Changes in life and direction

We finally made it! OK if you see the other blog posts you will realize this has no blog-ly context so let me tell you all the really great life things that have happened since early 2010.

In mid-2010 I graduated seminary woohoo! With a very beastly Th.M., 120 semester hours of bible and theology culminated with a 60-page thesis looking at literary unity and ties between 1 Samuel and the book of Judges.

This was followed by taking more seriously the next steps in ministry direction. We had been researching missions agencies but started doing that more seriously, trying to find a group that is doing work in the Philippines that would be open to us working in the Bicol area of the Philippines.




Along this path later that year we went back to the Philippines to visit family, see some beautiful beaches, and help teach classes in the just-starting bible school in Naga City. This was a great break and reminder of why we were heading down the path of vocational ministry. It was also a great opportunity to work with Pappa and Dr. Waters on a set of classes and get more of a taste for how working in a bible school in the Philippines will work.

In 2011 Joy got pregnant. Yay!!! With twins. Double yay!!! (with slight panic on top).

In 2012 we had Josiah Durland Nacion Crank and Caleb Nicomedes Nacion Crank.

 To answer the next and very reasonable parsing question: is that a double last name, middle name, or first name? The more convoluted than you imagined answer is no, yes and yes. 

In America their legal names are:

First: Josiah or Caleb

Middle: Durland Nacion or Nicomedes Nacion

Last: Crank

In the Philippines (because the tradition and government practice is to retain the mother's middle name as the middle name):

First: Josiah Durland or Caleb Nicomedes

Middle: Nacion

Last: Crank

Will this keep them, us and everyone confused for the rest of their natural lives? Yes. But what do you expect from the people who have four marriage dates with three weddings in two countries for one couple (a different convoluted story).

In spring of 2012 we went to the RACE (Reciprocal Assessment and Candidate Evaluation) event with World Team. We have been actively looking for a missions agency with which to go back to the Philippines long term. it has been a long road where we met a lot of great godly people, and found partnerships that almost worked... but the complexity of having such strong ties and wanting to make the most of those opportunities has kept us on the sidelines looking for a group that will enter that complexity with us. After being in this process since 2010 our conversations with World Team really established that possibility. So we went to this 10 day affair where we were presented with a very full picture of who World Team is, got to talk to a lot of both leadership and missionaries, and also went through some very grueling assessment that was specifically designed to put us under stress so that both our "behaved" demeanor and our "stressed" demeanor was more clear. The result of this was an invitation to become a missionary appointee with World Team, that we accepted.

The rest of 2012 is mostly a blur of: lack of sleep, watching the boys go tiny infants to walking, climbing, curly headed, cute, destruction machines, doing additional training and prep-work for partnership development, and often crazy work tasks and schedules.

So now, while the boys are definitely the biggest thing that happened in the previous 2 years, we were too insane just trying to keep them fed and alive to blog about that... but now we are finally started on partnership development. We are starting to send out letters and will then be calling people, etc. We will post on this blog how things look from a prayer support standpoint and from a financial standpoint along with a basic breakdown of where we are trying to reach so that we can make the big move to the Philippines.