Sessions on the definition of the church so we can all be on the same page in church planting. This is New Testament church, not a strict template to follow. The idea is to tell folks about Jesus and let them sort out how to do church.
We are put on teams to worship in small groups to simulate missionary team dynamics as well as house church dynamics.
There are different sessions on parenting "third-culture kids". Some of these deal with transition needs our kids will face.
There are several sessions stressing the need to pray, maintain one's own personal spiritual vitality, and share one's faith personally.
We had 3 days on spiritual warfare-dealing with a whole range of adversity from witch doctors to voodoo to the need to watch out for things which make us vulnerable to the "fiery darts" of Satan. This was led by Dr. Rankin, the recently retired president of the IMB.
We have several sessions on strategies which help bring about church planting movements--a rapid time of growth that really is in the hands of God to give, but there are a lot of things we can do either to hinder or to help.
There are many reminders to connect with your home church and stay connected.
We have sessions on health--taking care of yourself, immunizations provided, and malaria prevention.
Today we had a session on the big picture--global strategy. The goal is to engage all of the roughly 12,000 categorized people groups with the gospel.
There will be sessions on applied cultural anthropology, conflict management, worldview workshops, raising healthy children overseas, photo sessions for passports, visas, and prayer cards, the persecuted church, ESL (English as a second language) certification (Jane Anne), Baptist doctrine, homeschooling, personality differences, language learning, member care (they have psychological help in every region of the world), marriage enrichment, story-telling as a method of teaching the Bible to oral cultures (those that don't have a written language).
We will make a trip to Washington DC to find some people of the culture we are headed for to talk with. We will probably try to find the Burkina Faso embassy and the Ghana embassy. They drop you off at the subway station and the bus back to Richmond leaves promptly at 5 PM!
So I hope that gives you a better idea of what we are doing. It is more practical than what we did in 1989, but there is more information than my 51 year old mind will readily take in sometimes.
It is good, but I will happy to have it in my rear view mirror, too, just to get to work. However, once we get to Africa they are going to ship us all to Zambia for a month of Africa-specific orientation. Then back to Burkina for three to six months of language study (French) before going to Ghana for our Mampruli language in the Fall. By next Christmas I ought to be a thoroughly equipped missionary, a veritable "heaven on wheels!"
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