Jana off to Saudi

Yesterday Rachel's mother moved to Saudi Arabia. Yep, Saudi Arabia. She will be teaching 3rd grade at a medical compound outside of Tief. She was so excited/nervous when we said good bye to her at the Atlanta airport yesterday. I am so glad that she is taking this opportunity to do something new in here life. She, like many people, get into a rut with work and other activities that it seems that life has lost its "life" and there needed to be a change.

I remember when Rachel was talking to her mom on the phone while were driving in the Traveling Mercies' RV about what she would do if she was not teaching in Savannah. She told Rachel about a program where you teach over seas. She checked it out, got an offer in the Middle East and as of now lives in the mountains of southeast Saudi Arabia. I am so happy for her. I am glad that she took the risk to get out of her comfort zone and do something that seems totally insane. Please pray for her in her adventure of a lifetime.

Our Home

Pretoria South Africa rachelandchris@gmail.com

One thing about Africa that really excites me is that Rachel and I will have our own home. It has been over 2 years, Wow. Being on the road in a RV has been nice, but it's not the feeling of home. The basement (which was a huge blessing and I in no means saying that we did not love staying with the Hancocks or that we didn't appreciate them letting us live there for next to nothing.) just did not offer the feeling of "home" that we were really wanting.

As some of you know, Rachel and I were preparing to buy a house where ever we were to move next. When my aunt Pat died in November of 2003, she left us some money that helped us get out of debt and gave us a little extra to put down on a house. We had no idea that the next place we would move would be to South Africa. However, when we committed to moving there we looked at the housing market and got a really good deal on a new home being built in a neighborhood called Dane Hill. So we got one. It is a nice, little 3 bedroom, 2 bath with a 2 car garage and a little yard. It's the American dream. That is if the American dream is to move to a third world country and buy a house with bars on the window, but whatever.

So here it is, our home, our first home. I can not wait until November 1st when we get to finally have a place that is just for the two of us.

Travel Plans

We have finallized our travel plans to South Africa. We are leaving Atlanta on August 31st to go to New York. We are going on Amtrak and are so excited about taking a train. We will spend a week with our friends Tim and Suzy and then we fly to South Africa on September 7th.

Moving to Africa

Welcome to our blog.

Rachel and I have been working for the past few years with a performing arts ministry called Traveling Mercies (www.themercies.com) where we have done drama and comedy at Christian conferences, camps, churches, schools etc. As of the end of August Traveling Mercies will be now more. When we decided to be done with TM, Rach and I were really looking forward to living a more normal life. Perhaps start to settle down, have some kids, stop living in an RV with another married couple and a single guy. You know, more normal. Well a couple of weeks after we decided to call it quits we were working a youth conference in Cincy and a good friend of ours from South Africa was going to be there, Flaps. Flaps toured with us for a couple of months 2 years ago and he and his wife became good friends with Rachel and myself. Well to make a long story short, Flaps asked us to come over and work with him in South Africa. Rach and I thought and prayed a lot about it and went to visit the ministry and knew right away that this was something that we need to do, so we are moving to South Africa.

The ministry that we will be working with is called C-Kruis and is a performing arts ministry that uses music, dance and drama to teach the gospel. It is two fold ministry. There are two teams of 40 college-age adults that travel around SA doing shows at churches and schools. The other part of the ministry if for the young adults in the ministry. There is a large focus on the young adults, building them up through discipling, coulseling and biblical training so that when they Leave C-Kruis they have a good solid bible background, have had therapy to deal with issues in their past and train them to be affective leaders where ever it is they go after C-Kruse.

That's it in a nut shell. Rachel and I are going to SA to tour with one of the teams and perform at the shows and also to invest a lot of time and energy into the lives of these young adults. Rach and I have a passion for college age adults and feel that this ministry is exactly where we need to be. Touring, performing and getting a chance to work with college age adults, perfect.

Dark continent, here we come.