CIU

This past Tuesday Isaac and I visited Columbia International University, better known as CIU. CIU is located in Columbia, South Carolina (the capital city) about 1 1/2 hr south of Charlotte, NC. We visited with an admission rep, financial aid, housing, career services, went to chapel, had lunch with a TEFL professor, received a tour of the campus, sat in on a class taught by the president of the college, and hung out with some CIU staff/students for a few hours. It was such a God filled day. Words cannot explain how we felt during our visit. Over the next few days Isaac and I are going to start putting our applications into CIU. Please pray for us while we make quite a big decision to quit our jobs in NY and move to SC this August. Sometimes I think that we must be crazy to change our lives around so much, but then I realize the only CRAZY thing to do would be to not follow God's will in our life. Here are some not so great photos of our visit

A pond on campus with a little walking trail.




Prayer towers that lead down to the pond. There are 4 little prayer rooms in the towers that allow you to be with the Lord in a beautiful and quiet setting.


I felt embarresed taking a photo during class so this one is not very good. But Isaac and I sat in on a class taught by Dr Jones, the president of CIU. It was on personal evangelism. What a powerful message we received during the short 2 hours we sat in on class.


There is schoolwide chapel every Tuesday and Thursday from 10:50-11:40am. CIU consists of 600 undergrad, 100 grad, and 350 seminary students. So you can imagine the powerful presence God has during chapel. The worship was amazing and the message of "what is Truth?" touched both our hearts.


It was a gorgous 55* day in Feb. The grass might be yellow, but atleast there isn't 4 feet of snow on the ground!

And we begin

UPDATE:
flights are purchased! What a huge/scary step. They cost a total of $1456 for both of us. That is $544 less than we had budgeted. Praise the Lord.
Here is our itinerary:
April 9th: Drive in the morning to JFK
3:25pm JFK ----> 4:35pm BOS
6:20pm BOS----> 7:20am MAD (on 4/10)

April 18th
8:10am MAD ----> 9:20am Barcelona
10:55am BCN----> 1:45pm JFK
Drive in the evening back to Oswego


Hola!
As many of you have found out we are leaving for our missions trip on Thursday April 9th and will be returning on Saturday April 18th. We will be arriving in Madrid and taking the 5 hr bus ride down to Granada, Spain. We will be staying with Joel & Nancy Martinez. During our days in Granada we will be documenting the missionaries and their ministries. We hope to be involved in some small groups and/or bible studies. Isaac and I know a little Spanish, so It'll be challenging trying to share our testimonies in another language, but we have faith God will provide us with divine translation.
We will be using this blog to document each day with words and photographs. We will even bring our computer with SKYPE on it, so if you want to talk to us while we are in Spain we would be happy to video conference with you. (Kind of like our team did while we were in the Dominican Republic this Past October.
Towards the end of the week (probably Thursday) Isaac and I will venture back to Madrid via bus to visit with the C&MA missionaries living in and around Madrid. While there we will be meeting with the missionaries and seeing what their lives are like. We probably will not have to much time to get into projects while in Madrid, but my hope is that during our short visit to Madrid God will put the people in our paths that we need to meet. Thank you for your prayers and support as we venture towards the path God has made for us.
Hasta luego amigos!