Time with Family

I'm sorry that it's been so long since I've written!  Josh and I have been in Wilmington since returning from Colorado and it has been so nice to spend time with family.  We have made sure to have all of our favorite meals, visit our favorite places and meet with every friend we can think of!

It hasn't been all fun and games though :).   We have been getting down to business by speaking at churches and church groups about our coming work, focusing heavily on our fundraising, and volunteering our time to help prepare for the next project to Haiti.

Itemizing medical supplies that were donated for Haiti

Admiring our work after a long day in the warehouse.

There is another team leaving for Haiti from Wilmington on April 21st and we are sad not to be able to go with them, but they asked us if we would help them to organize supplies for the project.  We are very happy to be able to help them do this great work!

We will be in Wilmington until Friday when we head to Pinehurst to celebrate Josh's mom's birthday and spend some time with his side of the family.  We are so grateful to have the opportunity to speak at churches Josh's church on April 14th.  

Please pray for us in these last few weeks as we begin to say a heartfelt and complete goodbye to our families.  It is definitely one of the most difficult parts of the process, but we will rely on the Lord to give us the strength that we need.  We will write more when we get to Pinehurst!

Love and God Bless,

Goodbyes . . .

We are packing up our room and preparing to leave MTI tomorrow around lunchtime.  I can't believe our time here is almost over.  This time in Colorado has been so many things to us . . . a time of personal and spiritual reflection . . . a time to grow closer as a couple . . . a time to increase our faith and confidence in the Lord . . . a time to truly prepare our hearts and minds for our ministry in Ecuador and for the weeks and months to come.  We have learned and discovered more than we can process right now and I know that our PILAT and SPLICE binders full of information will be invaluable to us as we continue to move forward.

Our class time today was spent reflecting on goodbyes and healthy ways to say goodbye.  This is a part of the journey that Josh and I know is coming, but we are often hesitant to face.  Our families play such an important role in our lives and saying goodbye to them will probably be the most difficult thing we have to do.  We are understanding how important it is to allow ourselves to feel this loss and not to avoid or ignore it.  God's strength will carry us through.

As soon as we get home we will be working hard to continue to fundraise.  We are currently at about 52% of our goal for monthly commitments and we hope to make some real progress before we leave for language school on April 29th.  Please pray that we will find donors to join us in our ministry.  We are praying and trusting that the Lord will provide.

Here are some pictures from our day of goodbyes:

This is our SPLICE leader.  He has helped us soooooo much!

The kids memorized Psalm 139.  It was amazing!

This is the whole SPLICE group.  I'm going to miss them all so much!

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us during this process.  It has meant so much to us and we are so looking forward to putting everything that we have learned into action.

Love and God Bless,

  

"March"ing Right Along!

It's been a great and insightful week with lots of class participation!

We started the week continuing to focus on our conflict style and then moved into a study on adversity.  We worked with Mark 4:35-41 about Jesus calming the storm and considered who we would be in the story and what we would be doing in the boat (Are we shouting at the storm all by ourselves? Are we trying to swim away from our storm? Are we actually turning to Jesus for help? etc.).  It is so important to really consider our thoughts about adversity because we know that it won't always be smooth-sailing in missions and we want to know where we stand and that we should always turn to our Lord!

Wednesday was INTENSE!  We had a simulated hostage situation that was intended to put us in an extremely stressful situation so that we could really analyze our gut-level reactions.  It was unbelievably emotional, but so enlightening.  We now know what our natural tendencies are and we know whether or not there are things that we need to "check" when stress comes along.  They emphasized the fact that the simulation was NOT intended to teach us what to do in a hostage situation, but rather to help us learn more about ourselves under stress.  They suggested some videos that teach you how to handle crisis situations which Josh and I are looking into.  Best to be prepared!

Thursday was largely about learning to keep the Sabbath and embrace rest.  We learned that one of the biggest enemies to missionaries is burnout and that if you don't make a focused effort to take time away, you won't last long.  It is really interesting that keeping the Sabbath is a commandment just like the others, but we often don't give it quite as much weight.

Friday was all about transitions and transitioning to a different culture in particular.  As you can see below, Josh and I were both involved in exercises that demonstrate the difficulty involved in crossing from one culture to another and that you need "spotters" or supporters with you to help you cross safely.

Also, on Friday morning during our worship time, the kids performed a worship routine that I had choreographed for them.  It was very special and I was so proud of them!

The kids here have truly amazed me!  They are unbelievably mature, respectful, and well-rounded and I am so glad to have gotten to know them.

This weekend we returned to the Air Force Academy Chapel for their traditional service, and we are now working on a homework assignment due later in the week.  I can't believe that we only have one more week of classes left.  It is going to be so difficult to leave all of these wonderful friends, but I know we'll stay in touch.  Can't wait to see what we all learn tomorrow!!!

Love and God Bless,

A Wonderful Opportunity!

Hi Everyone!

I can't believe today is the last day of February!

Josh and I were able to attend a contemporary church service at the United States Air Force Academy Chapel today.  Wow . . . .  It is one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen!  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

See what I mean?!  :)

Needless to say, it was a very moving service and we are hoping to be able to get a ride back next Sunday as well.

Besides that, we've been working on a lot of homework regarding conflict resolution styles in different situations with different people.  We had to talk to each other, to a member of our family of origin, and a co-worker or other close friend about the way that we handle conflict.  The purpose was to realize that it is inevitable that we will encounter conflict with our team once we get to Ecuador, and there are a lot of different ways to handle it.  Each situation demands prayerful consideration.  This has required some very intense and sometimes difficult introspection, but we have learned a lot about ourselves.

