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August 27, 2007
New beginnings
A new marriage
In July, we took a hurried flight to California to attend the wedding of Brandan, my 28-year-old son, and Marquesa (“Mac”), the newest addition to our family. Brandan teaches speech and coaches debate at Palomar Community College just north of San Diego. He and Mac met through the communications program where Brandan got his master’s, and they have been going together for about two years. We enjoyed being welcomed into Mac’s family and the chance to meet her parents, Gary and Pat, and her brother, Ty. The wedding took place in a little walled lawn in a botanical garden, a beautiful, shady oasis. It was the first time in my life that I have worn a tuxedo, and I survived the inevitable teasing from Kinsey and Emily. They sang a lilting, French duet for the ceremony, which lifted beyond our little enclave and faded out across the beds of exotic cactus, the tourists visiting the garden, and the ceaseless traffic of Southern California.
A new school year
Kinsey moved to the University of Louisville campus, where she will double major in music education and vocal performance. Moving was chaotic; Kinsey does not travel lightly! She spent the first two weeks at band camp, marching with her sousaphone (she doesn’t march lightly, either) in the hottest, muggiest August that Kentucky has ever experienced. She is now tanned, muscled, and exuberant! She phones at random times just to have the chance to debrief: “practice went so well today!” “You won’t believe the new music we get to play!” “I made it through try-outs for the top choir!” It’s wonderful that she still shares, as excited as a kindergartener, and it’s incredible to see someone’s life require so many exclamation points.
Emily is starting her senior year as a full-time international baccalaureate student in her high school. She is now beyond me in math and French, which were the last areas where I could occasionally still help her with her homework. The IB program takes up all her school time except for one class period, which she splits between choir and orchestra. Emily spends her scant free time practicing her violin, sewing beaded geckoes on her backpack, and hanging out with her boyfriend, Zach.
Starting my last year of classwork for my doctorate, I’ll juggle three classes this semester: an anthropological research methods course, a stats course that appears survivable, and a seminar where I will start on actual dissertation research.
Lora, of course, is the center of this storm, the one who listens to all our stories, the one who keeps track of the calendar and the transportation, and the one who calmly points out that it’s easy to toss our mattress on the living room floor and sleep there when the toilet explodes and floods our bedroom.
A new call
Please join us in our joy! We have accepted a call to a three-year appointment in Ethiopia, starting just about one year from now when Emily goes off to college. We will live on the campus of a girls’ school in Addis Ababa, the capital city. Lora will be an English teacher and I will mentor and train teachers for the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (meaning the “light of Jesus”), the long-time partner church of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). We are thrilled with the opportunity to work with girls’ education, which both churches see as a top priority for the development of women as leaders in Africa.
We also are faced with the task of helping raise funding for our call. The cost of the two teaching positions, including all the orientation, travel, language study, insurance for emergency evacuations, and so forth, will come to about $100,000 per year for the two of us. That is, to us, an enormous number, and our first reaction was to wonder if we’re worth it. But we remind ourselves that this appointment has been confirmed by both churches as a priority, and we realize that everyone will need to make some sacrifices. The EECMY will provide us housing, forgoing much-needed income from the rental of a guest house. Lora and I will each earn a salary of $24,000, about half of what we would make as teachers here in the States. Looked at in that light, it seems reasonable to ask others to come alongside us in support, too. We invite you to share in this call. Please keep us in prayer, write us letters, and please help financially as you are able.
We are filled with gratitude at the path that now lies clearly before us. We feel that God has prepared us over our whole lives for this call, that God is sending us where our skills can be best used, and that God will be with us there.
In the meantime, we ask you to consider your own call. We wish you joyful challenges, plenty of exclamation marks, and small moments of oasis in your life, where you can invite others into the heart of your family and make profound and sacred vows in the midst of a noisy, hurried world.
Love and peace,
Bruce and Lora
The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer
& Study, p. 259 |
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