Welcome to the world, Grayson Lee!
My dear cousin Emilie gave birth to a healthy baby boy, their first baby, Monday night. I’m in love with him already.
Life here at FPO goes by pretty quickly. It’s crazy to think that I’m already in week 3. Days are long; we’re in classes during the week from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., if not later. We’re learning about everything on the planet that’s related to ministry or could prepare us for life overseas. Each week has a theme. The first week was more of an intro to life here and what we’ll be doing during FPO. Last week was focusing on personal discipleship, which was awesome. We had 3-hour sessions on prayer and 5-hour sessions on doctrine, all followed up with details like payroll or insurance. By Friday, my brain was gone. So much stinkin information in five days. All I can pray is that I’ll recall this stuff when I need it.
This week is affinity week, which has been really awesome. Monday we studied anthropology, and Tuesday we broke into worldview workshops. Meals are even based on what week it is. We had two special meals at lunch where we ate like different cultures. The first meal was bortsch (pardon my spelling), rye bread, and sour cream, based on Central Asian culture. The second was Middle Eastern. I forgot the name, but it was some sort of “salad” (picture fruit salsa, except it was onions and some other diced vegetables) and meatballs that we ate by tearing off pieces of flatbread and grabbing the food with it. Quite delicious actually and both fun experiences. Unfortunately I’ve heard we only have one more.
Visa details are still being worked out. I got my paperwork for my initial visa today, and my departure date was pushed back four days to October 9 for my language school partner.
New requests:
- Stability and consistency in emotions and thoughts. I feel like it’s the middle of the school semester, and I can’t form intelligent, coherent sentences because I’m so zapped. And it’s been a super emotional time for many, many different reasons (I think my record for days crying in a row now is up to 12). No worries, a lot of those days were empathizing with others. I’m not THAT distressed.
- Discernment in knowing what’s truth in my head and what are lies, and strength for fighting those lies. I’m constantly reminding myself that it’s true that I can’t do this by myself, that I’m human and sinful and in need of Him, but the great, awesome hope is that He is my sufficiency and power.
- Emilie and Josh as they are trying to figure out how to raise a baby and are getting used to there being a third one in their family.
