Well! There have been some big changes in my life in the last few months, so I guess it’s time I go ahead and update all of you who I’m sure are sitting on the edge of your seats, just waiting to see what I’ll do next. So here you go…
First, let me give you a little back story. One Sunday after I got back from Kenya Doug Lucas, President of Team Expansion (an awesome missions organization out of Louisville—check out their website, for real, it’s fantastic) was speaking at my Dad’s church in Milan. I’m obviously interested in missions and I’d heard great things about Team Expansion as an organization so I figured I’d go check it out. At this point in my super exciting story, you should probably know that I’ve always thought it would be cool as a career (as a second choice, if I can’t have a llama farm) to organize and plan short term trips for churches or other groups going overseas. I love the idea of short term missions trips if they’re done correctly—a group of wealthy, self-centered people can spend 10 days in another country, change the lives of the people they encounter there, and then, with a new outlook on life and American culture, can come back and change people in and around their own community. People who are impacted end up changing twice as many lives, which I think is a cool, unique aspect to short term trips. So anyways…
I got a chance to talk to Doug after the service and I asked him how I would go about doing that with a missions organization. Doug basically told me he’d been needing someone to do something very similar to that at Team Expansion and they hadn’t really been able to find people yet. It was actually a pretty crazy coincidence, in my opinion. Some may call it a “God-thing.” I think I will call it a Godincidence, for these purposes. So. That Godincidence began months of e-mails back and forth, figuring out what I and another woman who’s doing the same thing would be doing, what our jobs would look like, getting logistical things all figured out, etc. We met at the National Missionary Convention in November to talk about it some more and work out some details. Blah, blah, blah, lots of things happened and I filled out lots of paperwork….
Skip to now. I’m currently in the middle of a 2 week training program everyone at Team Expansion goes through called Launch. Me and 10 other potential missionaries that are going all over the world are getting intense training about Team Expansion as an organization, the difficulties and rewards of missionary life, support raising tips, etc. I’ve already learned so much more about missions, the importance of spiritual disciplines, the necessity of reaching the unreached and the best ways to do it. It’s really been a fantastic week spent with a lot of fantastic people.
So if everything goes well (and my psych evaluation comes out ok—cross your fingers everyone) then I will officially be a Team Expansion employee by the end of the month! I don’t think I can even begin to tell you how exciting it is for me to finally feel like I have some sort of career path or direction in my life. And you know what the BEST part is?! Apparently, they either have or are getting a number of alpacas to live at Emerald Hills, the Team Expansion headquarters!! So while I may not have a llama farm, I will work at a place that has llama cousins on it. And I don’t think I could ask for anything more than that. Maybe an endless supply of green olives and tacos, but I think I’ll just be content with alpacas for now.
Oh P.S….One of the great things about Team Expansion is that they don’t ask their missionaries to support their office staff. A lot of missions organizations take a percentage out of missionaries’ funds in order to pay the staff in the States, building expenses, buy coffee? I don’t know what they do with it. The point is, Team Expansion doesn’t do that. The missionaries keep like, 99% of the money they fundraise. While that is awesome for them, it ends up being less awesome for me (even though I think it’s a great idea and is super helpful to missionaries that are already on tight budgets) because that means I also have to raise support to work for Team Expansion.
I know what you’re probably thinking-- “Kelsey! Don’t leave me out! Please, send me a support letter so I can give you money to eat and live on! I want you to live in the nicest cardboard box money can buy!” Well thank you, kind people. And fear not, I would also like to live in a super nice cardboard box (maybe one of those big refrigerator ones!? I could even cut out a window!!) so I will most definitely honor your wishes and send you a support letter so you can both pray for me (and my cardboard home in the rain) and send me all of your money! J
