Hi, My Name Is…

Well, I suppose I’ll break the silence on this here ministers blog to introduce myself. I’m Mitch Anderson, son of Joel and Ann Anderson, brother of Link and Dev Anderson, and uncle of Reagan and Jayden Anderson, the cutest little gals at PV.

I’m part of a mission team which will be moving to Olomouc (o-lo-moatz), Czech Republic, on October 28, and you, Pleasant Valley, are my supporting church, for which I am very grateful! A cool part of being supported by PV is that I get to spend my last four months here with you. My time here will involve three things (in order of emphasis):

1. Getting ready for the mission
2. Connecting with PV people
3. Working as part of the church staff

I’ve been here just over a week and I look forward to getting to know all of you better over the next four months (though I have to admit that I wish it were October 28th now; I mean, we’ve been a mission team since 2001, which means we’ve been preparing for this for five years! Needless to say, I’m ready get over there!).

We plan to work in Olomouc for 10 years and hope to plant three churches during that time. Please keep us and the Czech people in your prayers, and when you get a chance, please check out our mission team’s website, where you can find out all about us, where we’re going, and what we hope to do: teamolomouc.com

So, what does a missionary do during his last four months before moving? Well, that’s a good question and I’m glad you asked.

As far as getting ready for the mission is concerned, I’ll be studying the Czech language for an hour a day, setting time aside for personal spiritual growth, setting up our team website with a page where people can sign up to pray for us (more on that in the near future), organizing and preparing to ship my stuff, researching housing in the neighborhood we’ll be moving to, selling my vehicle and other sundries, making last minute purchases (like power converters), getting medical checkups, setting up bank accounts and figuring out tax issues, acquiring medical and other insurance, taking part in a few team workshops, and spending time with friends and family.

Regarding connecting with my brothers and sisters here at PV, I’ll be visiting various Sunday morning Bible classes and Wednesday night small groups (to share our team’s plans and sometimes to teach), tagging along with Nick on his visitation outings, building relationships over a warm meal with PV leaders and members (including Tuesday night CEP dinners), hanging out with the singles crew, keeping fit in the Family Life Center, and hopefully interacting with you on this blog (and my own).

The connecting and working categories kind of run together, but some other things I’ll be doing as a member of the staff will be attending meetings and helping out around the office, helping out from time to time with worship services and Bible classes, and designing two newsletters to be distributed to the church (one about the work in the Czech Republic and one about PV missions in general). And one big project I might undertake is to get a recycling program set up in the church, because, as members of God’s Kingdom and stewards of his creation, I think we should be leading the way in being responsible toward the environment (but more on that later).

So, I guess that (among other things) is what a missionary does during his last few months at home. Thanks for reading!