Looking Forward...

Soon, yes very soon our newsletter will come out. It's been quite a while since we've sent one out and I bet some of you are wondering what we've been up to and what our future plans are! Well we are still prayerfully headed towards joining MAF and becoming missionary aviators.

The past month or so we've been focusing on learning how to be parents to our little girl Jenna. We're now starting to learn how to multi-task while doing that. It's definitely a process and we are thankful for the people at Servant Wings for giving us the heads up to move our tech eval date so we can transition more smoothly. Our MAF tech eval is in April 2011. So it gives us plenty of time to figure out how to multi-task as parents, get more involved at church, and for Eric to continue his flight programs.

In our next newsletter we hope to give you a glimpse of our life right now and show you where we feel called to be in the future. We hope to show you how what Eric hopes to learn as a CFI can be utilized on the field and give you an opportunity to be part of that ministry. We hope to also explain more about Kristine's future varied role as a missionary wife and give you more information on countries that MAF serves in. In order for us to continue on this journey it's definitely important to have support and people that come alongside us to help support the mission. Because without people back home supporting those on the field, the work doesn't happen. Everyone is connected. :)

For now, we just wanted to post a quick update to let you know to really expect the newsletter sometime at the end of this month or in November. If you have any questions for us regarding our lives or our goals as missionary aviators please feel free to e-mail us at ericandkristinereed@gmail.com.

Blessings,

Eric, Kristine and Jenna Reed :)

Welcome Wednesday!

So for those of you who don't know. There are often "events" that blogs have to help gain readership. Today is one of those events, it's called Welcome Wednesday! Today it's being hosted by Take It From Me.

http://takeitfrom-me.blogspot.com/search/label/Welcome%20Wednesday

What you do is you go to their website, add them, add a few other people to your blogroll and then people can come to your website and choose to follow your blog!

We want to welcome those people who are here for the first time via Welcome Wednesday. This blog needs to be updated, but it's primarily focused on our journey to become mission aviators. Right now we are actively working towards becoming missionaries with Mission Aviation Fellowship. Eric is a pilot and I am a teacher. We have a daughter named Jennavieve that was just born this September! We are part of an organization called Servant Wings that helps people that want to become mission aviators by helping them gain the flight hours and experience working on the planes owned by the organization. They've been a great help for us to build the last few hours needed and the people involved have been great at mentoring us.

We encourage you to check out MAF and Servant Wings for more information. If you'd like to ask us any questions, please feel free! We'd love to chat with you. You can find us also on Facebook via "The Reeds Journey to Mission Aviation" page.

Blessings,
Eric, Kristine and Jennavieve Reed.

Licensed!

I forgot to update this, but I (Kristine) finally got my teaching licensed back and I am now up to date on everything and licensed to teach for another three years. I am not sure if I am going to teach in these three years, but I am legal and have the opportunity if we need it. I figure if we needed I could sub once in a while. We'll see! Praise God it all worked out though!

Blessings,
Kristine

Meet baby Jennavieve!

I knew I was forgetting to update this blog! Our little girl arrived on Sept 12 at 7:55am and her name is Jennavieve Elizabeth Reed. We've been busy the past couple of weeks on the learning curve of being parents as you can imagine. If you'd like to read more about daily life in the Reed household, check this blog:

http://littlelifeinmine.blogspot.com/

I (Kristine) mainly write on that blog site. We hope to get back on track starting in October with other commitments. Starting then, we'll go back to doing Bible Study Fellowship once a week, Eric will hopefully start to fly a little more and we'll get more of a routine established. We are thankful to the members of Servant Wings for giving us the heads up about moving our Tech Eval date to a later time. There's no way that Eric would have been able to focus on his studies and show all that he's learned to MAF with our little one still having sleeping issues. :)

I'll try to update this blog more often! Feel free to add us on Networked Blogs if you are on Facebook or add us on Google Friend Connect/Google Reader to keep up to date on the latest in the Reed household. :)

Blessings,

Kristine Reed

Mozambique

So I (Kristine) was changing the channels on the tv the other day and saw this travel show on the public broadcasting network. It was mostly over (which saddened me) and had this man going into villages getting to know the locals and learning about them. I wasn't sure at this where this country was, but I was overhearing them speak a language that I mostly recognized as Spanish with some french sounding words mixed in. I checked the channel guide and it said the man was in Mozambique, so I watched on.

Singing Children
My brain is a little cloudy right now due to being nine months pregnant, but I remember him going into villages and learning about what food they typically eat. I think he mentioned that there weren't many roads here and I saw airplanes taking off and landing in the show. Towards the end, the part I remember the clearest was when he went into a local school. The teacher was teaching in this familiar language and the kids were listening. They sang the tv show guy a song in the language and his guide sang it too. It was very sweet to see those kids singing, made me want to be there! The show soon ended and I decided to check to see what the language was.

Portugese
I checked the language and it was Portugese! My dream language pretty much because I LOVE how it sounds and have always wanted to learn it. I listen to Joao Gilberto's (He's from Brazil) bossa nova music frequently and the language is beautiful even though I don't understand it. When I was at WWU taking a Jazz class a professor who knew this man personally and played with him, translated one of the songs...it really was beautiful. Who knew there was an African country that spoke Portugese? I didn't!

MAF in Mozambique?
I decided to check to see if MAF had an operational base in that country, just to see if they were there. To my surprise, they are in fact in Mozambique! Here's the link: http://www.maf.org/mozambique I looked at it and they've been there for a little while and have a few families stationed there. If you'd like, you can go to their website and check out the families and also see their personal newsletters. I do this all the time to see what's going on in-country that isn't typically mentioned in the overview on the website. Plus it helps me connect with the people in that country more. Turns out they work with many New Tribes Mission missionaries and even Wycliffe missionaries there among the other groups.

Openings in Mozambique?
I decided to take my search a little further to see if Mozambique had any openings. To my surprise, they have a Pilot/IT opening right now. That's exactly what Eric's going for. What a shock really. Was this coincidence that I happened to go to that channel on that day... I think not. I think God was allowing me to see the other opportunities there are for ministry in other countries and encouraging me to encourage us to continue to pray and seek where God would have us in ministry. Being open to an African country was never something I had considered. However the prospect of learning and speaking and teaching in Portugese is very tempting to me. I showed Eric what I had found and he seemed really interested too. Would I survive the climate though? I don't know...but it's something to think about!

Excited for potential ministry with MAF
What's most exciting about this is not learning that Mozambique has Portugese as one of their languages, but it was the spark that ignited in me when I was looking again at the tv show and realizing just how much I'd love living as a missionary in another country. I watched MAF's AOTW Haiti episode and just continued to fall in love with the ministry. It's so easy to become so set in your ways, to think, "Oh, I am going to have a baby soon. We could just live in the US with our house, work our jobs and help at church and not worry about this mission stuff".

Life often times gets in the way of calling. Somehow I don't feel satisfied with the status quo. I don't feel like staying in the US long-term is what Eric and I are called to do. The more I read and watch about MAF the more I can really see Eric and I helping out there and making a difference in the world. Our children will get a rich experience no one can take from them and learn a different set of values than they would if we just lived our mundane lives. I could see the benefits of living a life for Christ that are more rewarding than possessions. In all the trips I've taken, I feel more at home in other countries often times than I do my own. I love learning about other people's ways of life. Eric and I often watch survival shows and travel shows with great intrigue because it fascinates us. We'd love to instill that same fascination and love for other people in our children too.

We'll see what the next year has in store for us. God can change things in an instant. For right now, we are encouraged to keep pressing on towards ministry with MAF until God changes our direction elsewhere.