November out in Colorado for Language Training

Greetings from Palmer Lake, CO!

This is Dora! We are here at Mission Training International attending the PILAT training (Program in Language Acquisition Techniques). In fact, that is where this picture was taken. BEAUTIFUL!!! This includes lots work on phonetics (we do drills on various consonant and vowel sounds that don’t occur in the English language) as well as utilizing various language learning techniques in the classroom. We have also been put into various language groups and learning Russian, Mandarin, Hindi, Vietnamese, and French. Chris has been working on Russian and I have been working on Mandarin. Why, you may ask, are we working on languages that we will not need in Thailand? We’re actually focusing on the techniques of language learning and using these various languages to practice these techniques. It’s been really fun! There are about 35 other missionaries here and it’s been great getting to know some of them. Almost every missionary is going to a different country, and it’s been so cool to hear about what God is doing all over the world!

Last Month Recap-Getting Vulnerable

The last month has been a bit hectic for us! As you probably already know, around the middle of October, we went out to Washington to speak at a couple of churches, Christ United Protestant Church in Richland, WA, and Woodville Community United Methodist Church in Woodinville (just ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifutside of Seattle). We had a blast! We hung out in Richland for a couple of days with a great couple (I actually got to go on a women’s retreat), and we spoke that morning at both services at CUP (our newest supporting church)! Then, they had a reception during which people could ask us questions about our future ministry. This church has been so good to us and the people are so fun to be with! We’re blessed!

Next, we headed to Portland, Oregon for a couple of days and spent some time with some friends from college, then on up to Seattle for a five-day GIC (Global Impact Celebration) at Woodinville Community UMC. It was an amazing time to connect with the congregation of that church as well as many other missionaries serving all over the world. Early in this GIC we sat down with all the missionaries (local, national, and international), and shared parts of our stories. It was incredible because the more we got comfortable with each other the more we were able to share our concerns and struggles. An incredible vulnerability was birthed there, which has changed the way we are attempting to communicate, even with acquaintances and strangers. We both had the opportunity to speak at the men’s and women’s breakfasts (respectively), which was a huge blessing. Due to our previous session with all the missionaries sharing together, both took this as a chance to be very vulnerable and talk about the issues that we’re struggling with. I specifically talked about how I don’t feel very “missionary-like”—I mean, missionaries are supposed to have it all together and be super connected with God all the time, right? They’re supposed to be the most spiritual among us, aren’t they? God can work with all of us! Especially those like me that don’t have it all together!!!

The Kentucky Whirlwind

When we returned from Washington, we spent two weeks back in Kentucky trying to get stuff packed up in our house (we were partially successful) and hanging out with folks in the Lexington area. We did end up selling both of our cars, so that’s a huge praise!!

What's to Come:

The next couple of weeks…We will spend the first half of Thanksgiving week with some friends out here in Colorado Springs, and then we are renting a car to drive to Albuquerque, NM to have Thanksgiving with Chris’ great aunt Frances. Then, we will return to MTI on November 30 to begin another 3-week training session. This next training is called SPLICE (Spiritual, Personal, Lifestyle, Interpersonal, Culture, Endure/Enjoy). It’s basically a cross-cultural training on how to survive as a missionary in another country. After that training, we will fly back to Kentucky, pack up most of our furniture, and drive a U-Haul to North Carolina to spend Christmas with Chris’ side of the family. Then, we will head back to KY to wrap up the last few details and say goodbye to our friends and family there. As soon as our flight details are locked in, we will share those with all of you in case you are in the Lexington area and want to send us off (which we would love!). God bless you all and we love you!!

-Dora

The Last Minute Preparations

GREAT NEWS!

Hey everybody, Chris here!!! The past month and a half since our last blog entry has been an interesting one. Dora and I have been substitute teaching almost every day. Well, actually, Dora has been called every day for jobs, since she is a certified teacher in Fayette County, while I have been teaching saxophone 2 ½ days a week and looking on jealously! J In addition to teaching, we have been running around to several more churches to share God’s story in Thailand and to raise the remaining funds, and we have some amazing news to report…through the generous giving of so many of you, we now have 91% of our required funding pledged or received in order to depart for Thailand!!! Praise God and thank you all so very much. That leap of faith, mentioned in the last blog entry, of needing 80% of our funds by the beginning of November in order to attend our Colorado training was exceeded dramatically by the beginning of October. We learn more about trusting God’s promises every day!

