Pages from the Philips Seeking God's leading in medical missions

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It's feels like spring in Texas which means wonderful weather and plenty of time outdoors with the kids!  We have been blessed these past few months with lots of time together and further leading from God with regard to several decisions that needed to be made before we leave for India in hopefully 18 more months.

Praises:

• Christo found out that he passed the written portion of his emergency medicine board exams.  One of our big goals for the time after residency before we returned to India was to have the board certification process completed before our departure.  Christo will be taking his oral board exams on October 27th of this year.  Keep that in your prayers so that the last step can be done before we return to India.
• Halfway done with paying off student loans! Our goal was to have student loans paid off before we left for India because that would leave one less burden we need to raise support for and free us up with regard to which missions organization we will join to go to India.  We thank God for a wonderful place for Christo to work that has provided for our needs and allowed us to work on these goals!
• A great trip to Key West, Florida with our family and Kris (Melissa's sister).  Christo gave a talk on High Risk EKGs for the EMC annual conference which was well received and we enjoyed getting to explore the Florida Keys and Everglades National Park

Prayer Requests:

• Wisdom with regard to choosing a mission organization to go with back to India.  We are meeting with one prospective organization this week to help us with that decision.
• Our home group.  We are co-leading a home group with some friends from church.  Pray for God to draw the right people to come to the group and that we would be mutually encouraged through this group.
• Time management.  We are taking the Perspectives course (which we highly recommend to those of you that have never taken it - its a semester long course offered at multiple churches around the country on the world Christian missions movement) which requires an intense amount of reading along with trying to keep up with home schooling and work.  Please pray for us to get much out of the course but at the same time not feel too overwhelmed with all the other things that need to get done.

For the longer version...at the end of January we made a 3800 mile road trip from Dallas to Key West, FL and back.  We enjoyed stops in New Orleans, Miami, Key West, the Everglades, and Tampa on this trip.  Once I finish putting up all the pictures from our East Coast Trip (look at the end of the post for pictures from Boston and New York) I'll try to get the ones from Key West done.  We especially enjoyed trying out wonderful seafood from the Gulf Coast and even got to be at Cafe Du Monde when they were filming a new movie called, "Now You See Me" with Woody Harelson and Morgan Freeman!  We enjoyed Key West but really loved Everglades National Park.  Since it was winter at Everglades National Park the weather was wonderful (in the 60s-70s) and because it is the dry season there all the watering holes were concentrated and so we would often see 10-15 species of birds hunting near each watering holes along with plenty of alligators - including an 8 foot alligator which was about 2 feet from us.  Yikes!