The Purpose of This Blog

God recently gave us a tremendous opportunity to serve in West Africa at a mission hospital for two months. While there, we were busy doing life - task saturated. There is goodness in that type of work. However, life has a way of going on despite our task saturation. We subsequently have fallen behind in other essentials. We have just been “doing.” For Karla and me, it has been a bit of a challenge to live in a space where your tasks are not always straightforward: there are more tasks than we can accomplish, prioritization differs between individuals, the future is not clear, etc. I think many readers can understand. 

One ever-looming task for us is telling our story. This may serve several vital functions, and it will be a tool for us to:

• Honor God
• Help others
• Communicate our work
• Express our philosophy
• Explain real-world challenges
• Prepare experts to go

Therefore, we have chosen to narrow the focus on our blog to areas we believe will benefit the reader. While a “warts and all” presentation of one’s life and philosophy is a vulnerable position, a genuine presentation is most helpful if people are going to succeed in hard places where they are needed most. Because of this, our blog will discuss the following topics:

1. The rationale for our decision-making which demonstrates our motivation and logic
2. The work we do as experts in our field at resource-limited locations
3. Life abroad as a family
4. Preparation for austere environments: gear, techniques, and strategies 
5. Working with a child with Down Syndrome in austere environments

We hope and pray this blog will be meaningful.