Marriage Counseling

So, today I spent about five and a half hours receiving training to use the Prepare Enrich resource for marriage counseling. Dave has been a trainer for this program for quite some time and was asked to do it once again for some local pastors. He figured it would be beneficial to me too and invited me to join. So I sat with 4 other pastors from various denominations, though mainly Mennonite, and completed the training. (I even have a certificate to prove it!)

I felt out of place there with the others who are all paid pastors who do counseling and are substantially older than me, and are all married. But I enjoyed it! I find this kind of thing fascinating and it’s something that I look forward to doing as a pastor some day. The program I learned is centered around a pre-assessment that the couple takes online separately before starting premarital or marital counseling. From there, the counselor has a firm foundation of facts and patterns and graphs to show the couple and work with. There are a total of 25 activities that follow, but six main ones.

Normally I’m pretty suspicious of putting all that much faith in these online assessments, but this one seems better. I’m sure Prepare Enrich would hope I’d say that after taking the program! Though very thorough, it stresses the assessment as a starting point for conversation and a potential indicator of future problems and not a comprehensive analysis of the relationship. It makes the couple think through many areas of the relationship that might be ignored and teaches them to deal with conflict. Overall, it makes each person more aware of the needs and complexity of the other person. Interesting.

This past week a bunch of things happened. Duk didn’t start and I’ve been sick for a few days. I keep doing visiting and reading and writing for the church during the day. I’ve been invited to a few more meals with other members of the church and had some great conversations that way. On Friday I was able to check out the Iowa Mennonite Relief Sale. I sat in with the youth group’s (MYF’s) Sunday school class and went to an MYF event Sunday evening. There I was able to play Rook for several hours. Other than that I haven’t played a single card game out here in Iowa! Last night, I went to the Iowa Mennonite School Substate Finals soccer game in Iowa City. They lost to Regina and it wasn’t a real pretty game, but I was glad to be able to attend.

I guess that’s about all for now!