Summer Opportunity Overseas

We recently got a request for Todd to come along for a tour or two in Turkey this summer.  He is beyond excited to be able to accommodate this request at least once.  The official dates are a little “soft” at this time but it will be about June 23rd– July 9th.  The tour begins in Diyarbakir in the south near the Syrian border.  Todd has been there once before.  The artists for the tour are a hip-hop/rap group CTZN .  Yes, they will share the gospel with rap music.

A skilled soundman is a great thing to have for a hip-hop tour,  as it’s a genre with specific needs.  But there’s a second important role Todd will play this time, as well.  They like to have him drive the tour/equipment busses, and this year that ability is especially needed.  One of our other team members is temporarily without the commercial driver’s license required to drive the van and his licensing test has been delayed.  Since Todd’s been driving a school bus this year, his New York State CDL allows him to drive that van while in Turkey. 

A second tour is available to him in August.  This is with NLM, No Longer Music, a rock drama group that has been going on these tours for years.  He would run technology and help drive for that tour as well.  Whether he goes on that trip depends on whether he can get the needed time off from his summer job, and whether we can get the necessary financial support.  If you’d like to help, please let us know.  We’d also like to hear from you if you would consider going along as an artist or crew member.

These tours are often nebulous things.  Dates change and weather, politics and  public opinion change rapidly.  The team will need to be flexible and ready at all times.  A list of prayer requests can be found on the left.

The Perspectives Class

In my last post (we won't talk about how long ago that was), I mentioned that I was working towards coordinating the Perspectives class.  Things are moving along for the class to happen in the Fall semester, so I thought it would be good to tell a little more about it.

Just a few years ago when we were chatting with some leaders at our missions sending agency, we talked about our feeling that the Christians of our part of NY misunderstand mission work somewhat.  They are somewhat more supportive of what we call need-based ministry- work that cares for felt needs of people who are poor, oppressed, hungry, handicapped, etc.  We felt some resistance to the nature of our music ministry, which focuses more on sharing the truth of the gospel with those who are spiritually poor, oppressed, hungry and yes, even handicapped.  In addition many will argue that the need is so great here at home, we hadn't ought to go overseas to do ministry at all.  Our leadership suggested that we try to get the Perspectives class to come to the area, because it could address some of those concerns and help to broaden the understanding of kingdom work.

At that time, I looked into bringing the course to the area but it seemed like too long and intimidating a process.  For one thing, neither of us had taken the course, although we were familiar with the core teachings.  To coordinate one has to first take the course at Certificate level, which costs some money and takes 4 months.  So that idea was scrapped and we tried to start a Bible study which taught some of those principles through other means.  That was not well attended, and let's face it, Todd and I are not gifted Bible study leaders.  That's why we were trying to go to the mission field in support roles!  But I digress.

A couple of years later, I suggested to the pastor at our new church that we ought to see the course run here.  He agreed and asked if I would do it, but I said I couldn't because the process was too long, and we were hoping to leave for the field.  When that didn't happen, I volunteered myself and the church supported me to go down to Lancaster, PA (that was a long drive all by myself!) and train to be a coordinator.

The job turned out to be a bigger one than I had realized.  My original start date as I mentioned in the last blog was January, but it quickly became clear that we could never do the work required in such a short time period, and at Christmastime.  Undaunted, I have pushed forward, formed a committee, and am about to submit our plans for a fall course.  That's where you come in.

This class is for everyone who loves God.  Although it started as a way to prepare young professionals for the mission field, it's purpose has expanded.  It will train you to be a better pray-er, welcomer, sender and mobilizer.  It is for pastors and people training for ministry, and they can earn M.Div credit for it.  It's for missions committee members, for parents & friends of missionaries, people who have friends or neighbors from other countries, for people who think God is worthy of worship...it's for you.

I don't consider myself a leader.  I've taken gifts inventories- as much as I'd like that gift to show up, it doesn't.  This shows in choices I've made- I don't volunteer myself for leadership, but for service.  For this class though, I am serving by leading.  I got the training, and I have spent the last 10 months, working to build up a support base and a committee.  I'm leading meetings.  I am approaching all sorts of people.  I even went to Potsdam with my friend Kelly last fall and taught one of the sessions for their Perspectives class!  I'm excited that I have formed a great committee and am starting to see some energy around the idea of the class.

