Our first Blog
Posted in family news by Tim on March 3rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm.
So I just created this blog space for the family so that we could let everyone know what is going on in our lives and not just those who are on the myspace network. In the future we will be seeing many changes in our lives and I hope to keep this fairly up-to-date.
Right now everything is fairly mundane. Liz is working full time with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and I am working 3 days a week or so at REI in Boise. I am enjoying getting to spend time playing with Jacob as the weather warms up. As I write this I am listening to him talk to himself in his crib, instead of taking a nap. We have actually kind of found ourselves in limbo for an extended period of time. As I mentioned earlier we are expecting to see many changes in the future so I will explain those for anyone who doesn’t already know.
Last June Liz started working for MAF. MAF (www.maf.org) is a Christian NGO that flies missionaries, relief supplies, and helps with medical evacuations among other things, in very difficult to reach parts of the world. For example, they were a very large presence after the tsunamis in Indonesia and are still flying in supplies for that effort. For several reasons last year MAF moved its headquarters from Southern CA. to Nampa ID. As Liz learned about the organization and their needs we started to feel that this was an organization that we could be part of. After many meetings with regional managers, directors and other leaders in MAF we found that they were as excited about our interests as we are about theirs. In recent years MAF has realized that they need to recruit people who are not pilots or mechanics to run bases and do administrative work overseas. This allows pilots do use their training and do what they went there to do. What this means for us is that when MAF learned that Liz and I both went to grad school for International Development they got really excited.
There are many different ways that my career with MAF might play out but in general it will look something like this: The first term we will go to a larger base, some options are Lesotho in South Africa, or Indonesia on the island of Papua. I will either spend my first 3 year term being trained as a base manager or doing some kind of administrative work. The end result will be the same however. the plan is to work toward base management or section management (i.e. manager of operations, etc…). We have finished our applications and are planning to go through candidacy in January of 2009. After that we will begin a period of full time support raising. All of MAF’s missionaries raise their own support for their living expenses and for the operations of the organization. Although we had not planned on hooking up with an organization that works this way, we have seen how supportive MAF is throughout this process. We also have the assurance of believing that this is exactly where God has lead us and what he has prepared us for.
Until January we are making small steps in the process but we will not know much more until then. The most pressing thing that we have to work on right now is to get our contacts in an orderly and up to date fashion. Because of this some of you have already had me ask you for your contact info. If we have not asked you for it though PLEASE SEND IT. We know that this is going to be a major event for our family and it is very important to us to keep in touch with our friends and family who have always been such an encouragement to us. Please send your mailing address, phone number, and e-mail address. This will insure that you get the newsletters that we send out in the future.
Well I think that is just about all I have to say. This has been a long post but I think future ones will cover less time and so they’ll be shorter. thanks for stopping by and please keep in touch. We’d love to hear from you.
Tim, Liz and Jacob Schandorff