Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Merry Christmas!

God has been so good to us in the past year and we are excited about what He has in store for us this coming year! Glenn is pointing to where we will live (Hungary) and I am indicating the area we will work (from Hungary to the far eastern side of Russia).


World Map on the wall at Marietta First Baptist Church

Our plane reservations for January 7th were canceled because we had not received our visas to Hungary by December 19th, but they arrived on December 26th, so as soon as the IMB reopens on January 2nd and Jean has time to go through her 200 emails she received over the holidays, she will book us a new flight. We anticipate leaving Atlanta now somewhere between January 15th-20th, but we'll let you know as soon as we know something definite!

In the meantime, we've had a wonderful Christmas with lots of food, good times with family and friends, and a special surprise from our daughter!

Kari called us a couple of days before Christmas on our cell phone while we were at my sister's house and we got to talk to her for a bit, but she promised to call again on Christmas day.


Weak cell phone batteries so Glenn plugs it in to the car to recharge while talking with Kari. Don't want to miss a word!


Santa left one of his reindeer at our house by accident.

The reindeer looks a lot like Chris's dog, Shadow, that we are babysitting, doesn't he?


Christmas breakfast at Glenn's "Momma and Deddy"

After a delicious breakfast, we rushed back to our "old" house that has not yet sold in order to be able to talk to Kari and Chris and their spouses on Skype. Low and behold, while I was talking with Kari via the computer, her face popped onto my screen!!!! She had received from her wonderful husband, Jonathan, a web cam and so I could see her face as she talked with me! What a wonderful surprise! I got to talk to Chris and Kate and see them too! It was wild!


Talking to and seeing Kari at the same time! What a gift!

After talking with Kari, Jonathan, Chris and Kate, we headed over to my sister Elizabeth's mother in law's house, Emogene Bass, to have another Christmas dinner. (We'd eaten there earlier in the week when my older brother and other sister and their families came into town for a day or two.)


Elizabeth and I pose with our antlers.


My brother Jim and his oldest daughter, Dannelly from Chattanooga.


My sister Karin and her family: Eric, Morgan and Corrie

Besides celebrating with Cile's side of the family (Borders' side will celebrate on Dec. 29th), we also visited with some very dear friends of ours, most of whom are members at our church, West Cobb Baptist Church.


Dianne and Al Gay

We've eaten a lot of meals in restaurants (which Cile loves!) as this seems to be the best time to fellowship with friends. We enjoyed breakfast with Buddy and Ashley McLaughlin, lunch with Brant and Peggy Callaway, dinner with Bubba & Tassie Wainwright and Kerry & Bobby Rader and a Christmas party with our Pastor, Ken and Shawna Williams. The rest of this week is full with fellowshipping with more friends before our son returns from France and Glenn's sisters' family arrives for the Borders family Christmas celebration.


Christmas dinner at Emogene's included long-time friends, Jane and Anne Quillen.


Tea and crumpets with Queenie and Becky.

One of the most fun things I have done over the holidays was to attend one of the local Garden Club teas with Glenn's mother "Queenie" and my sister in law, Becky. We donned some hats, wrapped shawls around our shoulders and held our pinkie's out as we sipped a spiced Christmas tea and ate tiny delicacies. It was a lot of fun pretending we were the tea types.


Connie Smith, Becky and Cile enjoy a sip of tea and a taste of scones.

We hope your holidays are as much fun as ours has been! We thank God for His Son, Jesus Christ, who is THE REASON we celebrate Christmas and we want to honor Him with our lives, now and throughout the coming year. I hope you have experienced His Presence over the past few days and will make Him a priority in the months to come. What an awesome God we serve!

We graduated!

We finished our security training, turned in our final written assignments, met with our "coaches" and accountability partners, and had one last party with everyone going to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) before our commissioning ceremony on Wednesday, Dec. 13th.


Kristin reads a little Christmas ditty she penned for our enjoyment.

Our party consisted of a wonderful pizza dinner (away from the cafeteria!) and then back at one of the quads for desserts and a few games. We loved getting to know the others going to CEE with us and look forward to seeing them again in April and June.


Cile works on a puzzle of the Parliment in Budapest.

Kari and Joanthan gave us this wonderful puzzle as our early Christmas present, and we saved putting it together until our Christmas party. The neat thing about this puzzle is that Kari downloaded a picture from the internet while she was in France, and emailed it to the Walmart in Marietta for them to make it into a puzzle for us, and then she picked it up from the Walmart when she was in the U.S. in September! Isn't that cool! Great gift idea! Thanks Kari and Jonathan!