I still need help, though.  One position we have not yet filled is that of Prayer Coordinator. Perspectives is a spiritual exercise, and it challenges students to make life change based on what they are learning.  We need it covered in effective prayer.  It would be best if we had someone dedicated to presenting the class for this.  And of course, you can pray for us.
Next, we need students!  Please help me promote the class.  If a member of my recruiting group can come and speak to your Bible Study, adult Sunday School class, missions committee, quarterly meeting, etc., we would love to!  We have a great line-up of instructors for you from all walks of life.  We need to fill the room (it seats 40) to keep our costs for the class reasonable.
Finally, if you can't commit to take the class this time, consider donating to make it possible for someone else.  I have already had young people tell me that they'd like to take the course, but don't think they will be able to afford it (it's a steal at $275 when most college credit courses are $500).  We're not set up for donations yet, but if you let me know I will get you that information when it becomes available, or you can just let someone know you'd like to help them privately.

Please take 2 minutes (you've made it this far) to watch this video and understand more about the course.

What next?

Since we decided that we would not be going overseas (to stay) in the near future, we have both had to seek out a new place in the world.  We need an identity here as well as an income.  For six years or more our identity has been "Pre-field missionary," and we gave up another life to be that; a house, good, or at least adequately paying jobs, schools, etc.  Since then we've been nomads, one foot out the door at all times, borrowed house, temporary/occasional jobs.  That's not enough anymore.  It was never really enough, but because (we thought) it was short term, and God provided in other ways, we were satisfied with it.  It was even exciting.  Now, Todd needs to rebuild his career, and he can't go back to the main one he left.  So, what are we going to do?

Todd took a job working nights at a convenience store.  It doesn't pay much, but it's a job and he thought it would leave him flexible for other things.  Then he also went back to work at the amusement park.  That also doesn't pay much, but at least it's somewhat in his field (sound)- he's a Supervisor in the entertainment department, and he has a lot of fun and a nice tan (on his face anyway).    He is also still participating in the Ministry Apprenticeship Program at our church, and currently having mentoring meetings on the subject of coaching others.
He's also exhausted, and it's not enough.

He spent the spring in training (mostly unpaid) to drive a school bus for a nearby district as a substitute.  A few weeks ago, we was offered a permanent route.  That's pretty exciting because though it's still part-time, it pays nicely, and the schedule allows him free time for other things, too.   School bus driving is not what Todd always dreamed of growing up to do, but not many people can say that they are doing what they always dreamed of doing.   One of those other things is a seasonal leadership job that would go through the end of the year, but he hasn't accepted it yet, so I'm not going to publish it here.

We are excited about God's provision for our family.  If you pray for us, please pray for Todd to have skills at juggling all these various responsibilities.
And then there's me.

I am also working on training for a new position, but I am a long way off from it becoming paid employment, so I am not going to describe that here.  I am however working on a mountain of other new projects, and I thought it would be fun to share about some of those.  They are all meaningful things that I'm pretty excited about, and I could use your help with most of them.

https://class.perspectives.org/psp/about.html

Are you familiar with the Perspectives course?  It's official title is "Perspectives on the World Christian Movement."  This is a 15-week, college credit-level discipleship course that seeks to prepare and mobilize people for involvement in mission work, whether they go, send, pray, welcome, etc.  It covers the Biblical foundations for mission work, historical information about it (most of it fascinating!), strategic and cultural information.  Many people say that it "ruined them for the ordinary."  I took the course on-line through the spring and summer, and in July I went to Lancaster, PA to be trained as a coordinator.  With that, I can bring the course to the Glens Falls region in January-May 2014.  It should be a multi-church effort!  Recruitment now open for members of my coordinating team- I need a prayer coordinator, an instructor care manager (there's a different instructor each week, some from out of town), a registrar, recruitment manager, etc.  Its going to be a lot of work but it's a happy burden to me because I know that this class has eternal impact on the people who take it.  Interested?  You can find out more at https://class.perspectives.org/psp/about.html and please, let me know if you want to help or take the class.  I've become friends with the coordinator of the Perspectives Course taking place in Potsdam this fall, and we can sit in on a few classes up there for a preview.   And please pray for me and my developing team!


