"THE MEETING"

Anna and I wanted to thank everyone who prayed for us yesterday as we met with reps from the C&MA. There were four people who interviewed us and the interview was scheduled to go for 1.5 to 2 hours. I thought "what can we talk about for two hours?!" Well it went to almost 4pm. That is 3 hours if you were scoring at home, and at time was even emotional for everyone there (again, who would of thunk it?) The dynamics in the room were pretty cool, and overall very supportive. I was encouraged both by one member of the committee who was almost cheering us on, but was also relieved by another member who was relatively dogged about getting us to talk through some theological issues. The encouragement from the former was obvious but the the latter was encouraging to me because it reassured me that the C&MA as an organization is dedicated to having strong Christians in its ranks as missionaries.

The bottom line is that they were recommending confirmation to the C&MA for us. There were some details of Alliance distinctives that we were a little hazy on. I will have to talk to Pastor John (our Baltimore pastor at the C&MA church) about slacking on a couple of issues in his preaching topics.....of course it could be I might have dozed off a couple of times:)

From here we wait to here from Phil Skellie who is the director of IFAP to go from here. Further issues to be addressed are:
1) how much money will we need for support?
2)Where can we do language study? (we have a good idea on this one)
3)How is the relationship between C&MA and GO mission will be worked out?


Anna and I are very anxious to be going and doing so continue praying for us.

In other news, we will probably travel to Missoula next weekend since a missionary couple that we were with in Gabon will be speaking. They have served for a couple of decades in Gabon, he is a surgeon and she is a nurse (David and Becky Thompson).