Continuing to Get Ready

We have our plane tickets to Philadelphia where our Staging will take place. We leave Kansas City at 6:00 a.m. and arrive in Philadelphia at 11:00. The staging is a time of Peace Corps orientation and team building with all of the AZ6 group. We have heard there will be 65 of us.

On 9/22 at 11:00 a.m. we load on a bus for JFK and are scheduled to fly out to Frankfurt at 9:45 p.m. The flight is 8 hours, then we will fly to Baku which is another 5 hour flight.

We went back to visit the Freeman Baptist Church on August 24. We had a wonderful time renewing friendships. It is comforting to know so many people will be praying for us, and supporting us with their concerns.

We plan to go to Hopewell on September 7 and Archie on September 14.

We have already had Thanksgiving on August 16 with Matt and Andrew. Linda fixed all the traditional Thanksgiving dishes, and we had a wonderful time. We plan celebrating Christmas on Labor Day. It was fun to go Christmas shopping in August.

We Are Preparing to Begin

HISTORY
In the summer of 2007 we decided to retire from our jobs sometime during 2008. Linda began researching what options would be ours in retirement. One of the best resource books was "Don't Retire, Rewire". The book suggested we look for ways to do what we enjoy and would bring us personal fulfillment.
Linda ordered information from the Peace Corps, and we attended informational meetings at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. The best resource for finding out who are Peace Corps Volunteers and what they do is http://www.peacecorps.gov/.
We applied on November 7 to see what might develop. We were nominated for the Region of Africa in the program of Education on December 4. Following nomination came the medical, vision, and legal evaluations. In March and early April we communicated with the Peace Corps as they considered where we might be able to serve. Our approach was always that we would go wherever the Peace Corps thought was best. We were excited to learn that we had become Invitees to serve in Azerbaijan.
Both of us are motivated by the feeling that we have been truely blessed, and it is time for us to give back to our country through service in the Peace Corps and to the people of Azerbaijan. Now is the time we can do this because our health is excellent, our sons are independent, and our skills are still current.
Denney retired on March 14, Linda on June 4. Since then we have been visiting relatives, traveling to the east coast and up to Maine, selling our home, donating a lot of possessions to charities, and making arrangements for our serving.
We are fortunate to have friends and family who will be taking care of our business. We appreciate all who contribute to our lives through friendship, well wishes, and prayers.
ARE WE SCARED?
We are anxious to begin this new era of our lives. We have been researching and learning about the nation of Azerbaijan. We are routing for them in the Olympics and felt a great pride when we witnessed via television the Azerbaijani delegation to the Beijing Olympics.
The current PC Volunteers serving in Azerbaijan have been very kind to respond to our emails and request for information and insight.
We feel ready to begin. We are to leave Kansas City for our staging (orientation) in Philadelphia and we should arrive in Azerbaijan on September 23.