Close-up of Parliment building in Budapest puzzle

After our 7 1/2 weeks at ILC, we loaded our bags, said our good-byes, turned in our keys and went to visit with Kate and Chris in Maryville for two days. We brought them to Marietta with us and then took them to the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport (more commonly known as the Atlanta airport) where they caught a flight to France to visit with Kari and Jonathan for 2 weeks!

While Chris and Kate are in France, we are babysitting their dog, Shadow, and as you can see, he is a very loving Golden Retriever. Shadow misses "his mom and dad" but is having a good time playing with Cile's Dad's dog, Tundra. He also is enjoying walks in the local park and chewing on Tundra's dog bones.

Chris & Kate take a few presents to Kari & Jonathan.

Hurry, hurry, hurry, now let's wait! If you'd like to see pictures of their trip and hear all about it, you can go to their blog's and follow along! Go to www.candkborders.blogspot.com and www.jkmassonfrance.blogspot.com

We got word from the IMB today that our plane tickets to Budapest for January 7th were cancelled because our visas haven't arrived yet. (The IMB has to cancel reservations a certain number of days before the flight to not lose any $ on the tickets, and the IMB won't purchase the tickets until the visas have actually been received.) At this point, we won't be flying out as scheduled on January 7th and we won't have a revised departure date until we actually receive our visas for Hungary. We'll let you know when we know something more. We are excited about getting to Hungary, but every day that passes that we are still here in the U.S. is ONE LESS WINTER DAY!

Only 3 more days!

Our time here is almost over! There will be a commissioning service for everyone on Wednesday afternoon and then a reception. We have made some wonderful friends that will be serving all over the world, and we've enjoyed swapping prayer cards with all of them!


Linn Allee Donaldson

We've had another great week as we met up with several old friends. My best friend from high school and a bridesmaid at our wedding, Linn Allee Donaldson, drove down from the Washington, DC area to spend Saturday afternoon with me. I have not seen her since 1988-89! She looked great and it was sooooo good to get caught up on her news. Linn was always my alter ego; she always did and said things I wish I had nerve to do!


Jerry and Jenny Jones

We ate Sunday lunch with good friends from our seminary days, Jerry and Jenny Jones, that we have not seen since 1984 when we were here at ILC the first time around. Jenny and I used to walk our babies, Kari and her son Logan, around the seminary campus when they were just months old. Jenny's father used to pastor First Baptist Church of Marietta when Glenn was a little boy, so Glenn and Jenny go way back! Jerry was instrumental in our original call to the mission field when he invited us to teach at Ridgecrest Baptist Assembly during Foreign Missions Week back in 1983. It was while we were teaching middle schoolers at Ridgecrest that we heard God's call to serve Him in Ivory Coast.


Marc and Charity Verlander

When our daughter, Kari was here at ILC for training before going as a Journeyman to Senegal, she met Marc and Charity Verlander who were also going out as Journeymen. We met them for the first time when we were in Richmond, VA for our Candidate Conference last May. They came out to ILC this week to take part in the Contingency Training that we had Monday through Wednesday.

Well, only 3 more days here. As we finish our last papers and assignments, we are beginning to breathe a little more freely and actually have some "free" time. Cile likes to spend hers out in the living area, chit chatting with the other ladies.


Finished with his assignments, Glenn picks out a tune

Glenn, however, is an introvert and prefers to practice some tunes on his strumstick. He is doing really well with it, and even led us in music this morning during our small group worship time! He is working hard on learning some Christmas carols so that he can play during our family get-togethers at Christmas. Our daughter, Kari, has also taken up the strumstick (music runs in our family) so you might want to look for Kari and her Dad to put out a music CD in a few years. (Would you be interested in a piece of land in the Okeefenokee for sale?)

We thank you for your prayers during these past 7 weeks here, but please don't stop! Pray that God will take care of our house in Marietta that is still for sale. Pray for our families as we spend our last 2-3 weeks with them. Pray for our visas to Hungary to arrive before January 7th so that we can depart as scheduled. We appreciate your prayers so much!

Christmas is almost here!!!

The Christmas season has arrived and the quads are being decorated. The large tree in the cafeteria is adorned with ornaments and the tables are covered with red and white poinsettia's. Even the weather is feeling more like Christmas!



Glenn enjoys eggnog and Christmas slice 'n bake cookies with little Hudson and his father.



