Many of you may be wondering what we’re doing now that we’re stateside. Sometimes I wonder the same thing. The truth, however, is that we’re doing quite a bit even if it isn’t a 9-5 or 24/7 job that we’ve been used to.
First, we’ve been enjoying the fellowship of our friends and family. Thank you to everyone who has invited us to your homes or taken us out to coffee or just grabbed us for a chat. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed reconnecting with you. If you haven’t yet been able to grab us and would like to, our schedule allows us to be pretty flexible so we can adapt to yours. Use our contact page to let us know you’re interested in hearing our Uganda stories in person. Family bonding has also included work on finishing a bathroom in in the Verdick Senior’s home.
Secondly, it is amazing how much time and effort it takes to start up life again. Thankfully we now have communication and transportation mostly sorted, not to mention car insurance, doctors, the hospital where we will deliver our baby and indulging my insatiable desire for ice cream. Oh, and we’re dumping some of our old life by getting rid of items we don’t want to store or take to Africa (you may have seen the ads!).
Thirdly, we’re preparing for the future! Christopher has spent the better part of the last week on a video which we will show at New Life this Sunday during Sunday School. We’ve met with the head of our missions committee, Dean Abbott, to discuss fundraising and our long-term plans as missionaries. We hope to begin scheduling visits to various San Diego churches to see if they’re interested in partnering with us (once again, if you’re interested in us speaking at your church, use our contact page to let us know!). I’ve also bought all the ingredients for pecan pies for Thanksgiving.
Some things haven’t changed. I have maintained the bulk of my finance responsibilities for the mission via email, as well as working on larger projects that I never seemed to be able to find the time for before (like writing Financial Policies and Procedures!!). Christopher has continued extending his list of desired video projects and editing photos. We are both attempting to retain our language capabilities by translating Luke 8 from Karimojong to English (that might seem backwards, but we’re not good enough to go the other way!).
There you go, that’s how we’re spending our time. We also hope to keep writing blogs so stay tuned for our furlough thoughts and life musings!