Many of you reading this blog do not know the story of how God has brought us to this point in our lives. We want to share our story with you.
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| Our arrival at Equip in Orlando! |
During a missions conference in 2005, Tim surrendered to do missions. Well, he said he’d do missions part time. He went to China on his first international mission trip in 2006. They were distributing CDs with the Gospel of John in the native tongue of a Chinese Muslim group. While he was gone, Tara was able to keep in contact via email. She could see his excitement from the trip. She expected him to come home ready to go into missions full time, but that wasn’t what happened. In 2008 Tim went on his second trip. This time, he served with a medical group in Haiti. Again, Tara expected him to come home ready to go full time into missions. Again, Tim never said a word. In 2009 Tim went on a trip to Romania that pushed him completely out of his comfort zone. He had to preach at several churches while there. Like the majority of people, Tim would rather NOT get in front of people to speak. He saw God step in and guide him every step of the way.
After each of these trips, Tim would "just happen" to run into a gentleman at our church. Each time, he would tell Tim that IT Professionals (aka smart computer type people) were needed in missions. The thought had never occurred to us before that time. When Tim returned from his trip to Romania, we began looking to see how God could use Tim's IT skills in the mission field, but only on a part-time basis, of course.
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As Tara was doing some research, she came across a conference offered by Wycliffe. It was Check-IT-Out – a conference for everything IT (computer related) and missions. As we prepared to go to the conference, we prayed for confirmation and direction as to what God would have us do. He answered that prayer. We left Check-IT-Out knowing we were to serve God through full time missions with a faith-based organization. Within a couple days of returning home, we began to sense God leading us to Papua New Guinea. Of course, we had to look the globe to figure out exactly where this country that kept "popping up" in our lives. Contrary to our limited knowledge of Geography, it was not in Africa, but it is less than 200 miles north of Australia and situated south of the equator.
We knew where God was sending us, but we weren’t sure how. Tim was insistent upon looking at three different organizations. As we continued to look at the other organizations, God kept bringing us back to Wycliffe. The other groups seemed to just fall away. We felt God showing us that we were to be a part of bringing His Word in peoples’ languages to them.
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| Andrew & Bekah in front of Wycliffe USA. |
We began the thorough application and interview process in the Spring of 2010. In July we were accepted as members of Wycliffe Bible Translators with our first assignment in Papua New Guinea. In October we completed our six week online and two week onsite training course at the Wycliffe USA headquarters in Orlando. Needless to say, we loved being “home” Orlando for those two weeks.
We are very excited to see how God is going to use our family while we are still here in the States and when we arrive at our assignment in Papua New Guinea.