Another thing I have gotten involved in that makes an eternal impact is Better Way Imports.
Better Way is a home party-like company.  I am helping to market fair-trade items made by women who have been trafficked.  It is a ministry as well as a small income stream.  You can help by scheduling or attending a party- which I prefer to call an Awareness Event- or making a purchase. It helps to get the word out about human trafficking, and it provides women an alternate way of making a living.  The items I market are unique- bags, jewelry, stationery, journals and other items made from recycled fabric or textiles, sustainably made paper, etc.  It makes me very happy to be involved in something that helps women and children in far-off places, many of whom are victims through no fault of their own, and are finding love through the programs that rescue them and train them in these enterprises.  As a plus, the items are beautiful!  You can check them out at my facebook business page,Better Way Freedom Fighter- Tricia.  
And if you're a fan of the chocolate home parties I was doing last year, don't worry- I'm still available for that, too.

In addition to projects 1-4 above, we're about to start another year of homeschooling and we are in high gear now that The Little Princess is 6 and in the first grade (she got about halfway through traditional "first grade" materials last year, so don't ask her what grade she's going into- it confuses her) and reportable to New York State.  I don't really care about NYS- the point is the "baby" of the family is doing school, too. I am teaching two classes at our local co-op this year (8th grade General Science and high school cooking+) and tutoring one boy in Chinese along with my own boy- all of which is a new experience as I haven't been lead teacher before.  For any of my readers who are classical home educators, I've got a lower grammar students, an upper grammar student, a dialectic student and a rhetoric level student. So, as a friend of mine says, I have a lot of plates spinning.  I definitely drop one from time to time.  Although there are moments when I feel too busy, I mostly feel occupied, in a good way.  Most of this is exciting, can't-wait-to-see-what-God's-gonna-do stuff.  Some of it even lets me feel like I am finally using my college degrees (International Politics and Sustainable Development & Missions and Intercultural Studies), which is nice.

I'm happy to be able to share this information.  Back in March when we went before our church to explain our change in plans, Pastor Ken asked me what's next for us, I didn't have an answer.  At ALL.  We were still wrestling with grief.  And of course we still are- one doesn't set aside 16 years (today's our 16th anniversary, and we were headed for the mission field all along) of working for one goal overnight.  It hurts and we don't understand. So of course it helps to plant a new vision.  We've been encouraged by others' who've laid a hand on our arm and told us their story of loss and re-direction.  I feel confident that we haven't really lost anything; it just doesn't look like we hoped it would.  It's gonna be ok; maybe even more than ok, especially you walk alongside us.  Thanks.

Changing Paths- For those who don't get our newsletter or facebook posts

Sadly we are sharing with you, our supporters, that we feel it is not in God’s will & timing that we go to the foreign mission field as a family in the near future. As missionaries we willingly agreed to a financial policy which in a nutshell reads “We make no appeals for funds.” We’ve never made our need a focal point of our ministry presentations because we believe that God will move upon hearts to support us independent of our asking. In light of this, we must admit that since He hasn’t so moved over the course of six years, it appears not to be in His will that we should go right now.
We are not quite ready to decide upon meaningful next steps, but we intend to stay as involved with TACO as we have been. We will talk to leadership at our missions agency in the next few weeks about what our technical relationship with them will be; but they will remain in our affections!
We know that missions is a good thing and that TACO is a good thing. We even believe that we are a good thing; as much as any person is any good before God; our marriage is good, kids are good, and our relationship with our church is good. All of these things are very good. It a mystery to us that these things don't come together in the way that we had hoped. But after six years, and especially this past summer of working ardently to raise support to go to the field where we felt we could best use our gifts and talents, we find ourselves no closer. In addition, the nomadic and flexible lifestyle we have lived has begun to wear on us. Our savings safety net is dangerously depleted. Our children have sacrificed friendships as well as material needs and wants. We, Todd and Tricia, separately found ourselves ready to find regular employment for some time.
Although we don’t regret the choices we made over the last few years, we feel grief over the loss, at least temporarily, of this dream, which have nurtured since before we were married.
If you have given to us financially we are so grateful for your support and encouragement. Thank you for investing in this ministry! You have been a great blessing to us with your prayers as well. We hope that you will continue to support the work as the Lord leads and as we are able to participate in events.
Please continue to be in prayer for our family as we reconsider and wait for direction . We want to continue to honor God with the challenging decisions we have to make.

