Hello Family and Friends,

We trust that you've all had a great January! Our first month of 2014 has been quite an adventure!

We traveled quite a bit this month, from Vancouver, to San Antonio (where Jay's folks live), to Colorado Springs (where our eMi training was), then back to San Antonio to pick up the kids and spend time with The Whisnands before we head out, and finally, back home to Vancouver.

Our time with Jay's family was wonderful! We all had a fabulous time at their new condo: the kids loved the big pool, fish tanks, and being with their Pops and Didi (their names for Jay's parents). During our visit, we were also blessed to be able to spend time with Jay's brother, Wade, and his wife and daughter (Tara and Ruthie) as well as Jay's Aunt Dee. We were so grateful for the time we were able to spend together before heading out in March. It was very very hard to say good-bye.

Our week in Colorado for eMi training was very productive. We were two of twenty or so other volunteers and interns (*see picture) preparing to begin service with eMi all over the world (the US, Canada, the UK, Uganda, India, and another location that we're not allowed to write about for security reasons). Our training mostly focused on culture training and figuring out how God has designed us and equipped us to do His work.

One thing that surprised me (Becky), very pleasantly, was that ALL of the speakers and teachers were much more engaging and dynamic than I had expected. Quite frankly, I had anticipated a very long week full of dry talks from a bunch of analytical engineers. Instead, we had very thoughtful and experienced teachers who shared with us and taught us and helped us to understand ourselves better. What a good lesson for me, again, on not making quick judgements!

At training, we got to enjoy 2 things that we haven't been able to do for a long time:
1) Sleep through the night every night for a week
2) Play all sorts of games with our friends at the retreat center (it was SOOO good, we even got to teach our new friends how to play a game we learned in China, called Yak Brain!)

From my perspective (Becky's), the best thing about our time at training was the REST . Even though our days were full (most days went from 8 AM to 9 PM), I got to experience rest. Rest from cooking and cleaning. Rest from meal planning and driving around. Scheduled rest for processing. Scheduled rest for spending time with God. Sweet, beautiful, REST. It was so great to have that time of rest, particularly when I realize how completely insane the next 5 weeks or so will be!

And why will the next 5 weeks be so crazy? Well, it's because we've bought our plane tickets and we're officially heading out! WOW! Thanks so much to all of you for your financial support and your prayers that have allowed us to serve the Kingdom!

We leave on March 11th and we'll be flying from Vancouver to London, England, and from London, to Entebbe, Uganda (our destination airport). I'm pretty excited because our lay-over in London is for almost a whole day and so hopefully, we'll get to see Buckingham Palace (and when I say "see" I mean walk by and take a picture.) The story of our plane tickets is pretty incredible: we "randomly" found a travel agent on-line who got us missionary fares, which means they were much cheaper than any other tickets we were looking at AND we each get 3 free checked bags! That's 12 bags!!! Such a blessing!

Right now, we're sorting through our house and getting ready to have a big yard sale (in our basement...we have too many things to move outside...) in a couple of weeks (February 22nd). It's a big project, but we're making head way.

The last thing to update everyone on is the status of our support raising. If you don't remember our present goal is to raise $14,000 for start-up costs and $4,500 per month. To date, we have 93% of these costs committed. Which is awesome! So we have 7% left to raise which in dollars is approximately $400 per month. If anyone is planning on joining our financial team or knows someone who might want to help, please feel free to visit the EMI website at emiusa.org. Any questions, let us know.

There are so many things that we need prayer for, but we'll keep the list short :)

1) for emotional, spiritual, and physical energy and strength to get ready to leave
2) that we would continue to pursue Jesus and our relationship with Him 
3) that our yard sale would go well and that most of our things would go
4) for Jay to finish well at work and for our move to be a testimony to his co-workers
5) for our families as we go
6) for our remaining financial support

Again, we are so grateful for all of you and being on our team!

Love,

The Whisnands