We're taking off again!

We are nearly complete with our initial training here at Mission Aviation Fellowship. It's been a wonderful time getting to know the MAF staff and other new pre-fielders. Here's a picture of our pre-field class:

In this photo are families that are going all around the world to Lesotho, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia and Nampa, Idaho. We all got along really well despite having long school work hours and other family pressures. Often you could find us eating at each other's apartments, encouraging each other and talking outside until the late hours after the kids have gone to sleep. It's really been a blessing getting to know each couple, we are sad to leave such a wonderful community but excited for our next adventure!

What is this next adventure? We're officially "on the road" to visit friends, family and churches to see what's happening in their lives, share what's happening in our lives and share the opportunities to be involved in ministry with MAF. We are excited for the opportunity to see everyone again and really look forward to spending this year in great fellowship with them too!

We'll try to keep this blog updated at least every other week to keep you up to date on what's happening in our lives and where we are in the process. First we're heading back to Oregon to our home.

If you have any questions about what's going on in our lives or are interested in partnering with MAF in ministry, please feel free to ask! You can e-mail us at: ereed@maf.org (Eric) or kreed@ maf.org (Kristine). If you have any prayer requests please feel free to ask us too and we'll pray for you!

Blessings,

The Reeds

A Little Update

Halo. Selamat Datang! (Hello. Welcome!)

We are excited to be going to Indonesia! Above is a hint of the language we'll be learning in about a year or so. We praise God that He's allowed us to come this far in the process. Just in case many of you were wondering, we're officially on staff with Mission Aviation Fellowship! We have our name tags and everything. It feels so different to walk the halls and realize that we now belong here. This is our new job and our new wonderful extended family.

Jennavieve is loving hanging out with her sitters and playing with all the other children near our apartments. It's fun to see her really try to follow different kids but it makes us cringe when she crawls across concrete and lava rock (they use rock in the plant beds here) to follow them! This girl has no fear and a pretty high pain tolerance. She doesn't let anything stop her. Once she starts to walk we'll really have to watch out, but at least she won't continue to scrape up her little legs as much!

We will be celebrating five years of marriage together tomorrow! It's a huge blessing that we got a sitter for a couple of hours and we're celebrating it now as MAF staff members. It's been a long road and we're not in Indonesia yet, but we're definitely closer. God has been faithful through so much. We look forward to what He brings next.

Blessings,

The Reeds

PS: We'll add pictures later!

We'll be serving in.....Indonesia! :)

It's been amazing how God is teaching us and stretching us during our time here at MAF headquarters in Nampa, Idaho. We've been learning more and more about MAF and the more we learn honestly the more we have a peace from God about going with this organization. In fact, they are starting to become like family to us. Especially the other candidates that are in our class and are living among us in the apartments located across from headquarters. It's been great to see them playing about and to see Jenna enjoying being with them. It does definitely give us strong hope for the future program/country we'll be in. What country is that?

Well many of you are connected with us via facebook and found out but for those that aren't connected via facebook personally or aren't a member of our "Reeds Journey to Mission Aviation" page, MAF is sending us to Indonesia! We'll find out where specifically in Indonesia the closer we get to going there. Many of you have asked questions (which we love!) as to when we're going to be leaving. Well to calm your hearts it's not immediately! After we complete our training in a couple of weeks we'll be going out and visiting with churches and people about what MAF is doing in Indonesia and how they can be a vital part of the ministry. We'll also finally have a little time to really visit and talk with a lot of you then to hear about what's happening in your lives as well! We'll have more details about that at a later date, but the goal is to raise 100 percent of support by this time next year. Then we'd head off to language school on the island of Java. :)

We are very excited about this assignment and about Indonesia! We'll give you more updates as we go through this process here. If any of you have any questions about this process please feel free to ask and we'll answer how we can.

Blessings,

The Reeds

Tomorrow is the day!!!

Tomorrow we'll meet with the committee and find out what country we've been placed in. We're pretty excited about it even though we act low-key when we're out and about. We know that God will equip us to serve wherever He's called us. :) So look this week for a post update, we look forward to sharing it with you when we can.

We had a good weekend. It was pretty laid back which was a little different for us. We aren't used to having so much free time! When we were in Oregon we were busy every second we could getting the house ready for the house sitter and remodeling the house in general. We went to a farmer's market in Eagle, ID, a park in Nampa and on Sunday the kids played in the sprinklers.

We've been getting to know the other candidates/short term staff too on our time off. It's been fun to hang out on the lawn with them talking. It's always new and interesting when you are thrust into a class with people you've barely met. Guess it's good prep for when we go to our location and bond with the staff there. Some relationships take more effort, some come more easily. We're learning a lot through our new friendships here. Amazing how God always has something to teach us. :)

We look forward to updating you this week on how things are going. As always, please feel free to ask questions and we'll answer them when we can!

Blessings,

The Reeds

Meetings

So we met with the committee today... and no we didn't find out where we're going just yet. We basically were: just meeting with them to tie up loose ends, sharing our hearts and thoughts on the type of place we'd like to serve and listening to their ideas about where there might be openings for us. We felt like we got to convey everything we were hoping to convey to them and we think the meeting went fairly well. We are very blessed to have such a great group of people making the very hard decision about where we would best fit within Mission Aviation Fellowship. We won't tell you the places we talked about but we can tell you that we'll find out on Tuesday of next week where they think we should be placed. We are very excited to see where God would send us.

In the meantime we've been going to different classes to learn more about Mission Aviation Fellowship and how to prepare for foreign missions. Today we had a great class dealing with issues related to cross-cultural living. The man teaching it was from Indonesia and the class was both informative and entertaining at the same time. We feel very privileged that he would take time out to come to MAF twice a year to teach the class.

We also have been getting to know the short term staff and other candidacy class members during our time thus far. It's been fun to stand outside and visit with them about life and also about where they think God will lead them. Jenna's loved getting to know the other kids and playing with the cars. She loves the grass and loves the lava rock in the flower beds even more! We have to constantly keep on her to stop her from eating it!

We will try to keep you informed as we go. If you have any questions about this process please feel free to ask us and we'll let you know!