Our MAF visit in Idaho

Just last week, Jennifer and I had the awesome opportunity to fly out to Nampa, Idaho and meet with some of the MAF staff at their headquarters. We figured that while we still have flight privileges we might as well use them. So we left last Monday morning EARLY and flew to Boise, connecting in Salt Lake City. The interesting part was that we had to fly standby, but God made it happen and we were able to get seats on all of our flights, even though it was pretty tight on several of them!

We arrived in Boise and were met by a sweet lady named Judy. She drove us to the headquarters in Nampa, about 30 minutes from Boise, and checked into our apartment on campus (which was incredibly nice!) and got ready for an afternoon of tours and meetings. We sat down with Ron Hilbrands, who is the director of recruiting for MAF, for several hours. He also gave us a tour of the MAF campus (which was state of the art in every way!) and airplane hangars. It was pretty neat seeing the MAF planes for the first time, knowing that this is what I will be flying in the future! He showed us where we will be doing a lot of our training once we are accepted for missionary service and was able to answer a lot of questions that we had. Jennifer also had the opportunity to meet with several former missionary wives at the end of the day. This was a very cool time for her because she was able to ask questions about what life was like overseas as a mother raising children. I think she was tired of hearing airplane talk all afternoon! She also was very encouraged by their stories, but also challenged with the reality of raising a family in another country. Overall it was a very productive afternoon and we felt affirmed that this is what God is calling us to do. We spent the night at the headquarters and got some dinner at the local Subway before crashing for the night. We were exhausted since we had been up since 4 that morning for the early flight out. The next morning we finished up some last minute items we had to get done before leaving and we were driven back to Boise by another sweet lady named Chrissy. She was a former missionary wife in Papua, Indonesia so it was neat to hear of all her stories.

Now the play time of the trip began...

We had planned on spending the day in Boise as a one day getaway for Jennifer and I. Neither of us had been to Boise before so we booked a hotel room in the middle of downtown and explored Boise for a day. We started off by walking to an amazing New York style pizza joint called Guido's. Very cheap and very good pizza! After a great lunch we decided to go see a movie, since it was still raining a little bit. In case you didn't know, Jenn and I haven't seen a movie in a theater in over a year, easily! So we jumped at the opportunity and saw Iron Man 2, which we both liked a lot! We even splurged on popcorn and a Coke! After the movie we noticed the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing so we decided to go on a bike ride! It's pretty neat because our hotel loans out bikes for free to guests, so we jumped all over that! I especially felt cool because the bike I rode looked like something from the 70's and I could tell many people were jealous of my sweet ride! We rode down to what's called the Greenbelt, which is a trail that borders the river near downtown with tons of parks. It was absolutely beautiful! (We took some pictures and had planned to post them on here, but while we were snapping photos we dropped the camera and broke it! Jenn was pretty upset about that since she loves pictures so much, but we will try to post some on here when we can) A cool part of the bike ride for me was being able to ride around the campus of Boise State University! For any football fans out there, Boise State has the blue football field. It looks weird on TV, but pretty cool in person. So of course I had to get some pictures of that! I will post those later as well! After our bike ride - which my butt still hurts from that stupid bike seat - we sat down and had an awesome dinner at our hotel restaurant and then called it a night. The next morning we flew back to Memphis and even got to ride first class on one of our flights, which was pretty sweet!

Overall, we had an amazing time in Idaho, and frankly can't wait to go back! Thanks for everyone's prayers for our trip. After having reflected on everything we learned out there and the people we met, we definitely felt a sense of affirmation from the Lord that this is what He wants us to do. Recently God has been working on my heart once again involving stepping out in faith. I am reading through Genesis right now and just finished the chapter where God calls Abram (Abraham) to go to a land that He has set out for him. Abraham had no clue where he was going...but he went. I'm sure Abraham was nervous, went outside of his comfort zone, and was grieved at having to leave everything he knew behind. But, he still went. Lately, God has been challenging me with this. I want to have faith like Abraham! My flesh cries against everything that God is telling us to do! I don't want to leave family. I like my comfortable house, my job that I'm comfortable with, my church, and the security I feel when I go to bed at night. I'm just being honest here! But...we must go. God may change these plans but for now, we feel that He is telling us to go.

Sorry for the long post again. We will try to post pictures from our trip soon. Please continue to keep us in your prayers and also pray about joining us soon financially. God is using people even now to be senders and goers. Ask God what role you can have in His mission and plan for the nations!

Grace and Peace,

Andrew