My God Will Meet All Your Needs

As we get closer to our departure date, we get increasingly more excited about this new adventure we are going to be starting in just over 2 months!  We have been busy beginning to pack up our life in Upland and our little house on Bragg Avenue.  It’s bittersweet to pack things away…realizing how soon we are leaving and how soon we will have to say goodbye to so many loved ones.  But we are so excited about what is to come, how we will grow, how we will be challenged, and how God will use us!

We were finally able to purchase our plane tickets and will be flying out of Ft Wayne on Saturday morning, August 11^th.  After about 22 hours of travel, we will land in Busan on Sunday night their time.  We then will have just over a week to get adjusted to the time zone and to start to get a feel for our new city.  The first day of school for new teachers is August 20^th.  We are both excited about this date because now we are both going to be teaching full time at BFS!

I (Megan) was recently offered the position of full-time Nursery teacher! So I will be spending my days teaching a class of 3 year olds – yes teaching, not babysitting!  I will actually be teaching them math, phonics, some science and social studies, as well as crafts, PE, and yoga.  Yes, I will be teaching yoga, which will be very interesting since I don’t even do yoga myself.  Thank you, YouTube for having such a huge selection of videos that I can watch and then potentially mimic. 

This job is such a blessing!  I had just been telling Justin how I wished I knew what I would be doing there.  I knew I would have some sort of job, I just didn’t know what.  The very next morning, I received an email from the principal about this job for me!  It is the same pay as Justin and I will receive all the same benefits!  Thank you, Lord, for providing even more for us than we imagined!

By the way, there were 17 exclamation points in the last pots, in case you counted. :)

Philippians 4:19           And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Answers to Prayer

Before I begin, you will come to find out that there are many exclamation points in the following post.  If you can count the correct number of them, we will give you a pat on the back next time we see you.  The correct answer will be revealed (hopefully we will remember) in the next post!

The reason for the excessive exclamation points is because of the huge change of our stress level in the last 2 days!

Tonight we got to Skype with an administrator at BFS, and we were able to get answers to all of our questions!  First of all, we found out that I don't have to get a Visa after all!  He explained the entire process to us, and I won't get a Visa until we are in Korea, and I will still be able to work!  The job I will have will most likely not be a Full-Time salaried job, but it will be a paycheck!! Yay! :)

Second, he told us that since we will both be working at BFS, he went ahead and got us a 2 bedroom apartment!  Otherwise, we would have had a studio, so that's a huge praise!! Our apartment will be fully furnished, including all kitchen essentials, although we were advised to bring our own pillows.  He also said that our apartment is only a 5 minute walk from the school!

Justin also was able to get a lot of things clarified about teaching 3rd grade in Korea, and they are putting him in contact with the current 3rd grade teacher to help him prepare for the next school year.

The other exciting news is that the school will also be issuing us our own lap tops, complete with Rosetta Stone so that we can learn Korean!  Thank goodness we didn't fork over the $400 to buy it ourselves...

We have started looking at flights, and it looks like we could be taking off as soon as August 8th!  Apparently flying half way around the world gives you just the slightest bit of jet lag.  Who knew?  We want to be as adjusted to the time difference as we can before we start working on the 20th.

That's all for now.  It may be a while until we have further updates, but we always welcome and appreciate questions and emails about what's going on!  Thanks again for your prayers!  How great to have a God who hears our prayers and answers them!

Jeremiah 33:3   Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

Preparing for Take Off

Many of you have been asking what has been going on lately as we plan for our big move to South Korea.  

The biggest news is that since then, the principal of Justin’s school emailed me (Megan) and asked if I would be interested in either teaching a Spanish class or being a teacher’s aide in the elementary school.  Of course, I was extremely excited and immediately wrote back that I was interested in both ideas and would love to talk more about them with her.  That’s where our big prayer request comes in right now.  Visas.

The first step in getting a Visa is to get a background check.  No big deal, except that it takes approximately 8 weeks to get these back.  There are faster ways to get them done, but in order for us to complete the next step in the process, we have to do it the long way.  We just got Justin’s back, and then realized that I would need to do the same thing if I got a job there.  All along, I was planning on getting a dependent Visa, but I can’t work with one of those.  The problem is that even though I just sent in to get my background check, 8 weeks puts us at the end of June.  Then there is a 4 week process in between before I could even apply for a work Visa.  So that puts us at the end of July and we leave in the middle of August.  Our prayer is that somehow this process will go quicker than normal.  We keep reminding ourselves that this whole opportunity is such a blessing and is a total God-thing, so we know that He will provide what we need, but still, it’s hard not to be worried or nervous.   Justin’s Visa should be no problem since he has his background check back, so it’s mostly my Visa that is the concern. 

Please pray with us as we make decisions about my job – which one is the best fit for me – or whether I should just get a dependent Visa for this year and get a work Visa for the following year.   We are praying for clarity and for peace of mind.  It seems that we keep going through the pattern of hurrying up to get something going, then waiting quite a while until we can do anything else.  We are not fans of the waiting right now, so pray for patience as well.   We know this will work out like it’s supposed to, whatever that looks like. 

We always appreciate your prayers and questions about what’s going on, even if we don’t know the answer!  We are so thankful for you and for your support as we begin this adventure even now. 

Philippians 4:6-7     Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The Story Behind the Adventure

In mid-December 2011, Justin and I heard about an Overseas Teaching Placement Fair at the University of Northern Iowa.  After talking about whether going overseas was something that we were interested in, we decided to go for it.  The rest of December and January consisted of updating resumes, registering for the conference, and researching schools that would be attending the conference.  We had narrowed down the number of schools that we were interested in to about 25-30 schools.

The conference was held the first weekend of February, and Justin and his Mom made the long drive to Iowa.  We were told that Justin had about a 6% chance of getting a teaching job because I do not teach and because he hasn't had much experience yet.  On Friday, Justin was able to schedule 3 interviews for later that day.  The first two interviews went well, but nothing happened with those two.  His third interview ended up going very well, and the next morning, they asked him to come back for a second interview!  On Saturday he met again with the recruiters from Busan Foreign School in Busan, South Korea, and he was offered a job!

While neither of us have ever been to South Korea or even Asia, we are extremely excited for this opportunity that we have and are so confident that the Lord's hand was in all of this!  We continue to talk about how God has truly provided for us yet again, and how blessed we are to see so clearly what He has for us next.  We will be leaving in mid-August for this new adventure and can't wait to see what is in store for us!


Isaiah 6:8  Here am I.  Send me.