Greetings from Washington!

Hello all and greetings from Washington! These last few weeks since I arrived here have been great. The Foreign Service has been keeping me busy with training. Most recently, we spent much of last week at a resort in the mountains of West Virginia learning leadership and teamwork skills. As with every other aspect of our training thus far, the quality of instruction was excellent.

Easily the most impressive aspect of my time so far has been the quality of my classmates. Without exception, they are a very impressive group of people, both in terms of experiences and abilities as well was in terms of personal qualities and attributes. If this is an indication of the caliber of people that I’ll be working with during the course of my career then I’ll be in great shape!

As I’m sure you can imagine, all of mine and Katie’s focus is zoomed in on February 14th, since that’s the day we find out where we’re going to be assigned for our first post. Since I used my Arabic ability to get into the Foreign Service in the first place, it’s almost certain that they will send us to an Arabic speaking post. As you may be aware, the options are Damascus, Cairo, Muscat (in Oman), Senaa (in Yemen) and Jeddah and Riyadh (in Saudi Arabia.) We’re hoping for Damascus, although we’d be thrilled with any post outside of Saudi Arabia since the Saudi posts are unaccompanied, meaning that Katie wouldn’t be able to come with me.

Well, that’s the news from the capital. We appreciate everyone’s thoughts and prayers, and I especially appreciate everyone who’s been helping Katie out there in Provo!