lots of homework to prepare for the upcoming week. :) The first weekend that we were here, we decided to just jump right in and get into the amazing amount of beautiful nature that is available to us here in breathtaking Colorado. We visited the U.S. Air Force Academy and went on a hike just behind it. Unfortunately, the intensity level of the hike was a bit more than we had expected and than had been explained to us. We still really enjoyed it, but it was really difficult because we were still getting used to the higher elevation here and it was REALLY steep both up the mountain and coming down. We had to be very careful the whole way, and Jamey often had to help short-legged, short-armed Lesley on the practically all-fours rock climbing we had to do! :)

Our Hike at Eagle Peak! Note the "mountain lions are a real danger here" sign. There was an eight step system on what to do if you encountered one. That's kind of a lot to remember if/when you're scared out of your mind.

But, no matter how difficult the hike might have been for our first week here, we really enjoyed getting to spend time with the group that went with us (including a 3 year old in a hiking backpack and an amazing 6 year old climber!) and of course enjoyed the view. You can enjoy it, too, below:

The view at the top of the mountain from both sides. :)

We've completely loved Colorado, MTI, and all of the amazing people. We've been able to have completely new experiences... including our first October 3rd snow!

Our October 3rd snow dusting :) It was like a high of 45 that day. 

Please be praying for us as we enter the second, and much more emotional, portion of our training here at MTI. For the next two weeks we are going to be exploring our own personal lives, as well as how to transition into cross-cultural living.

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!