Archive for June 2018
The reason for our big move to Taiwan is a long story to explain. I (Linda) will do my best to do that here.
If you go back to our first post with our story you'll read that we got married as we both sensed a call from God to be missionaries to Asia. Fast forward to right after we got married, my dad received a diagnosis for plasma cell leukemia which is a rare and aggressive form of multiple myeloma. Being a nurse, I knew my dad didn't have long so we moved back to be near my parents. God provided a job that fit my PhD dissertation perfectly at my mother's alma mater. We settled into a comfortable lifestyle, the pay and schedule was great as it enabled as to live with just me working and Phil going to seminary and taking care of the kids.
I thought my dad had 3-5 years but it turned out he only had one. At that time I was pregnant with Joy during my dad's last days and it was stressful to say the least. Suffice to say, our time was really stressful and moving to the area we didn't find many friends. The town we were in seem to have this attitude of "if you haven't been here for a decade, we can't accept you or befriend" and maybe small towns just have that attitude which I didn't notice when I lived there back when I was a child.
Two years after we moved back near my parents, a year after my dad passed away, we begun to get restlessness. Perhaps it was from all the stress, perhaps from the lack of a good community but we just sensed that we needed to move. We talked with several missions agencies and I even did a field visit to China but just sensed that wasn't where God was calling us at this time.
Unfortunately, none of the churches or ministries Phil was interested in gave him the call. So we thought perhaps we just needed to stay where we were and instead gave a lot of money towards missions. If Phil could finish his PhD at my university he could end up earning a great income and our two incomes put together could enable us to support a family on missions full time, alas that wasn't to be either. I couldn't believe they rejected his application. Then circumstances just came to be that Phil was asked to go back to the school he was teaching in Taipei and that's how we came to see the move to Taipei as the next step from the Lord.
Our hope as we move to Taiwan is to save the world through small acts. As Saint Mother Teresa (or Saint Teresa of Avila depends on who you ask) says: "Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love." We've felt the call from God to go abroad and always thought we'll do something great for Him but recently we've realized that maybe all we're called to be is to live authentically as Christ followers and show small acts of kindness with great love.
I get the feeling that God is refining us with this move, that He'll help us to come to know ourselves, accept ourselves and be ourselves.
If you go back to our first post with our story you'll read that we got married as we both sensed a call from God to be missionaries to Asia. Fast forward to right after we got married, my dad received a diagnosis for plasma cell leukemia which is a rare and aggressive form of multiple myeloma. Being a nurse, I knew my dad didn't have long so we moved back to be near my parents. God provided a job that fit my PhD dissertation perfectly at my mother's alma mater. We settled into a comfortable lifestyle, the pay and schedule was great as it enabled as to live with just me working and Phil going to seminary and taking care of the kids.
I thought my dad had 3-5 years but it turned out he only had one. At that time I was pregnant with Joy during my dad's last days and it was stressful to say the least. Suffice to say, our time was really stressful and moving to the area we didn't find many friends. The town we were in seem to have this attitude of "if you haven't been here for a decade, we can't accept you or befriend" and maybe small towns just have that attitude which I didn't notice when I lived there back when I was a child.
Two years after we moved back near my parents, a year after my dad passed away, we begun to get restlessness. Perhaps it was from all the stress, perhaps from the lack of a good community but we just sensed that we needed to move. We talked with several missions agencies and I even did a field visit to China but just sensed that wasn't where God was calling us at this time.
Unfortunately, none of the churches or ministries Phil was interested in gave him the call. So we thought perhaps we just needed to stay where we were and instead gave a lot of money towards missions. If Phil could finish his PhD at my university he could end up earning a great income and our two incomes put together could enable us to support a family on missions full time, alas that wasn't to be either. I couldn't believe they rejected his application. Then circumstances just came to be that Phil was asked to go back to the school he was teaching in Taipei and that's how we came to see the move to Taipei as the next step from the Lord.
Our hope as we move to Taiwan is to save the world through small acts. As Saint Mother Teresa (or Saint Teresa of Avila depends on who you ask) says: "Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love." We've felt the call from God to go abroad and always thought we'll do something great for Him but recently we've realized that maybe all we're called to be is to live authentically as Christ followers and show small acts of kindness with great love.
I get the feeling that God is refining us with this move, that He'll help us to come to know ourselves, accept ourselves and be ourselves.
Our big move
By : rnphdmom
1
