Preparing for this trip has been exciting and cathartic. We look forward to living a year with fewer possessions and more intentional time with people both on the team and those we are serving. Since we have been married we have slowly accumulated a vast array of possessions and what we think are life style rights (like sushi and entertainment and coffee shops). We expect that we are going to have to take a good look in the mirror and measure ourselves on this trip. I think we will find that we are more selfish than we would like to believe, that we make luxuries into necessities and that we are largely pridefully independent. We expect that God will humble us in a big way to see what life looks like in his kingdom of sacrifice, service and joy. We expect that belonging to a team will be difficult, but fruitful as we learn to love others in a more intentional way. We expect that sometimes the people we serve will be exhausting, but that ultimately we will learn to see Jesus in their face. We hope that the trip will be transformative for us internally and that we can be transformative externally to people through Jesus. Ultimately we hope as all intentional followers of Jesus might: that others may not only see us, but the One who lives inside of us.
