Dear friends,
Here we are again with our update! This one is really exciting because this might be the last update sent from the US! Next time when you hear from us, it might already be from Europe!!
Yes, we might be leaving for Europe in exactly a month (March 6th). Our mission director, Bill Moberly, will be going to Ukraine next month and he wants us to go with him. We just learned about this last week so now we are trying to figure out how we can get everything ready in just a month. Right now we are in New Mexico (our mission director’s home) but when we come back home to Minneapolis at the end of this week we will start a very busy three weeks. PLEASE PRAY FOR US!!! Besides trying to pack our whole home, we also have very many last minute details to take care of. So we would definitely appreciate your prayers.
As most of you probably know, we finished our five-week mission training on Friday. The last three weeks of our training were about the different make-or-break issues of missionary lives. We talked about how to stay spiritually healthy on the field, how to deal with conflict, stress, grief and loss… how to keep morally pure… We discussed what to expect from the cross-cultural transition (the normal stages of “honeymoon experience” and “culture shock” before feeling settled). We also learned how to say “healthy good-byes” in order to be able to say “healthy hellos.” We were very thankful that we were able to be at this training. If you would like to read more about what we learned or see some pictures, click here: http://www.chmiels.com/gallery/mti/ (if you have seen some of the first pictures, just go to page two and start there).
You can also see some more videos from our training at http://www.chmiels.com/videos.htm Last time we sent you a link to a video but the problem was that we never knew what else would open on that website. So this time we put the videos on our own website so we do not need to worry about inappropriate advertisements or anything like that. So enjoy the videos!!
Someone just recently asked us, “How do you feel as you prepare to go to Ukraine soon?” It is hard to answer this question. In one of our sessions during our mission training the teacher said that when his family was about to move, his son said, “Daddy, I think God wants us to be both sad and excited about moving.” And that is how we feel, too. It is sad to leave our friends, our home, sell some of our wedding gifts, leave places that are very special to us… but at the same time we are very excited for what God has in store for us in Ukraine.
We very much appreciate your prayers! Keep in touch,
Tomasz and Miriam