Year in Review- enduring thankfulness

Recently our family devotional book (Character Building for Families, by Leeann Rubsam) led us through a study on thankfulness.  It talked about enduring gratitude, which in essence is to continue to be thankful long-term for the things God has done.  We forget our miracles too quickly. So I thought I would take this time to say THANK YOU! Again!  to Ivan and Debbie Weaver, and Jay and Carol Weaver.  You guys are amazing.  Thanks for letting God use you, one year ago.

About one year ago, we were living in an apartment, something like campus housing, at our missions agency's sending base.  We'd spent the summer in our camper and the late fall and early winter in this apartment, actually two apartments attached with the separate one for our older girls.  But a new candidate class was beginning, so we needed to find a new place to stay.

All of our housing finds are temporary because we still believe that God will move us out to, um, an unnamed country, soon.  We went to NY to visit family for Christmas and became convinced that we would have to utilize a house here where we had stayed before, so we left behind some of our things and wrote a letter asking for permission.  We went back to PA thinking we would pack up and come "home," not wanting to be in NY, but thinking we had no other option.  Our support isn't high enough or regular enough for us to afford a lease or mortgage, and we didn't want to have to get furniture etc., anyway.  After all, we sold our little house and downsized several times in preparation for a BIG move, so why undo any of that by settling in somewhere?  The house in NY was a comfortable plan because it was roomy, furnished, and cheap. 

Well, God had other plans.  The church that owns the house we hoped to use had it for sale, which we knew, and the contract said it had to remain unoccupied.  So, that option really was not.  Puzzled but not panicked, we took our pastor up on an offer to post the need on the church prayer chain (at our church in PA).  Within hours, the same evening I think, we had a phone call from a man I had met but didn't really know.  He had a house he wasn't using!  He had a renter lined up for June, but would be happy to have us use the place at a low rent until then.  He even had furniture in a storage closet that we could use!  A former missionary kid himself, he understood our predicament and quickly, generously responded to our need.

As an aside, the best part of this sequence of events was when I spoke to our pastor about it and he said, "I didn't really think that was going to work."  Another friend said, "When I saw that prayer request come through, I thought you guys were crazy!"  So, maybe we are, but it's working for us.

We moved into that house (basement and bottom floors of a duplex) and lived happily ever after for five months, when it was warm enough to get back into our camper and the permanent renters were ready.  We got to know our donor and his wife, kids and family, as their daughters spent some days with us.  We got to know the charming little town in Pennsylvania, near Valley Forge Park.  Todd worked for the US Census and for a production company in the area.  And we were close enough to our sending base to visit a couple of times a week.  We were able to homeschool in a big playroom with room for projects, and we even got to go to a co-op for a couple of months.  I made some friends there and so did the girls, a real joy for all of us.  Although I had to force myself to reach out to people, I did enjoy those other moms so much.  In fact, there I met someone who uses Tapestry of Grace, and a number of those moms are doing a TOG co-op this year.  It helped me along on my decision to switch, because I got to see the curriculum and talk about different options with my new friends. 


This was really a lesson in dependence and community for me.  Todd and I have always said that we longed to live in community with other believers.  We would love to have open doors with other brothers and sisters, where we share meals, childcare, burdens, joys, cars...maybe even actual space.  Yet when Ivan called and offered us his house, I felt strange about it and part of me wanted to say no.  I realized that I always picture myself on the giving side of this imaginary community.  One year, we happily loaned our car to a young family with a need for several weeks, in spite of objections about the risks.  As youth leaders, we tried very hard to have an open door policy on our home with the young people we worked with.  We practiced hospitality as much as we could.  I pictured myself ever willing to share what I had with those less able.  So why did I balk at receiving generosity?

You might say pride.  Certainly that's part of it.  And an independent spirit.  I never really liked to work in groups in school.  I'll do it myself!  I don't like to have to ask for help.  Maybe I don't think I deserve it.  But now, I look at what a blessing those six months were, and I am so glad to have been on the receiving end of a share. 

Not forgetting the rest of the year, I'll tell you that we lived in the camper (oh the camper!  Another story altogether, no?) from the end of May until September.  It sounds difficult, and sometimes it was.  But it was parked at our sending base, so we had some access to community meals, a pool, a shower with space to move, and the whole campus to run around on.  That really helped.  We were able to take part in community life there, which isn't quite like what I just described wanting, but is something we treasure.  In the mid- summer, we took the camper to NY for a few weeks and parked it at my parents' house, so we could visit our supporting churches here and send the kids to their familiar summer camp.  Then, we were back down to PA for the remainder of the summer, looking in earnest for more supporting churches and a place to live in the winter.

