Year in Review 2015

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (Or Seasons Greetings! to those who prefer brevity, which I’ve now destroyed with this long add-on sentence.) 

​In the spirit of the year-in-review letters that some people (much more on top of things than I) send out with Christmas cards this time of year, I thought I would give a summary of our journey in missions from start to present. If I dare to presume that I can plan for future Decembers, I hope to write a summary of each subsequent year in the December post providing a way for people to quickly find out who we are and what’s going on in our ministry by reading each December’s post. Stay tuned next December to find out if this plan succeeds for more than one year…!

By way of introduction: I am Ruth, 39 years old and the writer of this blog. I am married to Lance, 37 years old and the leader of this family (and proofreader of the blog). We have 3 boys, Josiah, 8, Micah, 6 and Alex 4 who are loads of fun, have lots of energy and keep us rightfully humble. We are all simultaneously very excited about our next stage in life as foreign missionaries, as well as sad and unsure about leaving our present known life with current friends, church and family.

Lance and I have been married for 13 years and have always shared the same vision of being missionaries. From the start of our marriage, as we tried various ways to get to the mission field, God used each situation to prepare and mature us for the mission field. It wasn’t the path we would’ve chosen, but realize the necessity of each lesson as God equipped us for ministry. 

In March of 2010 God spoke to our hearts telling us He was finally going to send us. Like Abraham, He was going to show us the place He wanted us to go and we were to be ready. Of course we thought in a few months we’d be on the field, which is definitely not what happened! What followed was four and a half years of much prayer, active waiting (working to be ready to go, while waiting on God to make it happen), seeking Him and spiritual growth. 

In 2013 we heard about The Master’s Mission (TMM), an 11-month training program equipping missionaries for the field and took a trip down to check it out. The family-oriented program equips you for work on the mission field through daily Bible classes, men’s and women’s technical classes, and remote living conditions. By May 2014 we realized we needed to make a decision if we were planning on attending TMM’s 2014-2015 school year, so sent out a few letters to people who had expressed interest in knowing about our tentative plans. God provided the support we needed so in July, Lance gave his 2 weeks, we sold our house and at the end of August headed down to North Carolina to attend The Master’s Mission’s program. 

Our September 2014-July 2015 blog posts are about our training year. We lived in a cabin with no electricity, cell, internet or phone service. We took the aforementioned classes, had veterinary classes and excursions, took hours-long tests, wrote reports, drew schematics, poured cement, schooled the boys, lived with mice, mold and maggots, and trusted God to keep our sanity. It was a rough whirlwind of a year that I wouldn’t want to repeat, but am glad to have gone through. We have had character-refining experiences and made life-long friends.

It wasn’t until July that God showed us where He wanted us to go after our training year. Again, after waiting on Him and much prayer, we feel led to go to Romania and Moldova. This past month we were able to take an exploratory trip there, got a feel for what will be necessary to bring, and made great connections with a local church and other missionaries serving the international community there. 

Currently we are back in the Erie, PA area where our sending church is located. We are living in the basement of a church member, which is an ideal setting, as we trying to organize our lives into taking, storing and giving piles. Josiah is in school and I’m homeschooling Micah (and Alex). Once God has provided the means, we will head to Iasi, Romania for a year of culture and language learning as we again wait, pray and watch as God leads us to where He would have us serve there.

Thank you for continually keeping us in your prayers, 
Ruth, for our family.