Below is the email sent to family announcing our big news. And no, we’re not pregnant! For those of you who have read this before, thank you for your patience and understanding of this “recycled material.” We feel that this gives the best picture of what we’re doing, what we’re thinking, and why we’ve decided to make this decision. It’s also exciting to look back at this critical moment: sharing information is not only thrilling but makes everything so real! 🙂
Hello family and friends!
Dave and I recently made a major life decision and wanted to share our big news with you. To start, let me give you just a little background information. For as long as I can remember I've had a desire to work with orphans and a sense that God has different things in mind for my life than the 9-5. I've spent years doing my best to ignore Him and let Him know that I'm doing an ok job as is; after all, I work in social services and practically volunteer for a living. What more could He want? This has been challenged many times along the way through conversations, a study with our small group on the book, Radical, and just reading the Bible. The pivotal moment that led to this email was opening up Christmas gifts from my parents. They had gotten two books for me. One, "Ordinary Life", and the second, "Kisses From Katie." The latter of the two is the autobiography of a young girl who walked away from a college education and, ultimately, the American dream, in order to work with God's people in Uganda. She has now been there for six years, has started her own ministry, and is in the process of adopting 13 children. I read this book and her blog in the matter of days, often crying and recognizing the longing of my heart as God speaking to me. So Dave and I started looking into short term mission trips. We wanted to know what opportunities were out there and how we could work in them before deciding what that meant for our lives. One thing you should know: it's not easy to google "Christian mission trips" and find organizations that are known as being reputable. There are a lot out there! In the process I ran across an organization called Adventures in Missions, which offers a trip called the World Race. The World Race is an 11 month mission trip that allows you to work with organizations across the globe. A friend of mine whom I traveled with in Russia had just gotten back from a World Race trip, so I contacted him to see what he thought of the experience and if he truly felt he had been doing God's work on the trip. He had nothing but positive things to say. This experience has changed his life and his mindset. He has a stronger relationship with God and now just longs to live his life serving Him. I felt reassured after speaking to my friend, and after a great deal of prayer, consideration, and more prayer, Dave and I decided to apply. To say the weeks following were a roller coaster of emotions is an understatement! We ranged from wanting to know the acceptance decision yesterday to longing for the organization to turn us down and decide that we're not fit for such a mission. Thankfully God is patient and understanding; His timing truly is perfect. As of this past week, Dave and I were accepted to participate in the group and officially accepted. We are now in the process of preparing our hearts and minds for this major life change. We will both be quitting our jobs and selling the majority of our things as neither will be available or useful to us over an 11 month period. We're beginning to recognize how much needs to be done to prepare for this as we are leaving in July of this year. We're both so excited for this adventure and for the opportunity to have to, for the first time, truly rely on God and His goodness. We don't know what the next 18 months will look like or how He will challenge and grow us, though I know He is going to wreck our lives and break our hearts for Him. We don't know what we'll do when we return to the States next June. At this time, all we know is that He is good and that He has called us to take this chance, to know Him more fully and to see what it looks like to love His creation. All we know is that He has our best interests at heart and that He will be with us even when we don't know what that means. And all I know is that I've never been more excited or free in my life!
We want to share this with you as you are some of the most important people in our lives and because we would greatly appreciate your prayers. We will be keeping a blog throughout our trip and would love if you would see His work in us and support us through prayer. This blog and all of the details of our trip are yet unknown. We don't have an official departure date at this time but will keep everyone updated. We also don't have our blog quite set up yet, but the address for that is daveandkelseyroberts.theworldrace.org.
Thank you for reading this and for hopefully being excited for us! We love you and appreciate your prayers!
With love,
Dave and Kelsey