The tendency is to think that there is only one appropriate way to handle every conflict and that we are, by nature, utilizing the wrong method.  We realized, however, that Jesus himself valued many different styles of conflict resolution in different situations: sometimes he withdrew from the conflict (Luke 5:16), but sometimes - for example in the temple - he was far more assertive and took charge of the conflict (Matthew 21:12).  Just realizing this fact, however, is not enough.  It will take a great deal of time, focus, and prayer to put this into practice.

Josh and I are very excited to jump into this next week!  On a lighter note, we learned that when a road sign says 4-wheel drive vehicles only, they aren't kidding:

Thank goodness for a kind man with an SUV!

Love and God Bless,

What's SPLICE anyway?

What an introspective week!

We've discovered that SPLICE requires a lot of self-examination and self-discovery and it is exhausting!  We are both ready for the weekend and a little down-time for our brains.  Josh says that he feels like he's back in Chem 101 with all the brain-power this takes. ;)

Our instructors are fantastic and they really know how to dig in deep.  The philosophy behind SPLICE lies in the fact that in order to REALLY get into another culture, you have to know yourself and how you relate to your spouse, family, and friends first.  That way you will be prepared when you are faced with something truly different (like Ecuador!).

Today we focused on "expectations" and the different ways that our expectations (especially expectations of our new life in a new country) shape our feelings and emotions.  Josh was chosen to help illustrate this point:

He got extra credit for this one!

Once per week each person/couple meets with one of the trainers for a "personal coaching" session.  We had our first one today and it was truly one of the most helpful things we've done here.  We got to ask specific questions we have about the nitty-gritty of missions and we received straight-forward and faith-based answers.  We talked a lot about our financial situation and we have realized how much work we have left to do when it comes to raising support.  We're really looking forward to our next session.

On Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 7-8pm a fun little group has formed in our recreation room downstairs!  One night after dinner I decided I was missing my dancing and I needed to do some stretching so I went downstairs to find some room.  Well a few of the little girls were interested and asked if I'd teach them.  I agreed and soon it turned into a class of about 7 or 8 kids!  It is wonderful to get some exercise and to teach them some really fun moves in the process.  I am hoping that it is something that they can keep up even after the program.  The surprise blessings we are receiving here are amazing and we are so grateful to have this opportunity!

Love and God Bless,

SPLICE Begins!

Hello All!


After experiencing (and playing in) some beautiful snow over the weekend, Josh and I are rested and ready to begin a new program called SPLICE!  SPLICE stands for Spiritual, Personal, Lifestyle, Interpersonal, Cultural, Endurance/Enjoyment.  From what we understand, we will be learning more about ourselves in all of these areas in hopes that we will be better prepared to enter and acclimate ourselves to our new cultures.  We have heard WONDERFUL things about this program and can't wait to get started.


There are 23 people in the SPLICE program and 11 of those are people who have stayed over from PILAT.  It's great to be among familiar faces, but I know we will grow extremely close to the new-comers over the next three weeks.  I will definitely update everyone as I find out more about what's to come!


On a side note - Josh and I attended a church this past Sunday called North Springs Alliance Church in Colorado Springs.  We were invited by one of the PILAT participants who lives in the area and it was wonderful.  The message was about "Viral Faith" - having a faith that is infectious and spreading it - and the pastor focused on 1 Thessalonians 1:3, "We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.".  He gave the analogy of a sailing vessel and said that the "faith" in this verse would be the sails catching the wind and moving the boat, the "love" would be the hull holding everyone together, and the "hope" would be the anchor keeping the boat steady in rough waters.  It touched my heart to hear the cross-reference to Hebrews 6:19 which inspired the title of our blog!  We will certainly need to hold strong to that anchor of hope in order to endure the challenges that lie ahead.  


We are so happy to be a part of this program as we know the Lord has placed us here for His purpose and the tools we learn here will be invaluable to us on this journey.


Love and God Bless,
   

Week 2 of PILAT

Hello All!

We are nearing the end of the PILAT program and boy has this week been busy!

Josh and I had the opportunity to attend a wonderful church on Sunday.  One of the families here, to whom we have grown extremely close, offered to let us go to church with them since they have their van here.  It's called the Little Log Church and it was an awesome experience!  Here are some pictures:

The pastor spoke  on Malachi 1:1-5 and our tendency to ask God "How have you loved me lately", when in fact He shows us all the time simply by giving us the opportunity to be his children!  For its size, this church has an amazing number of overseas missionaries which was great to see.  We are definitely planning on returning to this church for services during the remainder of our time in Colorado - as long as we can get a ride!

We had more classes, phonetics drills, and quite a few assignments that were due this week in class. Most of the assignments had to do with ways to put the PILAT techniques that we have learned into practice once we get to Costa Rica for language school.  They have taught us that it is easier to change a plan once you get to language school than it is to make it up on the spot.  Josh and I have a meeting tomorrow with one of the instructors to discuss the best ways to utilize these techniques practically in our situation.

I took a couple of pictures of our classroom so you can see where we spend most of our time:

We have REALLY bonded with the people in our PILAT group and we are so sad to see some of them leave at the end of PILAT!  We are very excited about the beginning of SPLICE, however, and can't wait to get into the cross-cultural ministry portion of our training.

We now have a facebook page called "Support Joshua and Stephanie Tucker in Ecuador" and we are so grateful for all of the fans that we have.  We want to truly thank everyone for your prayers and support - both financially and otherwise!  It means so much to us!

We will keep you posted as we move into the next part of our training!

Love and God Bless,