Family Update

It has been a while since I shared updates about our family.  So here is the news…

Cherie continues to work as a school nurse and supplement what is lacking in Wycliffe support.  This is her third year in this role, and some days she comes home with stories of cute things that happened that day.  However increasingly, she has felt worn down by this work.  She works in a place where families struggle with low income and she sees the impact of this in the schools.  She oversees two schools, and so she has nursing responsibility for over a thousand kindergarten to sixth-graders.  Even at these young ages, she has to do drug assessments and send children to the hospital with a drug overdose.  Young children are not immune from mental illness and this impacts her work too. So Cherie is often very weary in her work and we are praying about possible change next year.

Bryan, turning 27 in a couple of weeks, continues to enjoy his work for Google.  His work takes him all over the US to work at big events–from conventions or presidential debates, to corporate meetings or outdoor events with thousands of people attending.  He works with a team that is amazingly trained to provide the technology infrastructure, internet, and communications that make these events possible.  He has traveled in his work to Europe, and this past month to Tokyo.  The good news that he really enjoys his work.  The not so good news is the pace has him on the road for the majority of most months; and his work days on these trips can be up to 15 to 18 hours.  So it is good thing that he is young, but we pray for him as he understands that he cannot sustain this pace forever.

Michelle, now 24, has completed two years of teaching in a mission school in Cameroon.  She has lived in cross-cultural settings most of her life and seen the good and the ugly sides where cultures interact and sometimes collide.  Even Christians can face profound and painful struggles in this area.  Michelle in now in France in her first of a two year masters program with a focus on intercultural mediation.  This is an area that could bring its impact to many different settings, but this program has a particular focus on immigration issues–something very relevant in our country and almost any part of the world.  So she is now in her first semester in France, then a semester in Belgium, then a semester in Mexico, and then a final semester either in Mexico or back to France.  Her challenge is that while the program advertised that all courses are in French or English, she recently learned that during her time in Mexico, her graduate level courses will be taught in Spanish.  So she in addition to her studies, she is working to learn a third language over this next year.

Bryan is the second and Cherie is the fourth person in the picture.

A fun fact:

One of Cherie’s “bucket list” activities was to complete a “5K Mud Run.”  So last month, she signed up for a local mud run with a small team from our church.  When Bryan heard that she was doing this, he cashed in some airline miles and came home for the weekend to join Cherie in this adventure.  Now, if you do not know what this strange sounding activity is, it starts with a 5 kilometer run.  Now 5 kilometers is only 3.1 miles.  But this event is 3.1 miles with dozens of “challenges” along the way that include running through muddy marshes, crossing rope bridges, swimming under obstacles, jumping into a cold lake from floating platform high above the water, climbing over walls and lots of other fun.  Cherie and Bryan and their team finished the race and had a ball doing it.