A Week of Training

We leave tomorrow for a week of training in CO. It's such a great opportunity and we are glad that we'll get to be around for it. A week before the Lifeline's summer project begins, the staff gather and are either introduced or help train the new staff in Lifeline's strategy. We will get to be around for that week of learning. I'm not exactly sure what's ahead but I know that the older staff will lead us through meetings and activities that will train us and then everyone else will then be joined by students and will implement the same strategies for the rest of the summer.
For the last month, we have been continuing to settle in (cleaning out the yard which hasn't been touched in years, buying furniture off Craigslist, etc.) and Curt has been able to take a climbing certification class. This is a huge blessing because, once he passes an exam, he will be able to lead climbing trips with students in the fall. This adds one more thing that Lifelines has to offer at NAU and can attract more students. Although this may sound like fun, Curt has been overwhelmed with work. The class was extremely stressful and he was gone for 3 days from 6:30am-7:00pm. He was blown away by the amount of knowledge needed and will spend the next month after we return from CO "cramming" for his exam.
Pray for us over the next week as we travel with the girls (who are super-excited to go) and as we spend most of our days in meetings. Pray that the girls would do well as they play by themselves or with the babysitter who has been hired and that we would get good times together as a family. Pray that Curt and I would really soak up what the staff have to teach us. Thanks!

So, we're here. We moved out to AZ and finally found a house (see pic), which seems to be working out great for us. The girls love it. We spent about 2 weeks moving in (which still is not finished) and had a week of meetings with our new team (see other pic. We are still waiting on one couple and a single girl to join us in late summer). We had two days where the team evaluated the old year, which was good for Curt and I to get caught up a little. And then two days of planning for the new year to come. It was a really good time of taking the box and blowing it apart. We asked questions like, "What can we do more effectively? What are our priorities? How can we keep our students focused on actually being out among the unchurched and trying to reach them?". We came up with some really good values that we want to hold onto as a team. One of those was "Being with the lost!". From that stemmed ideas about how to train our students and be involved in their life but not take up all of their time so that they have no time for ministry. What Curt and I both had a hard time with in college was that we became Christians and then were so involved in all the activities that we never spent time with unbelievers. We want to see the students out there and excited!
The team agreed to try out storying among the students and want to dedicate about 3 months of the leaderships' meeting times to just storying. If they are trained in it and like it, they can take it to their ministry hubs (where they are pouring into; i.e. their sorority).
We will be leaving in a couple of weeks to go to CO. We will be spending a week there with other staff and students learning more about Lifelines; their values, goals and mission. Lifelines is a part of Campus Crusade for Christ that uses the outdoors to form relationships with students. The staff also always debrief the students they take out after their experiences, which of course leads to spiritual topics. The more we learn, the more excited we are getting. Please pray for us as we travel to CO and spend time getting educated!

And So We're Gone

We got back into the States on September 8th and have been raising support ever since. We set a goal and probably reached about 50% of that. We simply dropped the goal level and say we have 100% :). We think it should do us well to live on.
As you can see, we have another blog (thehanoverfamily.blogspot.com) where you can be updated about the family. We have traveled to about half of the States in our support raising. We left for Ethiopia on March 19th and picked up our three girls we adopted. We have been back since the 28th of March. We just recently drove out to AZ for our new assignment in Flagstaff. We just found a house and will be moving in shortly. Although staying in America wasn't our first plan and our hearts are still overseas, recently there has been a small window into God's plan. Our youngest has shown some signs of illness through all her medical testing and some of her meds require us to be here for 9 months. God knew all along.
We will be working at NAU (Nothern Arizona University), the third largest university in AZ measuring in at about 18,000 students. A large part of that student population is Native Americans, as we are right outside a Native American reservation. The town consists of Native Americans, whites and hispanics as it's majority, which I think is a great mix. It is a huge tourist town because it is the closest "city" to the Grand Canyon and I think half of the buildings are hotels. It comes in around 80,000 in population.
We have joined up with the team here of 2 other couples, one single guy and a single girl. They are a ministry underneath CCC called Lifelines. Lifelines uses the outdoors to draw students out and then uses the adventures they take them on to bring in spiritual topics. The ministry at NAU is relatively new and just starting to slowly take off. They are excited about the storying aspect that we bring. Their mentality seems to be "if it works, we'll do it". Perfect.

Storying Takes Off

And it did. We watched how one group began to grow and interact through the stories they themselves were crafting (taking stories from a text and turning it oral, usually in another language).
One day we took the stories we had worked on and went to a new village. There, one lady told the story of Creation. People kind of sat back, listened, joked, didn't interact with it much. We were disappointed. The next day we got together again and were planning just to move on. The leader jumped in and asked if anyone could re-tell the story from yesterday. One guy jumped up and told it almost word for word. Then the group began sharing about how almost each of them had retold the story to a neighbor, friend, co-worker, etc. We were amazed. These are people who are persecuted. People don't talk with them because of their faith. And yet they were sharing stories from God's word. It was awesome.
We spent almost our whole 3 months traveling in and out, helping to continue train and encourage nationals in Bible storying. I think what was most encouraging was how well they got it. I felt good about leaving because they knew almost everything I knew. They could do this and didn't need us. We, of course, would've been tempted to stay, to keep guiding. But I truly believe the God wanted us out. He wanted this to be an insiders movement, where it doesn't look like it comes from the foreigners. Although leaving was really, really sad, we felt confident that God moved us on.