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Monday evening I talked with a lady from Scottsdale Culinary Institute on the phone for a while. It was an interview for the school. Every prospective student has to go through one either by phone or face to face. So Monday I was armed with every question I could think of, my pen to write notes and my husband sitting on the couch across from me. Deanna is the name of the lady I have been talking with. She is very nice, helpful and excited to be able to help people. She told me at the beginning of the phone call that this would be an interview (I thought it might be, knowing everyone had to do one, but I wasn't sure if this would be mine.) She said that if at any point during the interview I felt this wasn't the place for me to let her know and we could end the call or if she felt at any point that I wouldn't be a good fit she would do the same. We talked for a good 45 minutes. She went through her list of questions and information tid-bits I would need. She told me about the Career center and how they are the ones who help direct you through the externship and then help place you in a job after graduation. She said the Chefs are there to help teach you but they are also there to pass on the batallion to the next generation of chefs. She said they like it when you pick their brains, they want to be able to teach you everything they can. I would be in class Monday through Friday either morning classes (7-12) or midday classes (12-6). I could then have a job while in school (which will be very important for Chris and I). She said that she thought the Associates of Culinary Arts would be the way for me to go. I didn't really understand this because after looking though the programs I thought the Bachelor's would be best because of what I would ultimately like to do. I asked Deanna about this and she said the reason was that the Assoc. is the beginning of the Bach. program. So if, before I do my externship, I want to go ahead and do the Bach. I can talk to her about it and get switched over to the Bach. program and then I would graduate with two degrees in the same amount of time. HOW COOL?!?! Yes, I would like lots more fluff on my Resume for the same amount of time please! Deanna said she would have the dates for the start of classes after the beginning of the year in about 2 weeks. She is going to call me then and we will go from there.

After that phone call Chris and I really wanted to look more into the seminary in the area. So I spent a lot of time yesterday reading about it and Chris e-mailed a couple of my questions to the lady at the school to find out some more information. I was encouraged by what we found out. The Seminary is set up so that students can continue in the ministries they are already involved in and finish school. The classes are set up to work around someone's already existing life and career. I thought that was cool. I also found that on the Diploma program Chris would be entering goes along the same exact class course as the MDiv he wants except you have to have 8 hrs of biblical languages for the MDiv and you don't for the DTh. Well I wondered if you could go back and get the 8 extra hours or if he would need to go back through the entire program to get his MDiv. We found there were two options. He could either finish his undergrad and then do the MDiv or there is an exceptions way in. If you get into the Diploma program and after at least 20 complete credit hours if you have a 3.25 and a few other requirements (certian classes taken) then you can apply to be moved to the MDiv program on an exception. Chris wanted to know after finding this out if it was something they do very often. He e-mailed the lady he had been asking questions to and (there were 92 students enrolled at this seminary campus in 2008) she said that if you meet the requirements they will help you out and move you. Basically you just need to keep your grades up. She said they have a few students now that have done it by exception. That was encouraging for us. Chris is so smart. His big thing with school is feeling like its relevant and being interested. He is ADD (has been all his life) and so his focus can be very short, but he can get into the MDiv program pretty easially I think. We are going to get him back on his medication while in school so he will have a better focus time. He was also telling me last night about some of the details of the school he found. He said the school is very missions oriented. That is something he is really excited about. The school is very diverse in itself. You can tell when you read the requirements and the last one is that you take the test to make sure you are proficient in the English language. Its a very cool thing. Chris thinks it would be a good fit. We think the smaller classes will help too.

We talked last night and we really feel this is the direction we are suppose to be going. I keep wanting to not do things because what if we aren't suppose to go? Although at the same time I feel like we are...a lot of my thoughts are coming from this has only been a week and I want to make sure it isn't hype and that its really what we are suppose to do. With it only being a week its amazing what all has fallen into place in a week. So Chris and I are going to continue to research and move forward until we feel like this isn't where we are suppose to be doing. We can't really do a whole lot to move forward except things we were planning anyways, mostly saveing as much money as possible. We will continue to research as much information as we can though. Its exciting. We are praying Father will guide us in our next steps and show us if this isn't right.