So as you may know…my Hubs and I went to Mexico. I’ve talked about it in passing a bit and you’ve seen how I’ve been wanting to update you on it but still haven’t. I apologize for that profusely…but life is crazy as you well know!

So Mexico.

My Hubs and I have volunteered with this organization for several years. It’s called Mission to the World. They are the big picture and we worked with the little picture which is GYFM (Global Youth and Family). MTW is a mission agency. Naphtali’s parents are missionaries in South America with MTW and have been for over 25 years. His grandparents also were missionaries with MTW for over 35 years. So there is a lot of Marshall history there. MTW has a ministry for it’s missionaries that is done every 4 years. Basically they get the missionaries in a specific area together for a chance to reunite, reconnect and refresh. So this year was the Latin American retreat which actually includes missionaries located in the USA, Central America and South America. Naphtali was part of the Europe, Africa, Enterprise one last year and the year before that we both participated in our first retreat as leaders which was for the Asia Pacific region.

GYFM, the branch of MTW is focused on the youth. So where MTW focuses on the adults, GYFM focuses on the students. We go to work with kids who are growing up in a unique situation. The general term for these youth is Third Culture Kid, or TCK. This isn’t just kids that have parents working with MTW, but any person who has grown up in a culture not of their own. It doesn’t have to be their whole lives, but rather enough to create a sense of identity. Just enough to make them feel like they don’t really fit anywhere.

For this retreat there were 28 leaders, and over 80 youth.

(Here are a couple of our very mature and fearless leaders)

We spent the morning with music, games, and a talk. We had free time for a couple hours in the afternoon and then did it all again in the evening. We offered seminars for the kids and then hung out with them when we could. During the free times Hubs organized soccer for the kids and I hung out with the girls at the pool. This year, as it was for the missionaries in Latin America, Hubs family went and I got a chance to hang out with them a bit. It was such a blessing because we don’t get to see them very often and live off the idea that we never know when the next time will be that we can see our families.

Most of the leaders on this trip I had met before and had valued relationships with. This retreat facilitated getting to know them and more people so much better. This in itself is a whole other blog and I don’t want to bore you. These last few posts have been rather wordy.

So I’ll sign off for now from this factual and rather sporadic post, but I’ll be bringing you Leadership Team AKA BFF’s…Part 2 very soon.

(Some delicious food we had at a Japanese restaurant located where we stayed)

Lovies