Where we go from here:

That all means that we can attend our training from November 9^th-December 18th. We’re also now in the process of confirming our funds and preparing to take another leap of faith to buy our tickets to Thailand for early January. We need to reach 100% in donations and pledges in order to hop on that plane, but we believe that God intends for us to be in Bangkok before January 14^th so we can start language school at the beginning of their spring term. We really must begin in January if we stand any chance of being prepared to move into our new home in the Roi Et province for the beginning of their school year in May. However, through our Brazil training, we have come to grasp the fact that if we have any hopes of being effective communicators in the Northeast, we have to spend the time for language training in Bangkok. So, we will stay in Bangkok longer than 4 months if necessary to have a functional grasp on the Thai language. If you have felt lead to partner with us in this ministry in Thailand and have been postponing joining us for any reason, we would humbly ask you to please consider doing so before the end of 2009 so we will have the funds necessary to depart on time.

Global Impact Celebrations!

We promise that we will write about the specifics of our final training in Colorado as the training commences next month, but currently, I am writing you all from Washington State, where Dora and I have been flown in by Woodinville Community United Methodist Church (in the city of Woodinville near Seattle) to attend their Global Impact Celebration. While we are here we are getting a chance to reconnect with an amazing church in the Tri-cities area of eastern Washington that is partnering with us, and to see some dear friends in the Portland area. These GIC events are like ‘Mission Conferences on Steroids’ to quote Dick McClain the Mission Society’s new president. GIC’s are 5 days of meeting with different members and groups within the church to discuss the church’s vision for missions and to help all the members get involved with it. It also gives us the opportunity to personally share our vision for ministry in Thailand with lots of people in small group settings, so that many members of the church are involved in the process of discerning the possibility of a partnership between the church and our ministry. We had such an amazing time in February at the GIC at Central United Protestant church in Richland, Washington, that we seized the opportunity to travel back from Seattle to see our new friends in eastern Washington before returning to Woodinville Community Church for their GIC.

The difficulty of goodbyes:

We will share more about this experience out in Washington and Oregon next month, but I wanted to finish this entry by sharing what’s been on my heart so heavily recently. We have begun the process of saying many of our goodbyes, realizing now that with such limited time in the states (and even more limited time in Kentucky and North Carolina) we can’t always say, “We will see you next time!” because that ‘next time’ may be years away. Dora and I have always been crazy travelers, and neither of us have had a difficult time leaving home before, but this is a whole new situation, and is stirring very new and difficult emotions for us both. I just taught my last saxophone lessons to each of my students this past week, and it was so much more difficult than I expected it to be. I really don’t feel like I know how to say goodbye to friends (and that includes my students) when I know we can stay in touch, but I very well may not see them for years. I know there isn’t an easy answer to this struggle, but please pray for both of us as we work through this together. This opportunity is so bitter sweet!!!

We love you all so dearly. Thank you for your support. Stay tuned since Dora is going to write the blog this next month!

Brazil Training

Dora and I completed an amazing training session with The Mission Society near Teresopolis, Brazil from July 1-20^th. I had all intentions of writing about this a full month ago, but life has been crazy, and God has opened all sorts of awesome doors for us to share about this ministry all month. We spent a week and a half teaching band camp and preparing to share in three different churches upon return from Brazil, and then spent the next two and a half weeks sharing on Thailand and playing our instruments in the Carolinas and Kentucky. On a less strenuous note, we had a lot of great quality time with both sides of my immediate family in the two weeks we spent in the Carolinas.

MISSION SOCIETY BRAZIL TRAINING

Please Check out our Training Pictures here!

The Mission Society chooses to host it’s missionary training in Brazil for a couple of reasons: first, they want to put the training in a setting where all the missionaries involved are experiencing the challenges of communicating cross culturally, and second, because it was actually cheaper to fly to Brazil and train than it would be for all the American missionaries to gather for two and a half weeks in the home office in Norcross, Georgia!

