Missions - we must go.
/My previous post, “Missions - how’d we get here?” contains in depth description of how on earth we got to where we are now.
Oct 2018 - Our first conversation with the company that is sending us was during the last few months of my pregnancy with our fifth beautiful son, Ezekiel. That pregnancy overhauled my body, and left me couch ridden with debilitating vertigo for all but a handful of days of my third trimester. I was driving home from an OB appointment when a vertigo attack hit a couple miles from home. I prayed my way down the streets, pulled into the driveway, fumbled my way into the house and shooed my son off the couch where Josh was having what looked to be a very serious conversation on the phone. The conversation we had that followed, coupled with the emotional stress of being hit with a vertigo attack while driving left me in a heap of tears. I couldn’t think of anything then but surviving the remaining weeks of pregnancy, not to mention what it was going to look like with a newborn if the vertigo didn’t subside after birth. Josh told me that the company we were asking to send us, and most sending companies for that matter, emphasize going before children have reached their adolescent years. Adolescents have a much harder time adjusting once their shift has gone from family to peer oriented. That meant we had a mere 18 months to get wheels up before our oldest turned 13. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s strongly encouraged. If Covid doesn’t further disrupt our current timeline, we’ll be be headed overseas right at half way through Elijah’s 13th year. He was also told in this conversation that he had to have 20 credit hours of masters classes from seminary and I had to have 12 hours of undergrad level classes. During this time Josh was working 8 24hr shifts at his ER, 90 minutes from our home. We were completely maxed with his schedule, and me trying to run the house from the couch every day - tacking school for both of us onto that seemed absurd and impossible. Book learning comes easily for Josh, but for me it’s always been a struggle. I barely scraped my way through high school and college. He encouraged me to find my certificate of biblical studies I’d earned from attending a bible college in Canada in 02/03. I assured him there wouldn’t be enough earned credits to make a difference, as I remember not doing well in many of the classes. I excelled in music, art and drama, but tanked the classes that had text books and tests, and those were the ones they’d need credits from. I eventually agreed to at least track my transcript down from this school that had closed in 2006, and submitted it to be reviewed. They took all of the credits and I was told I only had two more classes I’d have to take and I could take them as a certificate course option instead of actual credit hours. Absolute miracle!
Our fifth boy was born on Nov 2, 2018. The constant debilitating vertigo subsided almost immediately after birth, but I was still experiencing frequent attacks, which then subsided within several months. With this, I felt more motivated to start filling out my application.
We started our missions application in April of 2019. People had started asking us where we wanted to go, to what people group. We just wanted to go, but felt we were floundering, aimless and clueless as to where. We attended a medical missions conference that July, and here is where, as we watched in awe, we began to see one door after another fling wide open in ways we couldn’t have imagined. This was a clear direct answer to a pray request that we’d begged of our local church before heading to the conference.
During the previous year Josh had been completing online seminary courses that were required by our sending company. Through the communications platforms for these classes, he became good friends with a fellow student. This guy contacted him, saying he’d noticed that Josh’s profile said he was an ER doc, gearing up for missions, and that he had a ton of kids. They had all these things in common, and immediately fired up a friendship. They talked via text and had frequent phone calls about the classes they were in together, life in their respective ER jobs, confusion over the missions application process, life with loads of children, and just life in general. I’d often hear him talking on the phone and ask who it was. He’d tell me, and then he’d have to reexplain who this guy was. I thought nothing of it at the time.
July 2019 we attended a med conference specifically for docs that work for the sending organization with which we were applying. I didn’t connect until half way to our destination in OK that we were meeting up with Josh’s friend from his seminary classes and his wife. I was excited to meet this guy and his wife, but again, didn’t think much of it. We arrived, registered and Josh was immediately on the hunt for his friend, who turned out to be the other tall guy in the room. His wife and I said our hellos, but are both more introverted by nature, so it took us a bit to break out of our shells and start talking. To spare you all the minute by minute details, by the end of that 2 day conference we felt they were friends we’d had for a lifetime, that we’d picked up where we left off. It was easy and natural to be around them, and we continued to find one thing after another we had in common.
