Pair of Ducks

We returned to Davis last night after spending approximately four weeks on the road, most of our time being spent at Mission Training International in Colorado. We are grateful for a challenging and engaging training and God's protection during several snow storms that we forged through during the drive home.

As 40 adults were learning upstairs in the training center, approximately 25 children were receiving similar training downstairs. Although most of our curriculum was different, there were some similarities built into the program. A pair of ducks is something we ALL learned about.

If you say "pair of ducks" fast enough, you'll hear something that sounds a lot more like "paradox." At our training, we learned that many of our experiences can be described by this word. In each "pair of ducks" there is a yay duck and a yuck duck.

In some ways, your heart will be saying "yay!" and it other ways it will be saying "yuck!"—often at the same time.

For example, we just purchased our tickets for the flight over. We leave January 12th. The yay duck in us is thrilled to finally begin this adventure, after much waiting and anticipation. The yay duck is so hopeful in this calling we're received, and we can't wait to see what the Lord will do in and through us. The yay duck says "Let's go!"

The yuck duck in us is experiencing great sorrow just thinking about the loved ones we'll leave behind. The yuck duck want to resist leaving our community in Davis, our careers, and some of our favorite hobbies. The yuck duck says "How can we possibly leave?"

As you can imagine, its a very emotional time for us. This week will bring many goodbyes. Thank you for praying and caring for us in the midst of the yays and the yucks.

Questioning Our Pickers

Most of the time, what seems like a bad idea usually turns out to be a bad idea. It tends to be the same with good ideas. However, there are those rare circumstances when, what seems like a good idea is actually, well, a bad idea. 

One week ago we left Davis and headed to Colorado Springs to attend a 3-week missions training with approximately 40 other missionaries preparing to enter the field (www.mti.org). On our second day of travel—in which we spent most of the ten hours on the road in the beautiful state of Wyoming—we were quickly approaching the Colorado State line and were getting very hungry.

 In search of some good home cookin’, we decided to stop at a local diner instead of hitting up another Subway. We picked the Luxury Diner (the irony will hit you in a moment) in Cheyenne, a restaurant that had more than its fill in character but left us questioning our pickers. 

This fried food frolic left us feeling like we were 8½ months pregnant for the last three hours of the drive. You would think the lesson would be learned, but it turns out we have a history with misjudgment. 

When making the decision to attend this training, we heard awesome reviews from others. We still thought it was a bad idea. How could this be a good idea with a dissertation to write, curriculum projects to finish, and relationships in which we’d like to invest? 

Boy, were we wrong. We do have too much work to do, and we do love our friends and family, but we had no idea how much more we could learn and grow. We are learning a ton about ourselves, each other, and God’s plan for our lives. What seemed to be a terrible idea, turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. 

We’ll still misjudge situations—evidenced by the fact that I (Tommy) took down 20 hot wings the other night and could not sleep a bit. That being said, we are both so thankful that what seemed to be so bad is turning into something that is oh sooo good.