Brace Yourself

It's a teenage rite of passage...at least it was for me. On Thursday, CT got his new braces.But I'm having a hard time with this particular puberty ritual. It's not just that it costs $6000 and our dental insurance doesn't pay a dime (By the way, is there anyone else outraged that insurance companies don't have to cover orthodontics when 90% of kids need them?). It just one more visible sign that he's not my baby boy anymore. I was relieved when he was out of diapers and thrilled when he outgrew temper tantrums in Wal-Mart, but what I wouldn't give for just one more day of sweet naps on my shoulder or a little hand grasping my finger!

He's already taller than me, his voice has changed and he swears he found an armpit hair last week.With braces, it's official. After we finish paying those suckers off, he won't need me anymore. Well, by the time we finish paying them off, he'll be changing our diapers! The point is, that he's growing up so fast and this is just one more reminder that he's a man now. But you have to admit, the braces are absolutely adorable on the kid!

Before

After

It's Official

We are missionaries!

I would have never dreamed that I wold grow up to be a missionary. But here we are ready to follow where God leads.

PK and I drove to WGM headquarters in Indiana (with a quick stop for deep-dish pizza in Chicago) last weekend for the finale to a long a series of tests, psych evaluations and mountains of paperwork--the interview. After a Bible exam that the disciples themselves would have had trouble passing, we were intimidated to say the least.

One thing we've learned about being a missionary over the past year is that most of our colleagues all seem to have either grown up as an MK (missionary kid) or have been missionaries for longer than we've been alive. PK and I, on the other hand, had never even met a missionary before our journey began. In comparison, we're the toddlers in an unfamiliar world with even it's own language (and I don't mean Spanish!). So an interview with "The Board" was enough to have both of us shaking in our laymen boots.

And boy do they take their job seriously! It was a full weekend of meetings, tests, psych evaluations and culminating in a scary boardroom interview with the members of the committee who would decide whether we were good candidates to be missionaries. In fact, I'm pretty certain there are more than a few people in Indiana that know things about us that even our own parents don't know!

Oh, we tried to remind ourselves that they had already unleashed us on over 100 boys for an entire year, so surely they couldn't reject us now. But there was always that little fear in the back of our minds that maybe we just weren't good enough. Finally, the last interview was over and there was nothing left, but to ask the Lord to open the door for us to walk through or close it if we were meant for something else. Thankfully, the suspense didn't last long and we received word last week that we've been accepted as Missionary Disciples to Honduras!

We are excited that this time WGM won't just send us out to find our way on our own and will be providing some much-needed training. In fact, they have recommended a Bible certificate program that will help ground our ministry in Biblical principle and make us better prepared to share the gospel. We'll be taking the classes this year online and we'll have a coach to help walk us through the fundraising mountains that lies ahead.

So, there it is. God has given us a path and we stand eager to follow. It's official. We are missionaries.