The first meal there was dinner, and Josh made a point to be at the table of a physician he’d met at the previous year’s conference. This man has been serving with the company in Africa for over 20 years. Josh mentioned him after the 2018 conference - his name is very memorable (I’ll call him Doc P here), so I knew exactly who he was referencing when he pointed to the table where he sat and said we should eat dinner with him. The four of us sat down and started talking with Doc P, and again, the connection was immediate and natural. We laughed as we talked and ate and I threw out a couple comments about being on a team together and how much fun that would be, but had no inkling that that would even be a possibility. As we listened to him describe the ministry they have in their village and their goals, my mind was racing with the possibilities if that team were to grow. Over the course of those couple of days we shared several meals with Doc P and walked away with his contact information, a goal to finish our applications as quickly as possible, a list of very specific things to pray about for for each other, and a plea with the Lord to fling the door open for us to do ministry on his team in his village. We went to the conference floundering, we came away hopeful that we’d found the team and location and people group to whom the Lord was leading us, even though we hadn’t gone with the expectation that we’d find a team. We had gone simply with the hope that we’d start having an inkling of where we were being led. We walked away with an invite from Doc P, to join his team if the Lord leads, knowing his task was to get home and write job descriptions for us, that would need to be approved all the way up the line before anything could move forward - a task he himself said was, “a long shot.”
September 2019 - we drove south 8 hours to spend a week in a river side Air BnB house with our friends from the conference. Our communication with Doc P had continued, we were all still moving forward in the lengthy application process and we knew it was important to get together to be sure our families weren’t polar opposites. Our friends live in Alabama, and made the drive to meet us half way. We stayed with all 12 of our combined children, under one roof. We walked into this knowing it could be eye opening in uncomfortable ways, but after a week of watching each other interact in our marriages, parenting and every day stresses, we felt even closer to them than we had when we left the conference a couple of months prior. During our stay there we texted a pic to Doc P, who quickly responded that he had just drafted job descriptions and was talking to his team about them. The doors were continuing to fling open, in ways we couldn’t have dreamed up ourselves. Also in September we had a couple we were acquainted with from church commit to doing a 6 month New Testament study with us, This was also a requirement of our sending company, and included working through a 600 page study guide. It was not a small commitment from them, and through our time together in fellowship and studying the word, we’ve come to love each other and really cherish our small group time together, though we’ve been done with that study for a while.
Between Sept and November I completed the two certificate courses I was required to take. We received our medical clearance (a miracle in itself with the various health issues I’ve had over the years with my heart and head!) and rejoiced with our friends as he reached his weight loss goal required for the medical clearance process to begin for their family, nearly 100 pounds over the course of 4 or 5 months (another miracle)! Elijah’s “teen interview” with our consultant was in mid November and we’d done the required standardized school testing with the boys earlier in the month and were awaiting the results from those, hoping they’d pass so we could receive our invite to interview in late January 2020. It was neat to meet face to face with our consultant and get to know him a bit. He felt like an old friend we’d known for ages.
A couple of weeks after Elijah’s teen interview our friends received their invite, but we found out that we needed to retest our boys before moving forward. Through various conversations and events we felt as if the wind had been taken out of our sails. There were some major miscommunications and our expectations were dashed. It was hard to find the motivation to continue on in the process after being certain we’d be at that Jan interview conference. We put our normal curriculum teaching with the boys on hold and began to “teach the test” to them, focusing on problem areas to ensure they were up to par and could pass when we retested them. This left us keeping our attitudes about the process in constant check. While we understood why our sending company requires testing, it was a frustrating process as much of the reason we homeschool is to allow the boys to learn at their own pace, which isn’t the pace that standardized testing requires. It was a stressful few months, to be sure. During all of this school upheaval we got word that the jobs that Doc P wrote for us were approved all the way up the ladder, helped along each step of the way by one of the matriarchs of the medical arm of the company, who believes strongly in the mission that Doc P is doing and the ways he wants to move forward bringing our two families to join him and his team. Another miracle! Our friends interviewed, job matched and were moved forward in the process and will be attending training in Aug, leaving for language in Oct and hope to be on the ground with the team by early Feb of 2021. Looking back we see the Lord’s perfect timing at work. The team on the ground there would be hard pressed to find homes and big vehicles for two large families at the same time. While we’d hoped to do training and language school together, being several months separated is much better for our team!
