My Call to the Home

    
       When we first came to the mission field, I knew I was called to the mission field.  I had felt that from the age of 12.  We went to language school, and placed Katrina, then 3, and Heather who was 9 months old and still nursing into a pre-school on campus while we went to class for 7 hours a day.
      After language school, with the urging of our mission team, I was just as involved with ministry as my husband.  I hired a nanny so that I could focus on the cultural learning courses and language tutors each day.  We put Katrina into a preschool and I even taught at it one day a week to help with the cost of tuition.
     When we returned to the field after our first furlough, suddenly things were changing.  We weren't a part of the mission team we first came with, and were working on our own. 

      But, something else happened.

God called me to stay at home.

 

  I remember the specific moment... I was sitting in the car with the girls who had fallen asleep on the way home.  I was praying, talking to God and listening.  I felt him specifically telling me that for this time in my life, I needed to focus on the kids and the home.  That other ministry things would come again, but for this time in my life, they were my ministry.

 

        That year, was a very stressful year for our family.  We moved twice, we had interns (two married couples that lived with us in our house), we had a visiting team, I found out I was pregnant and we weren't sure where to have the baby, we had to help close out the mission work of a fellow missionary.   During all of this turmoil, I knew that I had to be the rock of stability for our kids.   God had called me to do it.

 

       During this time, I also started homeschooling Katrina for the first time, for Kindergarten. 

 

  But, more importantly, I was working hard at making the children feel safe and loved in the midst of all of the turmoils of mission life!

 

 

     Since that time, we have had many more moves, more changes, more teams.... and I have not yet felt the release from the call that God gave me sitting in my driveway all those years ago.

 

                     So, for now.... my ministry is my family.  Yes, I do other ministry, but they are my main focus, until God tells me otherwise.