Jan. 16, 2007

Why We Go

Dear friends and family,

The next time you recieve a letter from us, we plan to be in Galati!  This week we purchased plane tickets to depart on February 12th.  We are humbled and blessed by your support...your faithful prayers, words of encouragement, and sacrificial gifts. Through your example, we have been challenged to grow in our trust of the Lord. 

We haved moved in with Byron and Karen (Robin's parents) in Crawfordsville. We still have last minute detail tasks to complete such as reading, packing, continuing to study the Romanian language and the most exciting of all: taxes! We have been in good contact with our director in Romania and he says that they are deciding on a host family for us.

This has been an interesting transition in life. I guess we have always had some sort of structure layed out for us: from high school to college to marriage and jobs. But now we have resigned our jobs and have started to pack up and say goodbye to all of you, our family and friends.  It has been hard to prepare to leave all that has been so familiar to us while packing up what we have called home.

Sometimes when we are spending time with family and friends we experience pain at the thought of leaving them.  Even harder is seeing the pain it creates in those whom we love, and feeling responsible.  We question why we are going.  But it seems that it is not long before things come time mind to remind us why we have accepted this new season with joy.  We think of the children's faces we will be seeing everyday and of the small acts of redemption we hear about in their lives. We think of the community of people we will be working with and of their heart and vision and purpose. We think of what Christ has done in our lives and of the redemption and renewal he has brought to us. And when we recall how the Lord has so clearly opened the doors and provided for this season, we feel confirmed in this decision.

What propells us the most, is when we reflect on the life of Christ...on the work of redemption and renewal and grace that God made flesh has done through the cross and resurrection. You have read several times already that we use the word "redemption."  We do this purposefully, as redemption is the theme of Christ and his work on this earth.  Redemption has been the theme of 2,000 years of Christianity, a community that together lives out of the hope that Christ can make something beautiful out of this mess we've created.  The theme is redemption—redemption of the world, of humanity.

We want to live our lives in a way that the redemption of Christ is proclaimed.  We want to be a part of the naked being clothed, the hungry being fed, the fatherless being loved, the addicted finding freedom and the forgotten being seen. We have hope that together, as the body of Christ, this can become reality.

Thank you for allowing us to share.   Please feel free to email us anytime. We will have access to it quite often and would love to hear from you.

We look forward to sharing with you soon about what we are doing and learning from the children of Galati.

Please take care and live with hope.

We love you all.
Joshua and Robin