Happy New Year's Eve!

Happy New Year's Eve!! It seems like just yesterday we were planning for Y2K and now we're just a few hours away from 2010!
Things will definitely look different for us in the new year. While we are excited about what lies ahead, we know that there will be many changes this year that will be difficult for us. We will be selling our house (hopefully!); I will be finishing up the school year and saying farewell to co-workers who have become friends; and of course, we will be saying good-bye to family and friends whom we love very much.
I am happy to say that, currently, we have raised 50% of the support that we will need to head to the mission field!! In fact all of our team members are at 50% and above. We are all still on track to leave for Costa Rica in mid-August.
It has been a pleasure to visit with many of you during the last month. It's been fun to share with you about where we are headed and we have enjoyed catching up with what is going on in your lives.

Have fun tonight and remember to eat your black-eyed peas tomorrow!!

A Christmas Letter

December 22, 2009

“When they saw the star, they were overjoyed . . . they bowed down and worshiped him . . . then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh.” --- Matthew 2:10-11

Merry Christmas! We hope things are going well with you and your family. Despite the busyness and uncertainty of life, we trust you will be able to take time to rest in and reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. This past weekend we had the opportunity to attend a Christmas concert in a candle lit chapel in the tiny “town” of Hamilton in west Georgia. Oil lanterns and candles provided light and an old wood stove offered heat. It was a beautiful setting to ponder the wonder of the season.
Well, this year has brought much clarity to the new direction in our lives. As most of you know, we are part of a Medical Campus Outreach team (in conjunction with Mission to the World) that is planning to locate on an international university campus as career medical missionaries. In April of this year, our team committed to a location – Cusco, Peru. Peru is located on the Pacific coast of South America, just below Ecuador and above Chile. We attended one final week of training with MTW in June and began raising support in July. Our lives now seem to be moving at warp speed and we are holding on!
Joanne is completing her final year as a public school teacher and Ike is going back to school as a student. Joanne has found her last year of school to be rather challenging, while Ike is enjoying attending class with dental students and brushing up on his general dental skills. His last day of work as an orthodontist in private practice was December 3rd. He is now officially retired! Joanne still has 90 days to go!
In the midst of work and school, we are planning, purging, and packing! Our house will go on the market toward the end of January and we are working to get it ready. We haven’t had to do much to the house; instead, we have been busy going through all the things that are in the house. Of course, it hasn’t helped that we got a little sidetracked with gathering things that we will need in Cusco. If you walk through our house, you might see bags of clothing headed to the Salvation Army in one room and numerous down comforters, warm bedding supplies, and water-repellent clothing in another room.
We have purchased the Rosetta Stone computer-based language program to begin learning Spanish. We hope to begin studying with it by the beginning of February. (At the moment, cleaning out the house has top priority.) Studying with Rosetta Stone with actually be a warm-up for us because our first stop, before heading to Cusco, will be to a missionary language school in San Jose, Costa Rica. Currently, our departure date for The Spanish Language Institute in San Jose is mid-August 2010. Joanne created a blog to provide updates about our journey. At this point in time, she’s only updating about once a month. As we get closer to August, she’ll update more frequently. Here is the address if you want to check it out: http://ikeandjoanneholton.blogspot.com/

Wishing you a blessed Christmas!
Joanne and Ike

A Time for Thanks

"We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for You," - Colossians 1:3. As Thanksgiving approaches, we want to say how very thankful we are for each of you. We are grateful for you and for your presence in our lives.
This year we will be spending Thanksgiving with both of our families. Wednesday and Thursday will find us in Augusta and Stellaville with Joanne's family. On Friday morning we will head to Charleston and spend Friday and Saturday with Ike's family. We hope to spend time with both of our families in December also. Because we are planning to put our house up for sale in January, we will do some things differently. Since Joanne is still teaching, we are going to take full advantage of her two-week break from school during the Christmas holidays by cleaning out and giving away. Sadly, we are not going to put up our Christmas tree this year. Instead, we will go through our Christmas decorations and pack up what we will keep and give away the rest. This is actually Joanne's idea, not Ike's, as she is beginning to feel the time crunch and the seemingly massive amount of things to do.
Our preparations continue toward our departure date of mid-August 2010 for Language School - The Spanish Language Institute in San Jose, Costa Rica. We have discovered that we will need to take very little with us to Costa Rica. In fact, the less we take - the better! Anything that we bring out with us when we leave Costa Rica will be taxed. The Spanish Language Institute has a "Big Brother" program that is available to help us find a place to live and locate necessary items household items that we will need. In fact, the school has a big sale after each trimester for students who are leaving. We will let our "Big Brother" know the type items we need and he will shop for us at the sale.
We also are continuing our support raising. Currently we are at about 35% of the amount that we must raise.
We hope that you enjoy this season of Thanksgiving with friends and family!