Finally, we realized that we would have to move to NY and into this house.  It's Todd's parents' house, but they aren't here now.  In God's incredible timing, He moved them into the parsonage of a small church as Todd's dad became a pastor for the first time.  I'll be honest- I didn't want to do it.  I thought that PA was the way to go, and that more churches down there had showed interest in our work than we would ever get up here.  Todd didn't have a job here, either.  It didn't seem right- we hadn't accomplished what we'd gone to PA to do, which was find support for our ministry. *Sigh.* But we came.  And just to make sure we stayed put, the camper which was home for so long was obliterated in a major accident (my fault).


Here's a verse for me: 

Jer 33:2-3  "I, the LORD, do these things. I, the LORD, form the plan to bring them about. I am known as the LORD. I say to you, 'Call on me in prayer and I will answer you. I will show you great and mysterious things which you still do not know about.'

Todd has a job that he loves, and we have space to do school.  And the churches here are alive and well, after all.  We're reviving old friendships and making new ones.  Hope remains that we can move to that unnamed country (yes, I know many readers know, but I am trying to keep this blog neutral).  Even if we don't, God's got this!  I couldn't have, and wouldn't have, chosen much of what happened to us this year.  And then I couldn't and wouldn't have seen God move and felt His loving care like I do.  So I hold my hopes and dreams in an open hand, willing to let Him show me more 'great and mysterious things.'

God at Work

This summer, when I shared about our work at a couple of churches, I challenged people to consider writing up the story of God at work in their lives.  I wanted to inspire people to think about the many different media that made it possible for them to hear the gospel.  How did God use friends and family, pastors, strangers, books, music, or His voice to speak to you?  I also mentioned that my pastor's wife, Marilyn Palumbo, had done an autobiographical talk at our retreat this past spring, and suggested her format of using decades.  Weeks later, I'm getting around to writing mine.  Here goes:


How was God at work in the first 10 years of my life? 
Well, I was born into a family that were Easter and Christmas Christians (at the time).  I have one older sister who is 18 months older than me and was adopted when my parents thought that they could not have children.  I came along as a "surprise" later, and yes, this dynamic did affect how I turned out, although I wasn't aware of that until later.  My parents were a little older when I was born, but they wouldn't be considered so now.  We lived in a tiny town in Upstate New York where my father had lived all his life.  Although we didn't go to church much, I knew all the stories and believed in God.  After we moved to a new house outside the village, I spent a lot of time in the woods near our house by myself, and I would talk to God about things.

At the age of around 8 or 9 I began going to church, the United Methodist Church in our town where my parents were married and I was baptized.   Part of the reason I asked to be taken was that my grandmother clearly really wanted us to go.  I started reading the Bible from the beginning then, but I never got very far.  Someone always drove me to church and left me for Sunday school, then came back for me later.  Sometimes they went to the service.  Even my grandmother didn't go all that often, because she was in a wheelchair by then.  One thing I remember specifically about going to church with my grandmother was that she wouldn't let me take Communion.  At the United Methodist Church, they never withhold Communion- it is up to individuals to decide whether they want it.  Grandma's house-helper leaned over and told me, "She doesn't want you to take it until you know what it means."  I am really grateful for that, because it showed me that religion isn't just about blank participation in a ritual, and that one should understand what they are doing.

As I got into sixth grade, my Dad ran for political office and started going to church again.  My sister hated going, and at first I wasn't sure I wanted to go again either.  The church had changed buildings and combined with another local church, and I didn't know anyone.  But I went, was invited to youth group, and got involved.  I sang in the choir, and again I am glad I did because I learned so much good theology from hymns and anthems we sang.  I would say I was around 10 when I began asking myself whether I really believed in things like God, Creation and Jesus.  One Christmas Eve, during services, I said to myself, "But for God to come to earth like that would have to be a miracle...." and I heard a low voice say, "It was."  From that day on, I was in church on Sunday.