Our cultural worship experience for this week was Asia and the Pacific Rim countries, so the women and men had to enter opposites sides of the room and remain separated, men on one side and women on the other. Shoes had to be taken off before entering, and all women had to have their heads covered. The message was preached in Korean and then translated into English. Very interesting!



Many parts of the world where we send missionaries are third world countries, where the luxury of a toilet with a seat and a lid don't exist. One of our learning experiences here is to learn how to go to the bathroom by squatting, hence, this squatty potty that we are all required to use at least once while here! Hey, this potty is nice! When we were in Africa, there were many times that it would have been nice to have something like this one!


Squatty potty

This upcoming week is a very intense week for all of us as we begin Contingency Training. Our world changed with the attacks of September 11, necessitating three days to teach us what to do in case of a hostage situation or terrorist attack. It is the one aspect of this training that everyone dreads because it, evidently, is very realistic. Anyway, pray that we are able to learn all that we need in order to protect ourselves and others. It would be nice if we never have to use it, wouldn't it?

We have 1 1/2 weeks left to go. It has been a challenging, stretching, inspiring 8 weeks. We are grateful to Southern Baptists who have given their tithes and offerings through their local church to provide the finances for this wonderful training center, and the financial support that will allow us to work in Central and Eastern Europe. Most of all, we are grateful for your prayer support, for we desperately need and depend on it! We are humbled to be called, excited to be going, and ready to be used!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Ahhh! It's been a wonderful week and a great Thanksgiving weekend! The days are flying by and in three weeks we will be heading to Marietta! Many people think that missionaries "sacrifice" so much when they go overseas, but in reality, there are many perks, one of which is


Our first care package!

recieving care packages to encourage us along the way. Our terrific daughter-in-law Kate made us some pumpkin muffins and they arrived two days before Thanksgiving, and in perfect condition! Thanks, Chris and Kate!


Our second care package!

Then we got a package from Adam Doughty's family, full of our favorite candies, a book/music CD and a picture drawn by Adam! We know Adam both from our church and the school where I (Cile) used to work. (By the way, Cile's favorite is black licorice (and M & M's) and Glenn's is peppermint patties, in case anyone is writing a book!) The packages were a nice surprise and thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated!

Thanksgiving Day itself was a great day! During a normal week we start the day with worship in our small group of 7, but on Thanksgiving, all 14 of us going to Central and Eastern Europe met for a time of singing, worship (giving thanks!), sharing meaningful Scriptures and things God is teaching us during our time here. These folks will be part of our "family" overseas and we are growing to love and appreciate them.


Singing praises to our Lord!


Thanksgiving meal!

Then we headed over to our Richmond Associate's house for a delicious lunch of 2 turkeys, 1 huge ham, dressing, gravy, corn casserole, sweet potato casserole, green beans, cranberry sauce, Watergate salad, yeast rolls, and 5 pies! The food was plentiful and a very welcome change from the cafeteria! We spent the afternoon coveting Susie's Polish ceramic dishes (at least, I did!), playing board games, and talking long distance with our families.

OK, so it's not leftover turkey sandwiches, but it was just as good!

The cafeteria was closed on Thursday for supper to allow the kitchen staff to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families, so we had a pot luck meal in our "quad" that evening. Everyone hit Walmart on Wednesday night in order to contribute to the variety! We had pizza, meatballs, chips and cheese dip, candies, sweet breads, nut mix, and lots more!

Friday morning came all too quickly and it was back to classes as usual, but Saturday was a trip to Washington, D.C.! Oh, not for sightseeing! No, it was a working, cultural experience only! It took 5 buses to haul the 192 missionaries and their children to Washington. Everyone was divided into groups of 4-5 people and had certain tasks to do, having to do with our "people group" that we will be working with overseas. (Since our "people group" will be the missionaries, we went with 3 ladies going to Poland.)


Driving past the Washington Monument on the way into town was the closest we got to "sightseeing"!

We had to observe an international family for 15 minutes and record their behaviors that are different from American ways. We had to do something kind or helpful to someone of a different nationality. We had to share our testimony or talk with a foreigner about a relationship with Jesus Christ. We had to go somewhere via the metro system to experience how a large part of the world gets around. We had to locate and visit something that had to do with the culture we were going to be living in, so we went to the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center since Poland is a very Roman Catholic country and proud of the fact that he was Polish.


Weiner Schnitzel, red cabbage, cole slaw and sauteed potatoes!

