October 25, 2008: Seven Days & Counting... (Luke)

One more week before Andrea and I depart for Mexico. That amount of time seems so far away yet approaching much too quickly at this rate. We are eagerly awaiting our departure but trying to remain present in order to say good byes...oh yeah, and we have to pack! So, this upcoming week is going to be a doozy. We both understand that we are approaching a turning point in our lives, but neither of us are quite sure what life will hold once we turn that corner.

My anticipation reminds me of Christmas mornings as a child trying to sneak a peak at the Christmas tree before anyone was awake. No matter how hard I stretched my neck, or layed on the tile floor in my pj's to get a better view, I could not quite see what Santa hopefully brought the night before. We can't fast forward to next week - nor would we want to - but boy, we are excited!

The past few weeks have been delightfully busy. My home congregation of St. Mark's Presbyterian Church in Tucson commissioned Andrea and I on October 5th for our term of service. The commissioning itself was a lovely event. The children of the church layed their hands on the two of us during the commissioning prayer. Fast forward a couple weeks, and we were commissioned at Andrea's home congregation - Augustana Lutheran Church - in West St. Paul, MN. We were glad to have had present a representative from the "Global Mission Unit" of the ELCA. All of this is to say we feel sufficiently commissioned by each of our home congregations and will take their supportive prayers with us to Mexico.

Our preparations to leave for Mexico continue. We drove from Tucson to the St. Paul area a week and a half ago. Along the way we had the opportunity to catch up with some friends and family. The trip was good, though not as long as the three-week road trip of the National Parks of the West we took en route to Tucson during September. I celebrated my 30th in Yellowstone!

Anyway, we will be here in MN until we leave. We hope to put the finishing touches on our packing as well as spend some QT with friends and family in the area.

Our first few weeks in Mexico City and Cuernavaca seem to be taking shape slowly. We tentatively plan to spend the first week in intensive language school at CETLALIC in Cuernavaca. We'll take a break from intentional language studies to attend a retreat with the Young Adults in Global Mission and begin orientation to our new responsibilities. On a side note, the ELCA has provided Andrea and I two months of orientation with the current Country Coordinator which is a real blessing! Anyway, the third week we hope to return to language studies full-time. After that, our time is up in the air. We'll certainly continue with orientation to our responsibilities, but how that will take shape is any one's guess!

Well, thanks for reading this most recent post. We hope you are well and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you to those who have posted already. It is good to hear from you!

In Grace & Peace,

Luke