Welcome to our blog! Wow - neither of us ever thought we would be writing those words. We have nothing against it, we simply didn't see ourselves as the "blogging type"...It's a small example of the many changes happening in our lives these days. We are now proud "bloggers" and we will do our best to make this an entertaining and informative way to stay connected to friends and family over the next year - thanks for logging on!
By now, most of you know that we have decided to follow a desire that we believe the Lord has put on our hearts by accepting appointment as Special Service Personnel (SSP) with South America Mission. In January, we will head to Santa Marta, Colombia to serve the people of that community for approximately one year.
To give you a little bit of context, a couple of months before we got married, we began talking about a potential transition out of Arlington and the window of opportunity that we would have as a young married couple with few things tying us down. We discussed plenty of different options but we continually found ourselves drawn to the opportunity to serve in some sort of missions capacity in another country. We made a lot of contacts and after several meetings we were confused to find nothing but closed doors. We had breakfast with Kirk Ogden, a family friend and Executive Director of SAM, in July and while we were ready to pack up and leave ASAP after the wedding, we were told that South America Mission generally does not send newlyweds into the field. Trusting Kirk's advice and wanting to protect our marriage at all costs, we began to look for a new route essentially saying, "Lord, we thought you wanted us to go...what now?"
Several weeks later, we received an email from Kirk in which he presented an opportunity for us to go to Santa Marta. In some ways, the opportunity seemed to fit what we were feeling drawn to: our ministry would revolve around a school, there would be opportunities to be involved in the school's sports programs, there would be chances for self-starters to see an area of need and come up with a way to meet that need. However, in other ways, we found ourselves saying "That would be crazy": we can barely find Colombia on a map, we don't know the language, we don't know the culture or anyone in the whole country.
Several weeks later, we received an email from Kirk in which he presented an opportunity for us to go to Santa Marta. In some ways, the opportunity seemed to fit what we were feeling drawn to: our ministry would revolve around a school, there would be opportunities to be involved in the school's sports programs, there would be chances for self-starters to see an area of need and come up with a way to meet that need. However, in other ways, we found ourselves saying "That would be crazy": we can barely find Colombia on a map, we don't know the language, we don't know the culture or anyone in the whole country.
After months of discernment, and despite questions and fears, we decided in November to accept SAM's appointment as Special Service Personnel to Colombia. We will spend the majority of our time teaching English in a school in Santa Marta called Colegio Cristiano La Esperanza. The school has a great reputation - it is one of the top ranked schools in the state and the Lord is doing special things in Colombia through La Esperanza - we are excited to join their team. We also anticipate being involved with the sports programs at La Esperanza and jumping into the Santa Marta community in whatever other areas of need and opportunity that we see.
The Colombian school year runs from February to November, which puts us on a very tight schedule. We are busy packing up our house, trying to finish our jobs well and spending time with family and friends as we prepare to leave. You can imagine how those, coupled with the usual Christmas "to-dos", have us running around quite a bit. We have a lot to do but we are confident that we can make it happen and that the Lord will bless us in those efforts.
The Colombian school year runs from February to November, which puts us on a very tight schedule. We are busy packing up our house, trying to finish our jobs well and spending time with family and friends as we prepare to leave. You can imagine how those, coupled with the usual Christmas "to-dos", have us running around quite a bit. We have a lot to do but we are confident that we can make it happen and that the Lord will bless us in those efforts.
We will give more details on this very soon, but we wanted to touch on the subject of finances and ask you to partner with us as we try to love the people of Santa Marta. Through prayer and with humble hearts, we have decided to contribute our personal finances to support our cost of living in Santa Marta. We want Jesus' name to be glorified in Santa Marta, and the reality is that money is one way to break down barriers to this goal. Rather than ask you to contribute money that would be used to support us, we want to ask that you contribute money to directly support La Esperanza and SAM's mission in Santa Marta. All of the money that we raise will go directly into the SAM team's "Ministry Account" to be use to impact the local community for Christ. In the coming months, as we identify needs in the community, we will communicate with you about specific ways that your donations could help the people of Santa Marta and advance SAM's mission there. In the end, we hope that this structure will produce "more dollars hitting the ground" in meaningful ways in Santa Marta. If you would like more information on how to partner with us please let us know - you can donate online through the link on the bottom right of our SAM webpage, located HERE.
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