In my teenage years, I equated my relationship with God to taking part in church activities.  I didn't just do youth group; I was a leader at both my local church and the district and conference-wide youth events.  I helped plan and execute events for hundreds of teens.  I brought my faith with me into school; everyone knew I was a Christian, and I didn't hesitate to write papers and do other projects from my faith perspective.  In fact, the thesis paper I wrote for honors English on creation and evolution helped convert my Sunday School Superintendent's atheist husband into a church-goer.  I'm glad God used me for that, but I also developed terrible habits of using the Bible to say what I wanted it to say, and I know I turned some people away from Christianity with my attitudes.  I didn't have access to really good teaching, or even know about the great Christian music that was being produced.  If I ever met a really conservative Christian, I wrote them off as a nut (even though others might have done the same for me).

I didn't party in high school, and I didn't drink much.  I had some boyfriends, but I kept them at a distance.  I had strong convictions about some things, though I don't know where I got them!  My parents weren't particularly conservative, and I wouldn't even say my church taught those things.  They accepted everyone.  I think I used convictions as a way to keep people away from me, because I was, and am, really introverted.  I also think that God was just protecting me, and set me apart, and I am glad.  It wasn't much fun at the time though and I didn't have very many close friends other than at youth group.  If you read my very first post on this blog, you know that I also dedicated myself to my husband at age 17, and I didn't have much temptation to chase boys after that.

After a trip to China at 16, I decided that I wanted to become a missionary.  I lived traveling and learning languages (I was already learning Latin and Spanish) and I wanted to serve God, so being a missionary seemed like a natural next step.  I was 17 when I went away to Brandeis University for college.  Some thought of Brandeis as a strange choice; my English teacher (with whom I did not get along), asked whether I was aware that it is a Jewish school.  Yes, I knew that, but I also knew they prided themselves on their liberality and would therefore, I reasoned, be bound to accept me as different!  Truth be told, I got a lot of "Why did you come here?" from my classmates in the first weeks of Freshman year, but they got used to me.

At Brandeis I got involved with a branch of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  I know God was in this one!  I really thought that I would go into that club and become a leader, and own the place.  And in truth all I envisioned was bake sales.  I had no idea that my religion was only skin deep.  It was there that I discovered that I didn't have the first clue who Jesus was.  I had to ask myself whether I was still a Christian, since they turned my definition of it upside down.  I studied the Bible for the first time with these people, people who loved on me at great personal expense, even when I tried very hard to drive them away!  I will forever be grateful for Steve, Grace, Sean, Katie, Stanley, Chad, Lisa, Susanna and Kristen, among others.  Some of these people are still my closest friends.  I grew so much as a person through their persistent prayers and presence in my life for those four years.  I studied Chinese at college and went on an InterVarsity Global Project mission trip to China after my Junior year. 

And so I entered my twenties a different person!  Todd and I married when he was 20 and I was 21.  By then I had become bitter about all that I hadn't learned at the church where I grew up.  I refused to be married in the United Methodist Church!  We got married in a city park, by Todd's campus pastor.  How optimistic and crazy we were!  Within 6 weeks we were pregnant.  Our first daughter was born in June, and in August of that year we moved to Wheaton, Illinois so that I could attend graduate school in Missions and Intercultural Studies.  (My undergraduate degree was an Independent Major in International Politics and Sustainable Development, which I designed so that I could be prepared to go anywhere on the mission field).   I dragged that poor, cranky, barfing 2-month old to classes with me, sometimes setting up a playpen at the back of a classroom if I couldn't get a babysitter.  I graduated a  year later in December, and our second daughter was born a week later.

One great thing that God worked while I was at Wheaton College was to help me reconcile my United Methodist roots with my now evangelical leanings; through a class about wholism, I realized that just as God is Father, Son and Spirit, He ministers to our physical, spiritual and emotional needs.  Some churches reach physical needs, while others minister to the spiritual.  I had become a snob, and this class helped me put things back into perspective.  Now I can say it's the Methodism in us that makes us want to serve behind the scenes on the mission field, and the evangelical in us that wants to help preach the gospel.

While I was in school, Todd worked for Tyndale House Publishers, at the height of popularity because of the Left Behind Series.  He worked so much overtime, so that I could go to school.  It was difficult, but we also felt the nearness of God as every month our bills were paid.  Strangers stopped me on the street and offered me baby clothes!  We attended a great church and made some friends right away.  Later we would say that we felt closer to God then than when things were going well.  We had one paycheck for rent, and the other had to last all through the month for food, gas, car insurance, clothes and tithe.  We never went hungry, but we didn't always have all the coffee and chocolate I wanted, either.  For health care, I took the baby to immunization and weigh-in clinics, and no one ever got sick enough to need a doctor.