In February we retested the boys, rejoiced in pure relief when they passed, and with this we were invited to interview at the end of April conference. Covid hit and the conference was cancelled. Our invite was pushed to the May conference, which soon after was cancelled and we were pushed to the June interview conference, which ended up being all via video. It was a sad hit, to be sure, to not be able to attend the interview conference and meet the other folks that were in the same spot in the application process as we are. We’ve been working hard to get to interview conference for over a year, so not being there in person felt a bit anticlimactic, but we are thankful they found a way to continue moving us forward in the process! We were given the links to apply to the job with Doc P ahead of conference (this usually doesn’t happen until after - many folks come to interview not having a specific job in mind) so that we could be sure to job match by the 30th of June - the deadline to keep us on our original timeline. I couldn’t keep the tears back after clicking through the prompts and clicking “apply”. Conference started on Wed and went through Friday evening. We completed our consultant interview and staff interview before interview conference started. Those are usually scheduled inside the three day timeframe, but since it was via video, the staff decided to spread stuff out over the week. I cried a bit after each of these. We got through interview on Friday and then Sunday evening we received a unanimous sending vote from our church, which brought me to tears. We are so grateful and humbled by their affirmation and support. Our sending organization emphasizes that while they cover us financially, they are not the ones doing the “sending”, our local body of believers are the ones. We knew we needed the affirmation of the those we are doing life and ministry with here locally, and they gave that to us that Sunday night. The next day, Monday, we received an email from our consultant that we were invited to move forward in the process. I sat at the computer with a lump in my throat and let the tears flow. We were “interviewed” by Doc P, a couple other team members from his team and the “cluster leader” via teleconference. What a tremendously encouraging conversation it was! It didn’t feel like an interview as much as just a “welcome aboard!” call! Again, tears escaped. All of these individuals have been following our process since Doc P talked to them about us and started writing the job description. They knew us already, though we hadn’t met any of them. They encouraged us about how excited they were about the ministry revamp with our families coming, and the goals of the team and how having our families there would, Lord willing, help reach the FIVE unreached and unengaged people groups up in the hills around the location we are headed. Thousands upon thousands of people live among these 5 unreached people groups! Thousands of people that have no access to the truth of the gospel! The goal with bringing more docs on board, more members to the team is to make our way into these people groups, establish relationships with them, and “build bridges that can bear the weight of the gospel”! We are just beside ourselves! THIS is what we have been working and praying for since medical school, and even well before that! It’s surreal that it’s now staring us in the face. We are humbled that the Lord has opened these doors for us to go spread the beautiful truth of His Word!
Upcoming timeline:
If covid doesn’t further delay our process, we’ll be headed to VA in early November for a 7 week training course. We’ll arrive back home here on December 20th and stay through the 30th, heading out early on the 31st for Eastern Subsaharan Africa where we will attend 3-4 months of language school to learn Swahili. Our boys will be in full time international school on the same campus where we are learning. This is going to be a huge adjustment for our family, as we have always homeschooled. Josh and I will be in full time language learning, and will spend evenings with our boys, just as if we were both working parents with kids in public school - not something we are familiar with. However, we are SO thankful that the language school and international school are in the same place!
From here, after 3-4 months of intense language training, we’ll relocate to our final destination, still in Eastern Subsaharan Africa, but in a different country and further inland than where we are doing language school. Here we will join on our ministry team in doing life together, but much of our involvement in the ministry itself will be limited until we have a solid handle on the language and culture. They stress this importance to us, reassuring that they have no intentions of rushing us into ministry before we have fully acclimated and can communicate with the locals well. This was very comforting to hear!
Pray with us, please? While we are familiar with moving, international moving, culture shock and all the exhaustion and stresses that come with those, this move is on a whole other level from all our previous moves. I’ll touch on this more in my next post. “Missions - gearing up to leave”