It has been awhile since I have posted again. January was busy, but I didn't take many pictures. For some reason I have this expectation that a blog post needs to have pictures and explanations of exciting events. I haven't had too many of either lately.
I continue to make lots of preparations for SST leadership. I finalized my travel plans, and will be flying to Managua on March 27. The students will arrive about a month later, on April 25. Holy week this year is the first week of April, and the entire week is celebrated in Latin American culture, meaning that many people do not work, offices are closed, etc. It will be interesting to experience Easter in another culture. I am looking forward to that. My goal is to worship on Easter Sunday in an Anabaptist congregation in Nicaragua.
My first real orientation for SST leadership was on January 13. My co-leader Keri flew in for the meetings. She had been in Guatemala over the holidays to see her fiance, and flew back to Indiana in a winter storm warning and lots of snow. Luckily her flights all made it through (another answer to prayer), and we had a good time together of preparation and discussing what we want to do with our unit. We also got a lot of helpful information and clarification in the training meeting. I have now been working on finalizing the syllabus (borrowing heavily from past years), and reading a lot of books about Nicaragua (at least sections of them) to see if we want to have the students read them or not. We have our first meeting with the 23 students in our unit on February 22.
In the last 10 days, I have been asked to serve on two non-profits boards/committees. One for a fundraising committee for a camp in Minnesota that I supported and been to a few times, and one for the board of directors of a camp I used to work at. At one point in life I would have jumped at the chance to participate in both of these, but I am realizing that filling up my life with lots of meetings is not that rewarding, and I need some personal space to do my own things. I am also currently on two other boards that take up a fair bit of my time. Maybe sometime in the future I will be able to serve on these boards, but certainly not now while I am preparing for SST and then will be out of the country for four months.
I'll close with a few older pictures from my camera, and one new one (unfortunately not totally in order - don't have time to fight with Blogger).
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| This is 8th St in Goshen sometime in January or February. Snow like this has actually been quite uncommon this winter, as we have had lots of unseasonable 40+ degree weather, and even some sunshine!! |
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| I made it to The Hermitage at the end of January for spiritual direction and a few hours away from the rat race. It was a sunny, warmish day so I took a walk in the woods and saw these animal tracks. Raccoon? |
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| December First Fridays in downtown Goshen. Check out all the people on the sidewalk. Another unseasonably warm evening. |
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| Goshen College Men's basketball, playing against Bethel. Goshen won! |
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| Corbin was in town from Colorado for summer staff recruiting at GC. Penny invited Cheryl, Denise and I to supper and good conversation. |
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