Wow! What a year...

Musings from John:

Well, the first thing on my mind is that we have gone through some major changes.

I left my job as a minister at Fairfax Church of Christ to go back to school full-time to get a Masters of Missions at Abilene Christian University. To do this, we moved to Abilene, TX, on Jan 3, the same day I started school. Needless to say, Abilene is somewhat different than DC. I took 42 graduate hours in 2005 while working in two part-time jobs and trying to maintain some sanity with my family (the reason why this blog is so far behind).

It feels good to be able to take a moment to think about the past year.

We have sacrificed our savings, stability, and life with friends to learn to be tools to serve others around the world. If nothing else, we have learned some incredible lessons. The most important is that no matter how hard or weird the circumstances, you can get by with the support of friends and family. In fact, our entire plans for the future, trying to make a difference in people's lives and planting communities of faith that are models of love and care is dependent on the vision and charity of friends.

There have been some sweet surprises and some bitter moments. We have made some new friends, but we really miss the ones we left. We came to Abilene to learn, but it has come at a heavy cost, and some lessesons were not really all that valuable. I hope to post some of the best of what we have learned over the upcoming weeks.

I hope that this forum can be a discussion between friends on such topics as what is a missionary (really, a topic for everyone), lessons learned, discipleship, and what is truly important and worthy. That discussion would be worth any price.