End of Term Preparation

Today I started to work on my “End of Term Report” for MCC and I read “A Re-entry Manual” for overseas workers. With a little over one month left, I guess it’s time. The last months have flown by and I am sure this next one will go even quicker.

We were supposed to start this process back in May, when we participated in our last annual retreat. At that time we gave little reflections and had meetings with the area directors, but it just didn’t feel right. How can one reflect on the whole time when there are still three months left to go? I wasn’t ready for such activities; it seemed too early. After that local people began asking “when are you leaving?” as the first question after the standard greetings. Again, I just wasn’t ready.

After having taken the Crimea trip (the topic of the previous entry), I have started to feel like I am ready to think about leaving. I still want to be here until that last day, but I realize that leaving is a process and needs to be done over time so we can have closure with as many activities and people as possible.

So, what does the schedule for the next month look like? Laura will be finishing out her English intensive responsibilities by July 29. Sometime during that time we will also pack up our two suitcases each and move out of our apartment. From then until the end we will be living in a house of some friends of ours who will be on vacation. We will head to Zaporozhye on the 30^th for a picnic/farewell that afternoon; also spending the 31^st there for “end of term” evaluations with our country representative. After we return to Donetsk we will move our furniture and home furnishings to an apartment in Makeevka where the new MCC workers will live. They will arrive in country on the 4^th and in Makeevka a few days later. We will do as much of the moving in process as we can before they get here to help them with their transition. I will do some traveling and have some meetings with the new Income Generation worker, and we will leave Donetsk (by train) on August 19^th. We will spend a day in Kiev and fly out at 6:30am on August 21^st. It’s coming fast.

So, that’s it in a nutshell. I hope there will be more reflections to come.

Dave