FAQs Series #1: The Baby Question

Now that you're having a baby, how does that change your plans?

Let's be honest here. Kids were always in the plan for us. It's not like it was a surprise for us. “Oh, hey, surprise! You're pregnant!” We view kids as a valuable asset to us. Before we got married, we knew when we'd like to start having kids and had already discussed the myriad of things that would mean for our marriage and ministry. Kids are great for building connections with people in any cultural context. As they grow, they can become more and more involved in our ministry. We are excited to teach them about God and His amazing plan of saving the world (and them!).

So our plans have not changed. We are still hoping to have our support raised by next summer and head to the Philippines around then. We look forward to seeing our little girl make friends before she can even speak the language, climb guava trees, slide down mud hills in a tropical rain, and eat weird food. We also look forward to introducing her to a lifestyle where she will see people who live very differently than she does: street kids, beggars, Jeepney drivers, lepers, grocery store clerks, the person we buy our meat from at market, the guy who walks by our house every morning, and so many others.

Pray with us that we keep trusting the Lord to make us the parents she needs, that we would be diligent to teach her the truths of God's Word, and for the good-byes that will have to be said in a year from now. It will be tough.

We view being pregnant now as a huge blessing. Ideally, we wanted to have our first kid at a time in our lives when we weren't also in the middle of language learning and navigating a cultural context we are already out of place in. We are able to have our first baby in a culture/language we grew up in, have family around to help, and introduce our baby to everyone before we leave the country for several years. We have access to great medical knowledge and facilities. We're not against having a baby in another country. That may someday happen for us if God blesses us with more children. For the first kid, however, this experience has been great for us. Maybe this is sooner into a marriage than some people would like to start having kids, but for us the timing could not be more perfect. Did we mention yet how grateful we are that God has given us this baby girl?! We can't wait to meet her!