We made it!

Just so everyone knows Cadence officially asked us to become full time staff missionaries today. Thank you for all your prayers.
Wes

From the Mile High City

Wes and I arrived today in Denver, Colorado. We will be living here at the Marriott for the next two weeks. The purpose of this is to attend Cadence Candidacy and new Missionary Training.

You as our family, friends, and partners, have made it possible for us to get to this place. And we would appreciate your prayers over this decisive week. The first of these two weeks will basically be a screening/ job interview as we are assessed to be "Alpha Status" missionaries.
Some of you may be asking, "Aren't you already full time Cadence Missionaries?" Well, no. We are interns and support staff, working full time. This process will hopefully bring us into a long term commitment to do ministry with Cadence. Please pray for wisdom and guidance both for us and for the Headquarters staff during these weeks.

The second week will serve as an official orientation to the mission organization,and we'll get some more training.

As we have shared with you all before (and some of you have shared with us) we feel called to this ministry, we have abilities and gifts that fit hospitality ministry well. We hope to grow through this process, and follow God's plan for our life.

I hope you're all surviving winter, wherever you are. For those of you wondering about my dental work, it all went very well, what a blessing!

In Christ,
Elaine

The Weather it is a-Changin'

Me and Matt Porter the night before he left for his TDY.

My good buddy Matt just left a week ago to head to Guam for a three month Tour of Duty. The night he left we were talking about the weather here and there. It hit us that he would be experiencing a 100 degree temperature change within the next 24 hours. It was -20 degrees here when he left and 80 degrees in Guam.

The reason I tell you this story is also because within the last week we have experienced a 70 degree change in temperature here. It was 50 degrees today. Dan told me it was called a Chinook Wind and it will lasts a few days. It blows in (literally we have had some seriously high winds) and melts most of the snow. It is pretty ugly outside right now.

Anyway, we miss you Matt and look forward to seeing you in a few months.

Wes and Elaine

Losing and Gaining Wisdom

Dear Friends,

Last week we had the great opportunity to take care of Gabe, he is one of our single-Airmen friends who lives in the dorms on base. Wisdom teeth seem to be a big deal, and military dentists either really need the practice or they have some sort of secret goal of attaining the "largest collection of teeth" world record. Because where there are wisdom teeth present, they remove them! (Good for the airmen too, because it comes at no cost, an they won't really miss them anyhow.) So Gabe lived on our couch eating pudding, 'instant breakfast' drinks, codeine, and pureed mashed potatoes for a few days.
Wes often recalls a story from his early days in the AF. He was found to have wisdom teeth and promptly scheduled to have them removed. During a conversation with his sister back home, she asked who would be taking care of him during and following this procedure. With sadness Wes recalls that he did not have anyone to take care of him. Someone from work would take him to and from the appointment, but then he was on his own--alone in a dorm room on pain meds with no one to check of his progress, drugs, or the lumps in his mashed potatoes. This is why we are here, why we live among the airmen and soldiers, why we do more than preach a Sunday sermon or counsel marriages. We are here to meet practical needs, to help people who are far from home, and to love them like Jesus. And we love to do it.

(stretch...take a breather...come back)

The gaining wisdom portion of the story is just as painful as the 'losing wisdom' section. As most of you know wisdom is not available in the $.25 machines at the grocery store. It takes some struggle and hard times. While things overall are going well for us here, the counseling aspect of our ministry is getting quite the work out lately. I'm not sure if this is just something that happens as normal growth after being settled in minstry at a place for 5 or 6 months. Or maybe the pressures of military life are coming to a head for our community. Either way, we are being stretched in our relationships and ministry and it's good. It's hard but it is good.
Please pray that we would leave a good mark on the lives and marriages we affect. Pray that we would gain and give godly wisdom.

Thanks for sharing with us!
God bless,

Elaine

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

(Happy Birthday Jesus! Eric and Dan goofing around at Dairy Queen)

The holidays are over, and everyone is ‘detoxing’ from the plentiful cookies, fudge, fruitcakes, candies and other assorted holiday junk food. You’ve all surely noticed our absence online and some of you may have tried to load our page at the beginning of January and found it absent as well (our domain name expired, but we’re back!). I’m sure that my lack of blogging was partially due to the de-motivating nature of 2+ weeks of temperatures between -10° and -25°, and it’s still going.
I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas as much as we did. It was a very busy time; we had lots of people at the Hospitality House for Christmas Eve, Christmas breakfast, an outdoor game of broomball, and 40 or so for Christmas dinner. It wasn’t exactly “home” and when the day was said and done I missed my family and PA very much. But I think of the fact that there would have been 40 people spending Christmas by themselves in a dorm room or in small families thousands of miles from home it makes it worth it! I hope that our celebration of Jesus’ birth lasts through the year.

Expect another update later this week on what's up in our future! Thanks for hanging in there with us & Happy 2009!

In Christ,
Elaine