up 'til now

wow, so many cool and amazing things to say.

Lisa Hora

A group of people climbed to the top of Lisa Hora (the tallest Mountain in Czech). The weather started out nice and sunny on the way up... in fact, it was a little too humid for my liking(think rainforest, no joke). However, that was about to change

it was slightly discouraging to be climbing amist the fog, MAJOR FOG..., like if someone was 5 ft ahead you couldn't see them fog, like tall thin trees on a hillside and fog (really Lord of the Rings-ish, in fact they did film too much of it here)... so many details, most of you have already realized that this was Mary taking over while Lindy was gone... Here she is again :)

*ahem*

...like I was saying... MAJOR FOG.

The fog ruined the view but it was really cool to climb through clouds and to reach the top... my legs are still screaming "WHY ME!?!" but it was worth it.

We lost 2 girls on the hike and on the way down it rained.. not only did it rain- it POURED! Not only did it POUR there was THUNDER AND LIGHTNING!!! AND we got to be surrounded by it!!!!!! yeah... you guys don't fully understand the greatness of this moment.. We even got some of it on tape.. (By the way the girls were found)

it's really a shame that we can't recreate some of those deep conversations and the company. We really should have tried to record the convo between mary and I trying to find some really "spiritual significance" in our hike...There's a lot of analogies about not being able to see ahead or behind... we're good :)

Debrief of the rest of training: Here's Mary...

We were so blessed to learn under Dave Patty the president of this organization. We went through the entire book of Ephesians last week. A couple of "gold nuggets" we pulled out from that are:

The last session we talked about the armor of God. We were really enlightened about the specific ways that each attack can be responded to. I was really encouraged by this practical knowledge and also by the reminder that we have absolutely no reason to fear in a Spiritual Battle because we have Christ on our side.

We also were encouraged to submit to other team mate's strengths and cover their weaknesses. I also was reminded that there is no reason to feel threatened by others strengths because as a part of one body, they are mine too...


Also, we have been challenged to live in light of who we are in Christ (blessed, chosen, holy, blameless, redeemed, forgiven, predestined for a purpose, adopted, included in Christ, God's posession!!)See Eph 1. We were struck with how often we are not living according of who we are in Christ, how often we don't believe that we really already am all these things because of what Christ did. Often I think we search for grace and try to earn it back when we have had it all along. It's really hard to find what you already have. God's shown us a lot in this area...

We also talked about personality types and I found out although I wasn't too surprised that I am more like a:

"Beaver" organized, detailed, self disciplined, systematic, creative, loyal/faithful and that Lindy is mostly an:

"Otter/Seal" fun-loving, outgoing, talkative, enthusiastic, loves people, I think I have some of this too.

We also learned about conflict styles

Mary is more of a Lion, goal-oriented and aggressive. while Lindy is more of a passive aggressive Beaver. This could potentially be a very hard obstacle to overcome.

I (mary) am having a bit of an identity crisis with this because my form of conflict is effective in that it gets the job done but very intimidating and can cause people to withdraw. Basically I feel confident in this style but it is not always good for my teammates...I'm feeling sort fo discouraged because I can't find too many positives for this... This is an area that I know will be stretched and challenged this summer. Please pray for us.

Update about our schedule etc:

First off, all of this could change at a minutes notice if needs change but here you go anyway.

Lindy and I will be doing 2 camps... not 8, sorry for the confusion, we can't do all the camps happening in SLO this summer because a lot of them are happening simulataneously.

Unless something changes, we will not be at the GSCC camp. We will be working at a smaller camp in the 4th largest city in SLO Celje (tSell yay). This is sort of a pioneering thing and we are excited for it. As for our second camp, it looks like we will be in a village that has never put on a camp before, but we're not sure. Later, we also might help out with a camp in Croatia, again, not sure.

We are excited that a lot of our next few weeks will involve experiencing "real" day in-day out missionary life. We will learn how to navigate the city, attend language classes (a few), work on logistics for camp (lots of buying and organizing) we will even learn to drive here...just kidding, that'll have to wait till we're somewhere for longer, plus Mary is way too timid of a driver for intense Euro traffic :)

Pray for us as we ask God if this is something He would have us do in the future (live here as a missionary for a year or more).

Well that gets you up to date, if you made it all the way through this post congrats it was a bit of a marathon.

We are so blessed to have a great support base.

Mary and Lindy for the marylindy team

PS We're living in the future...literally
PS. Contrary to popular to believe based on our last email- mary and I DO NOT hate each other... we just want to be extra sensitive to the fact that at times our friendship WILL be attacked this summer. Sorry for confusion :-D