Beginning at the beginning

I never thought I would be a missionary. Ever. To be fair, I never planned to be a pastor’s wife either, I am a pastor’s daughter. It was a fabulous way to grow up, however, I thought I wanted something different as a grownup.

But, I fell in love with a boy who was called by God to be a worship pastor and here we are. If I am being truly honest, he did tell me, offhandedly, on an occasion or two, that he thought he might like to be a missionary someday. I did carefully question him, “Has God called you to the mission field?”

“No, not at this point.” He answered, truthfully.
I heard what I wanted to and we entered into full time ministry. When he was trying to decide what ordination track to take (elder or deacon), he chose elder because of that vague “someday” he’d spoken of earlier. He wanted to be prepared.

One fateful day we were called from our wonderful position as worship pastor and wife, to be church planters. At this point, he was sure that this was the “mission field.” Right here in Oregon (our own backyard, so to speak), we were going to reach the unreached and grow the kingdom by planting a church. I breathed a sigh of relief and felt a smug sense of satisfaction that I had been “right”; the U.S. is a mission field in its own right. “Someday” had come and gone. We were safe.

Well, let me stop right there and clarify a few things. 1. Church planting is in no way “safe.” and 2. It was apparently only a kind of preparation for what really was to come.

After eight years of hard, fulfilling work, of sacrifice and abundant blessings, of heart wrenching times and amazing faith-building times, of isolated loneliness and deep relationships in a rich community, God was calling us away. Away from our church family, our community, our kids and our extended family and country.

I should probably back up a bit and let you know how we moved from being the pastors of a church we had planted eight years ago, to being called to Bangkok, Thailand.

In our little church, one of the outreach programs we had was a children’s theater company. We used our drama and musical talents to bring the Arts to the children of Redmond, Oregon. We produced plays, taught drama workshops, lead bands, and directed choirs. The Children’s Theater Company even influenced our VBS. Each year we took the drama provided by the publishers and presented it with detailed costumes and elaborate sets. One year our giving emphasis for VBS was to actually give to a couple serving overseas who would be in our area. They came, they spoke to us. We fell in love with them. They loved our drama and had a vision for a Work and Witness team that would come and perform drama in the schools in Poland, where they are currently serving. A year and a half later, in March of 2015, we boarded a plane with a group of 14 students, ages 13-18, and 6 adults. We spent 10 intense, fabulous days in a country that was previously barely on our radar, Poland. We met some truly amazing people. We also got to know our hosts better.

The following year, we were invited to come back to help run summer English camps. 2016 just happened to be Kevin’s sabbatical year, we also just happened to have some friends who were on their way home from a year of teaching in Southeast Asia. They wanted to meet us in China, where they had taught 20 years ago, to do some touring and visiting. So, in the summer of 2016 our family took a two and a half month adventure. We travelled from China to London to Poland to France and home again. We literally circumvented the globe. It was a truly amazing experience. There are so many encounters I could recount, but one of the most interesting was our experience in Poland. While there we worked at a youth camp. In the morning we taught English language workshops to help the students improve their English speaking skills. In the evening we ran the club time, leading worship and speaking to the students about living life with Jesus. The second portion of our time was spent in Krakow, during World Youth days working with the Catholic Church.

Before we could go work in Poland for a month, we were asked to go through cross cultural orientation, a weekend seminar put on by Nazarene Global Ministry Center for people considering longer term international service. At the time, we were considering a month in Poland, but it put us on their “radar”, so to speak. It was also the weekend that Kevin learned how few full people were actually serving overseas full time. His heart was touched and he, unbeknownst to me, prayed that if God needed him, he would go. Later in the year, we were asked to attend a week-long candidate assessment event. At this point, I was very hesitant. I had not heard from the Lord in this area. I had to inclination to leave my life. I was pretty upfront about this, but they still wanted us to come as long as I would remain open to God’s call. So we went. Afterward, we were asked to consider a position in Southeast Asia, specifically Thailand. I was not ready to say yes. I needed to actually hear from God, audibly if possible. They asked us to pray and we asked for time. Specifically, till the end of summer. We wanted to take our sabbatical and see what God would do.

Serving side by side with our Catholic brothers and sisters, worshipping with them, and then worshipping with our Nazarene brothers and sisters in Poland really brought to life the Kingdom of God, the Body of Christ in a way I’d never seen before. Add to that the believers we met in the other nations we visited, the Church we worshipped and fellowshipped with in London, and suddenly, the Kingdom of God really didn’t have any boundaries, the family of God has numerous varied faces and it is beautiful.

One of the beautiful facets of the body of Christ can be found in Redmond, Oregon at a little eight year old church called The Bridge Church of the Nazarene. We love it there. We love the people. They are our family in as true a sense as can be found. These are our people. We missed them while we were away and we didn’t particularly want to miss them anymore. But through a lot of prayer, reflection, scripture searching, many conversations, and seemingly random events, the call became clearer and unmistakable. So, we said, “Yes, we will go” and so begins our journey.