Five Weeks in Colorado

From September 14th to October 16th I was in Monument, Colorado at Mission Training International. For the first three weeks I was with 41 other missionaries from 19 different agencies, going to 21 different countries. SPLICE (spiritual, personal, lifestyles, interpersonal, cultural, endurance/enjoyment) is a program that gives new missionaries information and skills needed for working in a new culture. We learned about the "twangs" of expectations, conflict styles, coping with stress, and many other issues. Here is a picture of some of the participants crossing the "transition" bridge. That represents the "settledness" of one's own culture transitioning to the chaos of entering another culture and then transitioning again into a "settledness" in the new culture.

On the weekends we were able to go to the Garden of the Gods and to Pike's Peak. It was great to have Matt and Gayle Denham there. We were able to get to know each other and to discuss some of the details of teaching English in Rwanda.







During the last two weeks we went through the PILAT (program in language acquisition techniques) training. We learned great methods for learning and/or teaching language and we learned to hear and make sounds that our outside of the regular 44 heard in English. What I learned in PILAT will be helpful both as I teach English and as I learn Kinyarwanda.