S.D. News

We've been gone from Bend for three weeks now, but we've only been in S.D. for 7 days. A long road-trip-move down the coast and a week and a half in K.C. have busied our days.

To catch you up to date on:

Training:
I kind of accidentally met the track coach at SDSU. It turns out that although the college doesn't have a men's team, he coaches a club team on the side of Olympic hopefuls in the area. It turns out that he specializes in pole vault and decathlon coaching. It turns out that he's a certified Olympic weight lifting instructor. It turns out that his track and weight room are the nicest facilities I've ever been on in my entire life. It turns out that he also coaches at the Olympic Training Center for track athletes in Chula Vista, 20 min. south of town. It turns out that my story intrigued him enough to get invited on to the team. It turns out that I'll be training with the #6 vaulter in the U.S., the #10 thrower in the world, and many other studs.

As I am learning and relearning, sometimes God has a way of positioning us for His plan that isn't obvious up front and we blindly walk right in to it.
He will be spending one-on-one time with me every day on the track and in the weight room. I will be training side by side with some of the best athletes in the world in their respective events. I'm thinking it might be more effective than training and lifting alone all day every day.;)

Jobs:
Sandy has already had a few interviews at various places. It looks like she may find easy opportunity to make great money as a nanny. Another option she's looking into is a promotional agency that often needs extras in films, wedding catalogues, product promotions, etc. They love her smile (surprise, surprise) and are confident that she would succeed. There are a few other options on the table, but we are wanting to pursue these two further and see what happens.

Churches:
We haven't been in town on a Sunday yet. We tried to go to a church on Wednesday, but Sandy had an evening interview. I have spent many hours sorting through the 1,500 or so churches in the area. I can't tell you how many websites I've visited or how many "about us"/"our beliefs" links I've clicked on. Through all the filtering, we've narrowed it down to about five churches that we are confident will be places we would love to serve in. Our three main criteria have been 1)A dependence on prayer, 2)An unwavering backbone in the Bible, without man's added or subtracted ingredients, and 3)A strong awareness for cross cultural ministry (both ethnically and economically). Our first official visit is tomorrow night, and is the one that I have initial feelings of being "the one"... We'll see.

I'll write more later, as the length has probably already scared off some would be readers :)


P.S. Props to Danny, Jamie, and David Schulz for being our first visitors. David, thanks for being so smiley our entire day at the zoo!