History Trippin' 

Coming home was strange.  It was almost like we had never left.  We jumped right back into the things we had always done.  I started teaching a 14 week US Geography class for our homeschool support group and the boys picked up basketball, then baseball with the church leagues.  The only truly difficult part was finding work for my husband, but there was no way to predict that our economy would be in such dire straights when we left.  That’s just a chance we took. 

In no time at all we were as busy as we were before we left, and my heart sank, feeling that we hadn’t learned anything, or at least what we had learned hadn’t stuck.  My husband was doing freelance IT work and was gone all the time.  I was ferrying the boys from one activity to the next and spending hours planning and teaching 20 other kids.  We were being sucked back into that same old rut.  It was time to refocus. 

Toward the end of the trip we began discussing what to do next, in light of what we had learned on the road.   Living in the RV we discovered that we really didn’t need all of the things that we had collected over the years.  In fact, they were more of a burden than a blessing – sucking away all of our time, energy and money.  Instead, we decided that we’d rather focus our energy on something that we felt had lasting value that we could do as a family.  We know that being together brings us joy and the years that we have with our children are fleeting.  (That joy doesn’t come immediately – there is an adjustment period where you just get on each other’s nerves, but eventually you learn to really love having each other near.)  So we began to ask God what we could do.  A few months later (it felt like an eternity of waiting) God arranged for us to cross paths with Pioneer Bible Translators.   

Pioneer Bible Translators is a non-profit Christian organization whose mission is to provide every tribe, tongue and nation with a Bible they can read.  They are investing their lives in the only things that will last forever…the Word of God and people’s souls.  That is something we can get behind.  The mission is far more than just providing people with Bibles.  PBT ministers exactly the way Jesus did.  These missionaries leave their homes (as Jesus left Heaven), learn the language and culture of their new home (as Jesus did), and function as part of the community.  They develop relationships – building trust by loving and serving (as Jesus did).  The goal is to share the gift of eternal life (as Jesus did) through God’s Word.   

We have been given the opportunity to serve in Tanzania, Africa.  That branch, which is currently working on 10 different translations, is in desperate need of IT help (my husband) and a teacher for the missionary kids (me).  Looking back we can see that God has been preparing us for this for over a year.  All of our stuff is still in storage.  We all have current passports.  I have a pension that will cover part of the expense (there is no pay for this position -in fact, we’ll have to raise support to cover any expenses that we can’t cover) so we can get there faster than a lot of people.  Our kids are already homeschooled, so that won’t be a big change for them, and they are looking forward to going.  They make friends really easily and, as we have seen on the RV trip, can adapt to just about anything.   We now know that we can live with less and still be happy, as long as we’re together.  So, if everything works out, we’ll be heading to Africa in September or October.   On to the next adventure…