We also had to eat an ethnic meal, but because we could not find a Polish restaurant, we ate at a German one, and it was delicious! We walked enough across the city during the day to justify the American milkshake we bought as we were loading the buses at 5 pm to return to Richmond. We were exhausted by time we got home, but it had been a fun day!


Chris and Kate at Chili's in Staunton, Virginia

On Sunday afternoon, we drove to 1 1/2 hours to Interstate 81 in the western part of Virginia to meet up with Chris and Kate as they were driving home to Tennessee from visiting Kate's parents in New Jersey for Thanksgiving. They arrived at the restaurant about 2 minutes before us. Perfect timing! We visited with them for about an hour while we ate lunch together, then they had to get back on the road, so we headed back to Richmond.


Chris, Kate, Glenn, Cile and Shadow (the dog)

We enjoyed every minute with them and look forward to seeing them again in 3 weeks! See you soon, Shadow!

Busy, busy week!

It's been a wonderful but very busy week! Monday through Wednesday mornings from 9 am to noon we had lectures on spiritual warfare by the President of the International Mission
Board, Dr. Jerry Rankin. (9 hours, but very interesting!) We also had classes on staying healthy on the mission field, working with churches to keep them informed, and even a visit by Miss Lottie Moon herself!


Map of where our missionaries are going.


Much needed seven minute break!

Since we are in classes from 8 am until 3 pm (with one hour for lunch), we have a 7 minute break in between each class hour. This is a good time for us to stretch our legs, visit with one another, and do something with all that water they want us to drink!


Co-workers in Europe

These are our friends that we sit next to every day for 7 hours of classes! They are either going to central and eastern Europe with us or have been working there but are moving to another region. If you spend as much time together as we do, you grow to love and appreciate each other!


Haircutting class

After buzzing all Glenn's hair off last week, I decided to take one of the extra curricular classes that were offered in hopes of learning a few more tricks of the trade. I asked all the other females that are going to central and eastern Europe to take the class too so that we could cut each other's hair overseas. I keep forgetting that Europe isn't Africa, and that there will be beauty salons in every block, just like there are nail salons in every block here in America!

Small group worship time

The fourteen of us going to central and eastern Europe were divided into two groups of seven, and it is in these small groups that we meet each morning for worship (overseas style!) and discuss/disect/digest "personal growth issues". We've grown to love these folks in our small group and recognize their unique personalities and gifts that they bring. We are looking forward to visiting with them in Europe too!!!!

We've had a blast from the past! Since we arrived, we've run into quite a few folks we've known from our previous overseas experience and it has been so much fun getting caught up on their news. Some are now working for the IMB in Richmond, some have just been reappointed like us, and some are home on stateside assignment (formerly called "furlough").

Kate was one of Kari's roommates in Senegal when they were Journeymen before Kate married Tim and Kari married Jonathan. We first met Kate when we went to visit Kari in Senegal.

Tom and Janet are from our previous home church in Marietta. They have been with the IMB for 25 years!

We knew Eddie and Debbie in France when we were in language school in 1984.

Larry and Trish were also in language school with us in France. They served in Mali.

Jerry and Carol served with us in Ivory Coast. They were the ones that accompanied us to our home up country in Daloa and helped us get acclimated to our new surroundings.

Karen and Al were used by God to confirm our call to the mission field when He was calling us to Ivory Coast in 1984. They were serving in Burkina Faso at the time. We've been spending a lot of time with them here at ILC and are enjoying their friendship tremendously. We've run across one other family we knew in Ivory Coast (Roger and Sarah) but didn't have my camera with me at the time!


Checkin' out the new boots to make sure they're waterproof!

We miss our leaves in Marietta so much that we went and raked someone elses leaves! Friends Karen and Al have a house in the Richmond area that they are trying to sell before they go back overseas. They were having an Open House on Sunday, so on Saturday morning we helped them do some yard work to get ready.

After raking leaves, our group of 14 going to central and eastern Europe assisted a local mission church in going door-to-door to invite families in 2 neighborhoods to attend their church. Either no one is home on Saturdays or they were all watching college football games, because we did not have very many families come to the door! After going door-to-door, our group decided to skip dinner in the cafeteria at ILC and went out for dinner! After dinner, everyone came back to our "quad" for apple pie and ice cream and some good ol' fellowship!



Apple pie and ice cream!

We are now half way through our time here. We have learned so much and can hardly process it all! We ask you to pray that we will use our time wisely and make the most of the remaining weeks that we have. Pray for those of us who have houses to sell, family members who are ill, visas to come soon, and the 1001 things that still need to be done before leaving the U.S.!