10 more sleeps

We just sent out a mass e-mail to family and friends and if you are reading this then you must have you clicked on the link and may even have subscribed. If you are someone that we have not spoken to in a while you may wonder what is going on so here goes.

We created this blog back in 2012 to keep in touch with family and friends (mainly Nanny and Anita) while we went across Canada. We continued to blog the next couple of trips including Hawaii in 2013 and the UK in 2014.

Equipment check

YWAM

In a couple of weeks we (the whole family) are heading off to Hawaii for three months to attend a YWAM course and then in December we will be deployed to somewhere in Asia on an outreach mission.

If you would like to follow us on our adventures you have two main choices Option 1 - subscribe to the blog and you will get updates sent to your e-mail address. Option 2 - if you just want to check in once every few weeks thats fine too.

A brief update on the past 12 months.

Barry (thats me) was laid off from work on December 17th 2014 and I have since been living a life of leisure, enjoying the best summer ever, and generally decompressing from 37 years of work. 

Ever since the dreaded day when I was laid off I have felt God’s presence and calm in my life and no rush to go and find work. I found myself connecting with friends I hadn’t seen for a long time, helping out lots at the church and spending more time with Jenny and the kids.

One morning Jenny woke up and said ‘YWAM’.  We were in Kona, Hawaii a couple of years ago and had driven past the YWAM University of the Nations campus and had briefly thought about missions work, but how could I ever get 6 months off work (I took 10 weeks off in 2012 to go across Canada….hmm maybe getting laid off was not such a surprise!)? I guess anything is possible with God, so we decided to answer the call and check it out.

YWAM is Youth With a Mission and their purpose is to build and equip YOUNG people (ie Youth) to spread the gospel around the world through teaching, serving and mercy missions. YWAM has a program for people at a crossroads in their lives, ie older people, who would like to do the same thing. This is the shortened summary for those like me that have a short attention span.

In summary…

We leave Sept 25th for Kona, Hawaii. We will spend a few days acclimatizing, and on October 1st we will start the 12 week Discipleship Training School (DTS). 

Around Dec 21st we will head off to Asia (location to be determined) for two months and then head back to Hawaii at the end of February for a debrief.

We have our return flights to Canada booked for March 7th 2016.

Jemma and Ryan are enrolled in a school on campus where they will follow much of the same curriculum as us, do some Canadian school work online and spend some time on Hawaiian studies learning about marine biology and volcanology. The kids will get to spend a night up on the volcano! 

That’s it for this blog entry. 10 days to go and counting.