Background Scenery

This weekend I was explaining to some of my family about the photography rule-of-thirds.  (If you're not familiar with it, you can check out THIS link for a quick overview.) When you follow the rule of thirds in an effort to frame your subject AND include scenery, it makes both the main subject and the background more interesting to the human eye.

I think, before too much time elapses and I start posting about current changes and events on this blog, I should briefly summarize the "background scenery" behind the subject of Gabe and I "taking on the world."

Both Gabe and I have been interested in and consciously making decisions moving toward doing overseas work in a capacity that allows us to serve humanity for about the last 10 years.  Obviously, we did this separately before we met and got married.  We had both done some "preliminary" (i.e.: short-term) stints in places like Uganda, Mozambique, North Africa, Europe, India, Central America, and East Asia before we even started dating, so one of the ongoing conversations in our relationship has been about "where" and "how" we'd like to work overseas... not "when" because we both just assumed that it was a given!

However, we also wanted to prioritize our marriage, being involved as a married couple in a home community here in the states, and make sure we had a solid foundation working together as a team before we launched into cross-cultural ministry - so when we got married two years ago, we knew it would be at least a year before we were ready to pack up our bags and chase our dreams of living and serving overseas.

As we continued to talk about our options, we found that we had an abundance of opportunities before us.  One of the funny things about being willing to serve and minister to others is that there seems to be no shortage of places where we could go and things we could do.  We realized if we didn't start choosing a direction, we were going to suffer from paralysis of analysis.

One of our desires in doing ministry cross-culturally is that we do it together.  We want to do something that we both find interesting, challenging, and valuable if we are able.  Obviously, we know God is ultimately the one opening and closing doors, but if we were going to choose, we wanted to choose something that we both have a passion for.

We've found there are five basic areas of common interest that we have that seem to lend themselves toward overseas work:
1 - serving and working among orphans
2 - educating and equipping children
3 - operating a business as a platform for serving
4 - meeting medical needs
5 - supporting work that combats human trafficking

As far as a specific location where we want to work, we found we didn't have a lot of common experience, and therefore couldn't both speak from an informed perspective as we tried to identify geographical directions.  Gabe has spent time in Central and South America, Central and Southern Africa, and Eastern Asia.  I've spent time in Europe, Northern Africa, and India.

As we talked and dreamed and shared about places we'd been and organizations we'd worked with, we had this crazy idea to take a trip and spend time serving and visiting places together.  We knew that if we were going to do something like this, we wanted to be sure to spend sufficient time in a place to really feel like we got to know it - the organization, the people, the needs, and how we could see ourselves operating within that ministry.

Simultaneously, we've had a lot of conversations about how to purposefully prepare and equip ourselves for doing ministry together.  Gabe participated in a YWAM DTS after high school, and he's felt like much of his foundational understanding of God and ministry and prayer comes from that season of his life.  I haven't done anything like that, but I've often thought about how encouraging it would be to take a short season specifically set apart for learning about God within a community of people who are also pursuing that end.  We decided it would be beneficial for our long-term goal of overseas work to undertake such a season together.

And that brings us up to the current status:  we're approaching our target savings for undertaking some kind of cross-cultural "vision seeking" adventure.  The timing seems reasonable and good - we don't have kids that we'd be uprooting, don't have careers that we can't walk away from, don't have a mortgage or debt that keeps us tied to a paycheck, and as far as we can guess, we don't have siblings that will be getting married in the next year or so!

So, it's time to act: I've given my notice to my employer that I will finish teaching winter quarter at LCC and not continue my contract after that.  Gabe's given his employer the heads up as well.  We've done some research, found some options based on various factors, and now it's time to make a decision.

Option A: Complete a DTS in Chaing Mai, Thailand
Option B: Complete a DTS with a compassion/medical focus in New Zealand
Option C: Go work for a school year teaching English to kids in Thailand prior to doing option A or B (or an unknown Option D, should such an option develop while we're in Thailand!)

We're praying about it this week, and hope to have peace about a decision soon.

Feel free to join us in prayer for wisdom!