The first weekend in May, Matt and I went to Alpharetta, Georgia for our North American Mission Board (NAMB) interviews. Let me give you some background on Matt's job at the West Virginia Convention of Southern Baptist. His official title is The Director of Evangelism and Student Ministries. He was hired by the West Virginia Convention of Southern Baptist (and we went through extensive interviews with them) but we are actually NAMB appointed missionaries to the state of West Virginia. Very confusing I know! We had to fill out tons of paperwork with NAMB and I do mean TONS! We had to give them the names of 15 of our closest friends and then THEY had to fill out tons of paperwork. It was very extensive. When we passed that part of the interview, we received an "official invitation" to the NAMB offices to be interviewed in person.
This was one of the first things you saw as you walked into the building "The World At Our Doorstep" Below you see the heartbeat of NAMB: Sharing Christ, Starting Churches, Sending Missionaries.
From the moment we stepped on the campus we were treated as royalty. Everyone there was so nice! Everywhere we turned someone was thanking us for giving up our lives to become missionaries! Truly an amazing experience! They rolled out the red carpet for us! We ate and ate and ate! We were encouraged in our lives, marriages and ministries. It was an uplifting experience to say the least.....then we were interviewed. As many of you know....I am a worrier by nature. I had built the interview up in my mind to be something Jack Bauer would use in one of his interrogations. It was FAR from it! Our interview was two-fold. The first half was our missionary interview where we discussed our calling into missions, ministry and our own personal spiritual growth. This went REALLY well! Our interviewer was so kind and compassionate. He took the time to ask about Davis and we even talked about 24 for a little while! The second half of the interview was our ministry interview. This was the most precious time of the week! Our interviewer was Thomas Hammonds and he took this time to just encourage us! He gave Matt some very practical ministry advice and then just kept us in stitches telling funny stories.
This is a picture in the Missionary Break Room. One wall was a white board and as you can see it says Welcome Missionaries! And then each missionary candidate name is listed. The staff at the building took time to come by and pray for each of us by name! There was also couches for us to rest on, bottled water and the BEST chocolate chip cookies I might have ever tasted!
Throughout this process, we met some of the most precious people ever! We came from all over the United States (Georgia, Alabama, Seattle, Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, California, Oklahoma, etc.) We all just really connected to each other and became fast friends. What was amazing was how similar our stories were. One night at supper we sat with two other couples, one from Oklahoma and the other from California. Our "ministry stories" were almost identical! Only an amazing God can bring three couples to one table to share and encourage each other!
The evening after the interviews, we were all ready to relax so we headed to Starbucks! This is a picture of Matt and Tanner at Starbucks. Tanner and his precious wife Marsha are planting a church in Boston. We just really loved getting to spend time with them. As an aside here, when we were at the SBC in Orlando it was time for the Seminary reports and after the report from Southern (Matt's alma mater) I just kind of zoned out. Then the report for Southeastern Seminary began with a video and there was Tanner! Small world!
This is Cara and I. She and her husband Matt are from San Francisco, California and he is going to be a Chaplain in the Navy. Sweet, sweet couple!!!
And this is everybody! I could go on and on about each precious person in this picture, but I won't because that is only interesting to us and them. I will just leave you with this ~ each person in this picture is doing BIG things for God and I count it a privilege to know them!
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