The rest of the decade wasn't as good.  At the time it felt like a Decade of Disaster.  As soon as I was done at school, we started making a series of bad decisions.  No, strike that.  We made one big bad decision.  That was to try camping ministry.  We thought that maybe we could use it as our skill in missions.  It wasn't that camping ministry itself was a miscalculation, but our motives were wrong.  We accepted jobs at a Christian camp near home in NY, and our decision was just as much about going back towards family as it was about following God.  We walked into a bad situation at camp, one that I won't go into here.  We were so young, and we had no people skills.  I actually suspected it was bad from the beginning, so much so that I developed a little nervous tic in my eyebrow!  But I knew how much Todd wanted to be near his family, and I wanted to bring the grandkids home to my parents, so I said nothing.

Our camping jobs lasted nine months; we left there devastated.  Since the job included housing, we had to move suddenly and ended up in a space borrowed from my mom's church.  We had to put all our belongings in storage and Todd had to take a sales job, and pull strings there to get cleared for an apartment.  We ended up taking jobs we could get by on, but I was miserable.  I realized that it was simply the first time I had failed at anything, and it was failure with a capital F to be left nearly homeless and as far away from foreign missions as I could be.  We were so wounded by this experience that we put all of our dreams on hold.  I worked part-time as a secretary and delivered newspapers; Todd eventually got a job at a warehouse.

We bought our house in 2002 and I hated every minute of it.  The first time I wrote my return address on an envelope, I cried.  What had I done, buying property when I was supposed to be living in some exotic location, sharing the gospel with natives?  I had promised my husband a grass hut!  When my Dad was unloading boxes and furniture into the new house, he complained about how many times he had done this for me (the camp, the borrowed parsonage, the apartment and now the house, in the space of 4 years), and I promised him a 5-year break.  It was one of those things I just knew- that this would not be forever but that we needed to rest, heal and, I realized later, grow up.

As we approached our thirties, I was desolate.  Many nights I cried, alone because Todd worked nights.  Even though I wanted to believe that home ownership was a 5 year plan, I saw no light at the end of the tunnel.  I kept asking Todd what he wanted to be when he grew up, so I could figure out how we could do that thing as missionaries.  If I had learned one thing, it was that to be successful we could not squeeze ourselves into a mold, but that we would have to do ministry from wherever our hearts were.  The trouble was, Todd said he wanted to be a sound man when he grew up!  I was having some fun doing youth ministry, but that wasn't a great fit, either.  Where in the world did God need a missionary sound man and an overqualified secretary?

In 2005 our youth work led us to the man who could answer that question, Derek Levendusky of Isaiah Six Ministries.  We asked that question and he pointed us towards Turkey, where an organization needed us both.  From that moment on, our journey had direction.  We had another bad experience with a missions agency, and it almost knocked us back off track.  But we did sell the house, almost 5 years to the day later.  And we made a tidy profit, which paid off all my (weighty) student loans and paid for a year at Bible school for Todd. Thus began our thirties!  God gave us a son in 2003 and another daughter in 2007.  Off we went, all six, to an apartment while Todd studied, and we continued to see God healing and shedding new light on the bad experiences we'd had.

Finally, in 2008 we came to our current agency and were accepted.  Todd has been overseas several times doing what he loves, and I have discovered the joys of homeschooling, among other things.  That's a subject for another blog.  Certainly it has been a journey that has changed me, and perhaps also changed the direction of our childrens' lives, and I couldn't begin to explain it now.

How has God been at work in my thirties?  I have realized, from hearing his voice and from the counsel of both good friends and strangers, that my success doesn't lie in accomplishing missions, or achieving anything in this life.  I have heard Him say that I'm already everything He wants me to be.  Five years ago, even two years ago, I was sure that if I didn't manage to get to the mission field, I would be a Failure again.  I was driven to become what I said that I would become.  Today, although I desperately want to get to our chosen field, my success or failure in this adventure doesn't define me.  I've learned that just walking with God is enough, even if we're not going where I think we are going.  Even if I can't see 5 steps ahead of us. To paraphrase John Piper, "Missions isn't the main thing.  Worship is."  I won't be despised or neglected, for I am accepted.  I only want to be what He wants me to be.   A worshiper.  I'll be that for as many decades as He gives me.

How is God at work in your life?