Starting about 4 years ago, we began asking ourselves a very challenging and uncomfortable question: “Is God calling us to serve Him on a foreign mission field?” It’s no secret that we have always held missions and reaching the lost as central to the call to follow Jesus. We have regularly taken personal mission trips and increased the scope and focus of missions within youth ministry.

But when we started asking ourselves this question, the dynamic changed. For a few years we found reasons to put off this question, but time and time again, we felt this question resurface. Through conversations with friends, mentors, ministers, elders and missionaries, as well as through trips, experiences and relationships over the past several years, we continued to feel this nudge.

Exodus 3 comes to mind when Moses is talking with God though the burning bush. “Who am I to go? God replies I AM WHO I AM. Tell them the Lord you God sent you. What if they don’t believe me, I’m not eloquent enough… Please send someone else.” But God wanted to use Moses and He promised to be with him through the journey.

So at the beginning of 2014, we set out on a course to discern whether God was calling us to missions or not. We have been working with an organization that focuses on preparing missionaries and churches for foreign ministry, and at the same time, we were talking with a mission team in Mbale, Uganda about the focus of their work.

After a lot of discussion, prayer and discernment, we decided that the next step for our family is to go in the mission field. A survey trip to visit the team in Mbale, Uganda confirmed our direction and answered many of our questions. Our hope and plan is to join this team at the beginning of 2016. This year will begin the journey of training, preparations and support-raising.

Joshua 1:9 – “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”