CROSS CULTURAL CHALLENGES:

It is amazing to me how much more the challenges of entering and working within a foreign culture come alive when people from different cultures learn and engage in team building exercises together! Though many of the Brazilians spoke English and have traveled to the states, there is still a significant worldview difference between the Brazilians and Americans that was very present in our discussions of ministry. For instance, we did an exercise where we looked at a list of doctrines that different denominations have held over the past 2000 years to be essential to the Christian experience, and we were asked to make our own list of which of these doctrines we saw as essential. While each trainees’ lists varied significantly, the division between the lists of the members of the Brazilian Methodist church and those of the American Protestant churches was huge. But, then once we all argued our perspective on these doctrines, we were able to see how each other’s worldviews influenced each person’s reading of scripture, and we all walked away with a new and deeper understanding of the impact of the Word of God on our lives and potential ministries. Please hear me rightly, I am not saying we all compromised on the truth of scripture, but that our experiences, coupled with the knowledge we obtain about Biblical worldviews, and the modern understanding of those with a different worldview (a.k.a. the Brazilians), gives us a much deeper understanding of the relevance of the Word!

ENTERING THE SLUMS:

We were divided into teams of 12 or so, split completely between Americans and Brazilians, and sent twice into favelas in Teresopolis for a half day, and once into favelas in Rio for a day. You can see our team in our pictures posted on Picasa and Facebook. Now a favela is a slum-like neighborhood where the majority of the community members are living as ‘squatters.’ A squatter community is one in which most members do not legally own the land on which they have constructed their house or shack. In addition to this, the drug lords within the communities instead of the police often govern these communities. The ramifications of this were not evident to me when we were in the Teresopolis favela, but when we went to Rio to a favela called ‘Hill of Providence’ I was hammered with this reality. As we climbed the narrow alleyways (the entire community is built on the side of a VERY steep hill) we saw men with guns and radios at every corner just observing us. While we were reassured that our group had permission from the drug lords to be walking through and observing the communities that day, I could not shake the feeling that we were being watched like hawks by men who may not be in their right state of mind.

But, the amazing part of that Rio favela experience was that we observed the older missionary, who had been serving that community for 45 years and was acting as our guide that day, receive hugs from many of these armed men and most of the community members. Despite the armed men’s dark demeanor and occupations, the missionary had earned credibility with the roughest of the rough, and his ability to minister to their children and families was the fruit of these relationships. Darrel Whitman, a brilliant Christian Anthropologist who directed our training, said something like: “To be effective cross cultural witnesses we must have enormous confidence in the Gospel and ever-renewing humility so Jesus is always clear by our presence.” I believe this man exemplified this statement and I pray I may learn to live by it as well. Praise God that he uses the steady willingness of missionaries to reach into the darkest places!

LEAP OF FAITH:

While in Brazil, we discussed with Jim Ramsay, the field coordinator for Mission Society missionaries, the possibility of registering for our FINAL training in Colorado with Mission Training International. We will send more about the specifics about this training later. The Mission Society’s policy is that missionaries should raise 80% of their needed funds for their upcoming term of service before they attend MTI’s training. The training is a 5-6 week session and the last one for the year begins in November. If we miss this training deadline, we would not be able to begin training until January, which would prevent us for leaving for Thailand until at least March. At the time of our Brazil training, we had raised approximately 60% of our necessary funds, and Jim told us that he believed our funds were coming in well enough that he gave the ‘go ahead’ for us to register with MTI for November! He doesn’t want us to miss the opportunity to catch our training by the end of the year, which might ideally put us in a position to leave for Thailand in January, so we are taking a LEAP OF FAITH, believing we will be at 80% by November. Thank you all and Thank GOD for making this unreachable dream a reality!!!

PERSONAL GROWTH:

Finally, in Brazil, Dora and I had an unbelievable time of spiritual and personal growth. We both carved out significant portions of our day for prayer, bible study, and to discuss our fears of ministry and this upcoming leap of faith. We shared many tears and comforting, and I think God has opened each of us in new and deeper ways to each other’s needs. We are both realizing how desperately we must stay connected to each other and to God if this ministry is going to be a success. Fortunately, we serve a God who can do all things!!! How awesome is that! Please continue to pray for us that God prepares our hearts in any ways necessary for this coming challenge. God bless you all.

