Minneapolis

I invited my mom to come along to the AIM regional picnic this weekend. It was really good that she came. It was kind of a long drive just for a picnic but she got to meet lots of people who have lived and raised their kids and survived in Africa for 2o years or so. There was mixed reception of the UK TIMO team but most people were pretty excited about it. This girl Leah taught in a national school in Uganda last year and was really excited. I told her she could join our team and she laughed...but I was serious, she was pretty cool. We have fancy new postcards from the PR department and the TIMO website just won some sort of award. You really should check it out, it's pretty snazzy. We got new cdroms for videos and stuff which look nice but the videos are still pretty crappy which is sad.

At one point I was arranging another trip to the cities to check out refugee ministry there and I overheard my mom talking to this lady about how she (my mom) feels about me leaving. She said she was glad that it's England and that she thinks it's right for right now but then she started talking about how it's right for our family, and how when one person leaves it's like part of the whole family goes, so she was glad that this fits our family right now. it was really good, she sounded so smart and cute and totally like a mom. i think that's how the church should look, that we should be in community in such a way that we become part of eachother, so that when some of us go, we take the hearts of everyone with us. It makes it seem less daunting to be able to claim that. and it makes everything a bigger decison when it's not just you. I guess that's why it was harder for my family than I thought it should be. I was just thinking that it was me going, but my mom doesn't see me as an individual (which causes some problems) so there was a big committment for her as well. So basically it was really good for me that she went this weekend. I got to see where her heart is at in a new way.