New Beginning

Day 686

Danielle and I got married in Pensacola on 16th December 2006. We lived in East Point [Atlanta] fixing up a house and doing economics grad school together. 686 days of marriage later, we're taking a slow morning in Lancaster, PA. From the beginning, we wanted to use our gifts, passions, and opportunities to serve the poor through international economics. Not exactly sure what that looked like then, but we decided HOPE International was doing a pretty good job serving the poor with micro-finance. We read about HOPE, signed up for the employment update, and I applied for the Savings-Led Specialist position, which I was offered on September 30.

After a day to think about it, we spent 15 hours driving directly to HOPE in Lancaster, PA, and Danielle and I described our excitement and love of HOPE, but also our dreams and plans to work together to do international economics internationally. The job in PA is perfect for me, but I didn't want to sacrifice Danielle's gifts, passions, and opportunities.

Here's the quick run-down. Best I can tell, our prayers to serve met HOPE's prayers for needs, because a week and a half ago we get a phone call asking if the two of us can serve in Rwanda.

Yes we can. Do we mind missing Thanksgiving and Christmas? We'll miss family, but no, we don't mind. Can we go right away? We're already packed.

Rwanda happens to be a perfect place for me to train for my new job, and while there Danielle can help with operations and also pick up some international research projects (currency hedging in Ukraine?). Two Thursdays ago, we knew we'd leave for Rwanda on November 10. That Friday we got vaccinated, Saturday was the yard sale, the next Friday was U-Haul to Lancaster, and since then we've been getting to know our new home (for two weeks) and getting ready to leave. Work officially starts this Monday and Tuesday, then we'll be in DC for a conference Wednesday through Friday, and the following Monday we leave.

I just conferred with Danielle, and this is official, we both rate life a 10 on a scale from 1-10.