Over the past two months many (but unfortunately not all) of you have heard, to one extent or another, of the calling that God has placed on our hearts to serve Him at Black Forest Academy in Germany (for those of you who haven’t heard, please read on). Unfortunately, our lives have been very busy through this holiday season and we feel that we have not adequately expressed to many of you what our vision is, how it came to be, and how committed we are to it. We hope to explain all that in this email, and ask for your continued prayer as we move towards this calling.
Our calling goes all the way back to 1997, when Emily made the pivotal decision to take a year off of school between high school and college. During this year she served as a teacher for missionary kids at a school in Chiba, Japan. This experience engraved into her heart a passion for third culture kids; especially for helping them find a sense of cultural identity while growing up between cultures. So strong was this passion that it swayed her studies in college and caused her to write here Master’s Thesis on “Third Culture Kids Re-entry and Identity Formation: From Theory to Application.”
In addition to Emily’s specific passion for third culture kids, both of us have had a joint passion for missions in general. This passion was cultivated through our involvement in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at college, where among our other involvements we both served separate terms on the Evangelism Team. As we graduated college, got married, and began our lives together as a family, several barriers made missions work an unlikely fit for us. For one, we were young and (though we didn’t realize it at the time) inexperienced. Emily’s health has also always been a major concern (for over 14 years she has battled with Crohn’s disease). Ultimately, Michael took a job in law enforcement that he knew would provide the family with good benefits, would allow him to pursue a career serving others, would allow us to support those missionaries we knew on the field, and (not the least important point) would allow him to avoid a standard desk job. Then came the kids (four in a row), and before we knew it life was flying by. We still felt a pull towards missions, but we had no clear direction or calling. As we prayed and talked about it, we continued to feel as if we were in a holding or waiting pattern; that it wasn’t our time yet.
This past year, however, God has been moving fiercely in our hearts. In retrospect, it seems like He was preparing us to be mobilized. Last fall we felt a clear but difficult calling to a new church body. During that process, God led us to the Christian and Missionary Alliance as a larger body, and by February He had led us specifically to York Alliance Church. It was also no accident that we “just happened” to get plugged into our specific Life Group where we were challenged spiritually to grow, to serve, and to love (and be loved) sacrificially. Through this amazing group of friends, the Sunday teaching, and regular prayer we continued to hear God challenging us to go, but still we did not know where, what, or how. We looked into some short-term opportunities, but found that with my work schedule (I have to schedule large blocks of leave like vacation time a year in advance) it would be nearly impossible. So we continued to pray, and to get involved in our newfound community. We also struggled with the idea that we didn’t seem to meet the concept of “ideal” Christians. We felt a little too rough around the edges to even be considered for missions work.
During this time, many other things happened that in retrospect we believe were the hands of God lifting barriers to us serving him as missionaries. One of the largest of these did not seem like a barrier being lifted at all when it happened. In the end of May through July Emily began having a series of Crohn’s-related intestinal pains that were debilitating. By the end of July she found herself undergoing an emergency bowel-resectioning resulting in the complete removal of the diseased portion of her intestine. Though recovery was long and we were not without our doubts, Emily now appears to be in a state of surgically induced remission! This, coupled with the knowledge she has gained over the years on how to manage her disease, has increased her horizons for service incredibly. In addition to Emily’s surgery, I have felt the growing sense over the past few years that God is calling me out of my current profession. It was a vague feeling at first, but it has grown steadily, and it peaked this past fall (and particularly on November 8th) with me coming to the realization that there was no long-term redeeming value in the work that I was doing. I was (and still am) owned by my job, unable to truly serve God in the way I felt called to because of scheduling, being on-call, and working long hours. All of this would be okay if my work felt valuable, but I have come to realize that in my current profession I am unable to impact the hearts of others for the glory of God’s kingdom.
In the soil of this context the seeds of a definitive calling were planted. On October 10th a missionary family that our church partners with (The Straws) returned from Gabon to share some of the work God has been doing through their aviation ministry in the past few years. During this presentation, Alace talked about how they had sent their kids off to boarding school for the first time, and how it had impacted her. I saw the pain and the struggle that this decision caused her and I connected with it. I realized that being a dorm parent was something I could do; I could (and in fact do) love kids. I could help kids walk through the struggle of being separated from their family, and I could comfort missionaries struggling with being separated from their kids, allowing them to continue in the work that God has set before them. So I talked it over with Emily, and we decided, “Yeah we could do that.” But that was as far as it went. We continued to live life like we had been for the past year.
Things started rapidly changing November 8th. I was working on some mock interviews with co-workers when it really started to sink in that I was not in the profession God wanted me in any more. I researched dorm parenting that night and found Black Forest Academy (among many other schools). As I continued to look into BFA, Emily and I really felt a connection with the vision and the people there (we read many blogs). On a whim, we emailed them for more information. In just a few hours we had a response from one of their recruiters who stated that there was a need for dorm parents, he was going to be in our area doing some recruiting, and he wanted to meet with us. We were not expecting that kind of response at all. On top of this, we were still actively wrestling with the teaching that we had heard the Sunday before this. Our pastor was preaching on Mark chapter six, which includes the feeding of the five thousand. What was really driven home to us was the concept that when we discover our inadequacy God wants us to offer what we have. When we do, He is faithful to provide for the world’s needs through us. In the context of our lives, the following part of this sermon really struck us:
“Here’s the thing: God is calling you to something. And he’s already equipped you for that something as much as he’s going to equip you for it. And see, we like to get to the place where we’re ready. Like, I got this thing, let’s jump in and do it. But see that doesn’t work that way. He says, ‘here’s the responsibility that you have,’ and He gives us the responsibility. And then we realize that we can’t do it. And then He says, ‘what do you have?’ And we offer our pathetic inadequacy. And He says, ‘good, that’s all I wanted.’ And he breaks it, gives thanks to God, and He hands it back to us, and we find out that it’s enough.”
The need was there. Our hearts were there. The only thing standing in the way was our feelings of inadequacy: the feeling that we weren’t good enough Christians, the feeling that we hadn’t been with our church family long enough to be worthy of support, and the feeling that we had to secure the stability of our own family’s future instead of trusting in God to provide for us. As we have continued to investigate the possibility of entering this ministry, all of these barriers have begun to evaporate. We have received encouragement from our Church and both our Christian and non-Christian friends and family. Many steps of the process have challenged us, but whenever we get discouraged God always seems to send just the right word of encouragement at just the right time.
And so it is in light of all of this that we truly feel called to pursue this ministry. We have begun, and at this point are neck-deep in, the application process. There are still many points along the way that could keep us from this ministry, but we trust that if this is what God wants us to do, He will pave the way, and if it is not, He will hold us back. We ask that you would all keep us in prayer through this process, specifically that He would accomplish what He wants, regardless of what we want. We also hope that this better explains our calling to you. There are honestly many more little things that contributed to it, but for the sake of brevity (don’t laugh too hard) I tried to stick with the main points. We will continue to update our blog as we progress down this path.
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