We received an exciting phone call on August 16 from our IMB candidate consultant. "Congratulations, the trustees voted to approve you as candidates for the IMB". We celebrated and breathed a sign of relief. (After all...imagine if we weren't approved after selling our house and moving to Georgia)
Even though it's official, it's not really official. At least that is what the emails communicated to us after we received our phone call. We still have one more additional milestone to complete. In September we will be going to Richmond for an "Appointment Service".
The Appointment Service is a service where all the current IMB candidates are officially approved by the trustees before being sent onto training. Once the Appointment Service is complete, we'll have less than 30 days until the start of our training/orientation in Virginia.
The Sending Celebration/Appointment Service will officially be held at 7:00pm on Wednesday, September 28 at Beaverdam Baptist Church in Virginia. We're grateful that some friends plan to attend, but you can also watch it live online. We'll try to send out some more information about live stream.
Life In Georgia
In the meantime, we're still enjoying living in Georgia and being close to family while we wait for the Sending Celebration. Just last weekend we enjoyed floating down a river in Helen, Georgia. This upcoming weekend, Jared will be visiting his family in Tennessee while Amy enjoys a much deserved vacation with her sister and mother.
Please pray that we enjoy these last few months at home with family before we move overseas. These are sweet times with grandparents and cousins. Living in Florida made it hard to see family as often as we wanted. So it's been a real blessing to have this opportunity.
Jared has continued working for Pro-Tech Air Conditioning & Plumbing Service remotely. They were gracious enough to allow him to continue serving up until we start with the IMB. Pray for Pro-Tech as they seek a marketing manager to continue the work that Jared started.
Amy has started homeschooling the kids for their first 8 weeks of 5th Grade, 3rd Grade and Kindergarten. It's been a great start to the year. The kids will be in three different school settings this year. Pray for them as they transition from homeschool here in Georgia, to private school in October in Virginia, to Bilingual school in January in Mexico.
We've also found a good church to attend while we're in Georgia called Grace Community Church. Pastor Ray and Pastor Kevin have welcomed us into the church and even gave us an opportunity to talk to the church about what we're doing with the IMB. The members are all very friendly and there are lots of young families in the church.
Please pray that we stay healthy for the Sending Celebration. We have a few things to do in preparation for the event, but we're almost finished. If you are on our email list, we'll do our best to send out instructions to watch the Sending Celebration online (as long as we get instructions in time).
Sincerely,
Jared and Amy Mitcham
PS - Below are some pics from our time with family.