should I stay or should I go now...an intro to a new beginning

I've spent a lot of time here on politics over the last few months...probably too much time. I started out trying to nail down my views and I've engaged in some good discussion along the way. Now, as the election is upon us, and as my endurance is running out, I'm off to other things. Sarah and I are in the midst of many huge decisions. And rather than work them out behind closed doors and hope for the best, we thought it might be good to bring some of them out and see what insight come out from others. So if you're interested...keep reading! I'll be posting more thoughts as we seek to figure things out.

When we were in college at Virginia Tech, our church began talking about some people moving to Los Angeles to plant a church. The big question on everyone's mind was, "should I stay or should I go?" I sat down and wrote a spoof song based on the Clash's famous song by that title. My friends Scott, Patrick, and I performed the song at our church's Christmas banquet (I felt like it was an encore performance to Patrick's and my hit "We 4 Kings of Orientar: It's Me, Vince!" from the previous year's banquet). Our fans were yearning for more, so we gave it to them!

Anyway, back to the point. There is a point, you say?

So as many of you know, about this time last year, Sarah and I began sensing a huge burden on our hearts to move to Davao City, Philippines so that Sarah could work in a Christian, charity-based maternity clinic serving the poor women from the city and surrounding villages. The desire grew so great that we could think of little else. We even went as far as beginning to raise support to possibly move this past summer. But after lots of prayer, thinking, reading, and talking to others, we decided to postpone moving.

Sarah had the chance to visit this summer for 2.5 weeks and fell in love with the program at New Life School of Midwifery and all of the wonderful people there. She noted the challenges and hardships of life there, but still felt a strong draw.

As we prayed and talked more and more, we began to feel that maybe this just isn't the right time for us as a family. We could think of a million reasons why not to go. But we could think of just as many reasons why we should go. In the end, we found ourselves settling on Plan B - which isn't a bad option, but we're still not settled with it. Next post: starting with Plan B