We will do our best to explain the process of how we came to this huge, life-altering decision in the next few paragraphs...
Since we moved to Houston we have believed that it wouldn't be our permanent home, but we made some very good friends in the city and it became home for us over our four and a half years there. When Joe felt it was time to resign as the head coach at Houston Christian, we figured that a move would be in the not too distant future. It was very clear to us that God wanted Joe to coach a certain group of young men at HC and when that job was done he began to prepare us for the next step in life. Joe says regularly that his job at HC, both coaching and teaching, was the best job of his life. He loves his HC students like his own family and will most assuredly keep in touch with many of them for the rest of his life. That being said, we both began asking the Lord to let us know His will for our lives once the 2012 summer began.
We knew when this school year ended that it would be Lindsay's last year of commuting to Baytown to teach at Walker Elementary, we just didn't know if she would be working on the west side of Houston or elsewhere. Around Christmas break we began to put out some feelers in areas that appealed to us and, shortly after, Lindsay began being contacted by recruiters for international teaching gigs. One company began to stand out and Lindsay made her way through a long interview process as the spring began. For awhile we thought we might be offered work in Abu Dhabi, but just before Lindsay was to have an in-person interview she got a call about a job teaching at a brand new school in Kuwait. She got the phone call on a Thursday evening, telling her that the director of the school, which would open its doors for the first time this coming fall, was in Houston for another day and that she would like to interview Lindsay on Friday morning! Lindsay went to the interview and felt it went well, but wasn't sure if she would get the offer.
The offer came about a week later, but not officially for several weeks. We decided to pursue this path while fervently asking God to close the door if it wasn't His will. Around the end of the school year Joe was contacted by another school in Kuwait, interviewed, and offered a job all over the span of a couple of weeks. He also received an offer to take over another baseball program at a independent school in Houston that was willing to let him coach baseball there while still teaching at Houston Christian. We prayed hard and often for a week while trying to figure out what the right move was. We asked God for a sign, which was given in pretty clear fashion.
So, we finally committed ourselves to the idea that we would be moving to Kuwait to teach for, at least, the next two years. Then we began the long and hard process of packing up two classrooms and our entire home and moving everything into the largest climate-controlled storage unit that we could lease! This was a great challenge because throughout this process Joe was coaching baseball all over Texas and even for a week in Orlando, Florida. We spent the month of July staying with friends in Houston, with a two week stint in the middle while Lindsay was back home in Indiana and Joe was leading a team of 24 students and 3 other teachers on a trip to Nicaragua.
We are confident that God has called us to Kuwait, as He has prepared our hearts through the past few years. We are excited to love students in an entirely new school, country, and culture and we are excited to see what we can contribute to the Lord's work in Kuwait and the Middle East. It is such a vibrant, growing, and lively region and, while still having lots of issues that need to work themselves out, it is very obvious that God is doing major things in the Arab world. We are excited to play our part!
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