Hello, New Haven!

We are finally here! After much planning and preparation we are finally getting settled into the house here in New Haven. We went ahead and decided to get four new tires in Virginia and to get new windshield wipers – it’s a good think that we did because we ran into heavy rain and high winds on the way up. Unsurprisingly, we hit traffic in New York City that stayed with us all the way to New Haven. We arrived Friday afternoon around 4:30pm after leaving Virginia at around 5am that morning. We agree that the last day of travel was the most exhausting out of the whole trip.

We are living in an old house (1913) on Willow Street. We are in walking distance of some great local shops and a very trendy downtown area. Yale University is nearby so there are tons of students everywhere and all of the sorts of businesses that cater to students. Coffee shops, laundromats etc. Several groups of people live in this house with us. The basement and attic are rented out to Yale students. We live on the first floor with four other people who are all part of YWAM. We all share the living area, kitchen, and one bathroom and eat all our meals together. On the second floor lives the YWAM director and his family. They have their own kitchen and everything that they need up there. They also have a python that escapes occasionally, we are told. They promised to get Jason the next time that ‘Monty’ gets a meal of live mice.

Our schedule has been pushed back this weekend due to one of the DTS students being ill. She has asthma and has been in the hospital here for about 3 days now. We are praying that she'll recover quickly. The activities that were scheduled to begin on Friday night (tour, orientation, etc.) were pushed back in the hopes that she would be out of the hospital and wouldn't have to miss anything, but that has not been the case. We are going to have our orientation and introduction time tonight after dinner, I think. Our regular classes will start tomorrow. It already seems like we have been here much longer than 2 days!

During our time in New Haven there are going to be a few ministries that we can choose to be a part of. One is an outreach called 'The Space' which is a music venue/coffee shop that is Christian-owned, but not really frequented by the church crowd. The other is an organization called IRIS, which works to help refugee families from the Sudan settle into life here with a place to live, furnishings, and provisions. We are going to hear more about those ministries and what it entails to work closer with them later this week.

At the moment we have enjoyed a lot of down time and have gotten the chance to set our room up to our liking and to sort of bum around town with some of the YWAM staff and other students (6 students total, including us Connors). Today we drove 45 min. to church on one of the most lovely roads I've seen. Highway 15, I think. We had a picnic lunch right off the beach and then wandered through an Italian Festival that was happening down the block. I had pretty high expectations for the festival and was slightly disappointed that no one was dancing in the street and there were no accordions being played. We finished the afternoon off with ice cream floats. Today is the first sunny day since we got here and we took advantage of it! We are now connected to the internet from our room, so more updates to come!