Fall is in the Air . . . and so is the swine flu!

Things have been moving fast and furious for us - until this past weekend anyway. That's when the flu hit. I got the official diagnosis yesterday - it is indeed the swine flu. They put Ike on medication as well as me, so hopefully, he won't come down with it. I'm feeling better at the moment - I hope that's a good sign! After school yesterday, I talked with my sub. She told me that six of my students were absent. Hmmm . . . I wonder where I could have picked up this flu bug?
As I mentioned, for the past couple of months our schedule has been packed full with school, church, support raising, and time with friends and family. I think my body needed this mandatory rest that it is having to take!
At school I have been up to my eyeballs with work. Ike is enjoying the dental classes he is auditing - he is in class about 4 mornings a week. We have tried to schedule most of our support raising meetings on weekday evenings or on Sunday afternoons - and no more than one or two a week. Currently we have about 30% of our support pledged.
We've enjoyed special visits with our families lately. The end of September, we went to Charleston for the wedding of Ike's nephew David. This coming weekend we will attend a wedding shower and bar-be-cue luncheon for Joanne's cousin's daughter, Allison. (At least I'm still hoping to go. We'll have to wait and see what my contagious status is.)
We are continuing to plan toward departing for language school in San Jose, Costa Rico in mid-August 2010. It looks like we will put our house on the market in January. We have already begun cleaning out a drawer here and a closet there to prepare for this. Of course, we have much more to do in this department!!

Back to School!

It's hard to believe that school is back in session! I have already had my little 1st graders in class for a whole week! This year, however, I'm not the only one at our house who will be in the classroom. Ike begins auditing some classes at MCG's Dental School on Friday. He'll continue attending classes and labs on various days until May. His purpose in doing this is to refresh and make sure he is current on dental skills and philosophy. He's actually looking forward to going back to school!

Next year at this time we will be packing up to head to language school in Costa Rico. We will be attending The Spanish Language Institute in San Jose, Costa Rico. Orientation begins the last week of August, so our plan is to leave for San Jose by mid-August.

Some tidbits about San Jose:

The Spanish Language Institute is located in San Francisco de Dos Rios, a middle class residential area on the southeast edge of the capital city of San José, with churches, restaurants, pharmacies, grocery stores, and a post office within walking distance.

From the Language Institute, you can easily reach downtown San José in 20 minutes by bus or 10 minutes by taxi. San Jose is perched 3,500 feet above sea level in Costa Rica's broad, mountain-ringed Central Valley and enjoys a year round average temperature of 74 degrees Fahrenheit. The coolest months are January and February, while April, at the tail end of the dry season, is the warmest. Temperatures are quite moderate in the rainy season, which stretches from May to December, and showers generally occur in the afternoon.

Welcome to Happenings with the Holtons!

Hi everyone! Well, I'm venturing out into the cyberspace world of blogs! You'll figure out pretty quickly that I'm learning as I go and you'll also note that my initial post was in May. It's taken me awhile to get things figured out and put together. The slide show that I wanted to add is still not on here, but one day (I'm not saying when!) I'm hoping it will be.
I decided to blog because I thought it would be a fun way keep y'all informed, as well as being a good way to show you lots of pictures. Since my initial posting date was in May and it is now the end of July, you probably realize that I'll not be posting new updates on a daily basis. In fact, my plan is to add new posts about once a month. When I add significant new information, I'll send out a quick email to let you know to check our blog. (Thanks to my cousin Nancy in Seattle for that idea!)
Our MCO Cusco team now has a website. It has lots of great info about us on it! It has been up and running just about a week or so, so there may still be some kinks to work out. The link for the site is over on the right-hand side of this page. Check it out!

It is now official! Our MCO International team will be heading to Cusco, Peru! We’re all very excited about it, but it is still sinking in. Cusco (can be spelled Cusco or Cuzco) is located in southeastern Peru and has a population of about 350,000 people. It sits in the Andes Mountains at an altitude of almost 11,000 feet. Because of this, even though it is relatively close to the equator, Cusco has a mild climate with highs averaging about 65-72 degrees year round. (Lows average about 32-42)

We are still on track to leave for Peru during the summer of 2010. We will go to language school first, possibly in Arequipa. If not Arequipa, then most probably it will be Costa Rica. Arequipa is about a 45-minute flight from Cusco. Most international flights fly into Lima first and then you take a domestic flight to Cusco, Arequipa, etc. The flight from Lima to Cusco is only about 45-60 minutes. However, because of the mountains, if you wanted to go by car instead, it would be about a 10-hour drive over some very rugged, winding mountain roads. Needless to say, most people recommend flying.