Speaking at Churches around the US

Dora and I preaching at Perryville United Methodist Church in Perryville, KY

Dora and I have been so blessed with many awesome opportunities to share about our ministry in Thailand in the past months. We have shared and preached in many churches and talked with several mission boards in Kentucky, in North Carolina and even in Washington State! Please pray for us as we share at two churches in Greensboro, NC and two churches, one in Southern and one in Eastern Kentucky, in August. We will be traveling back to Washington in October to share, so please be in prayer for that opportunity as well. God has really been opening doors for whole church communities as well as individuals to enter into partnerships with us in our ministry in Thailand.

We would love to opportunity to share God's vision for our ministry at any church or small group/bible study, so please let us know if you believe your church or small group might be interested. We travel!!!! Please email me at barbee.chris@gmail.com if you want to discuss any possibilities.

Over halfway to leaving for Thailand!!! Our First Blog & Training....

Hello everyone!!!

God has been so good to us over the past 8 months.   Since we began out fundraising in late '08 we have now raised approximately 60% of the TOTAL FUNDS we need for EVERYTHING for the field for the next 5 years!   While this is great news, we must still have the rest of those funds committed before we are able to leave for Thailand.

We hope to depart for Thailand NO LATER than the beginning of 2010 in order that we might do at least 4 months of intensive Thai language training in Bangkok before moving to the Roi Et province in the Northeast to begin teaching and ministering.   Since we will be teaching English (and possibly music with all the instruments that have surprisingly been donated!) during and after the school day in approximately 10 different schools, it would be ideal for us to begin our work in the NE at the beginning of the school year in May.  So, we have to get a move on it!!!

Brazil Training:

  For those of you who may not have heard, Dora and I are preparing to leave for 16 days of training in Brazil in a small village in the mountains near Brazil.  We will be working alongside Brazilian cross-cultural workers to learn how to deal with the issues presented in interacting cross-culturally.  Dora and I are both thrilled about this training because Darrell Whiteman is the coordinator and leader, and he is the former dean of the E. Stanley Jones Mission School at Asbury Seminary where I just graduated!  This should be an amazing time of growth for all the new missionaries and cross-cultural workers from the Mission Society preparing for their respective fields of service.   But, our time down south will be extremely intense, so I ask you to please PRAY for our retention abilities and stamina as we undergo this intensive training!   We will NOT have Internet connection while in Brazil, but I look forward to sharing much more about this amazing experience when we return state-side on July 21st.

Other Final Training and Preparations:

Chris' school: Yes, the rumors are correct, it appears I have actually completed my Asbury Seminary degree: a Masters of Arts in Intercultural Studies!!!  I say "it appears" because my final grade has not yet been posted, so I have not yet been awarded a degree, but I am close enough!!!!  I truly believe these last three years of academic, spiritual and cross-cultural training are going to prove invaluable in the years to come.  I still believe whole-heartily that this wild opportunity (or Holy Experiment, as Oswald Chambers puts it) we are entering would not be possible without the AMAZING POWER of God's Holy Spirit, so I give all my training into God's hands to do with as He pleases.

Dora's school:  Dora is currently working on a Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language through Western Governor's University online.  This program is not only preparing her (and me vicariously) to be more effective in the classrooms in Thailand, but also giving her the certification she will need if we are ever to return to teach and work in the states, she would have the proper credentials to re-enter the public school systems.  Dora is an absolute work horse, and has somehow managed to complete the first 13 hours of her 30 hour degree in only 6 months, while teaching elementary music!  She may even have the entire degree completed before we depart for Thailand! God is so good, but we both need some more sleep!!!

Final training session:  If our support-raising situation is approved by October, we will be attending the final pre-departure training for our ministry in Thailand in November and December.   This training is given by an organization called Mission Training International in Colorado Springs.  We will be going out west and staying on their campus for 5 weeks and engaging in two intensive trainings:  The first being a language acquisition training that will help us make the most out of our official Thai language training in Bangkok, and the second being a culture-entry training.  As mentioned above, if have raised enough support to attend this training in November, we will stay in Colorado Springs over Thanksgiving and return to the Kentucky and North Carolina areas on December 19th to enjoy Christmas with family and friends before we leave.    I pray life will slow down once we reach Thailand!!!