I have been looking for a new theme for my blog, but I can’t find one I want, so I’m just going to make it myself. I don’t know entirely what it will look like, but I have an idea. I’m hoping to roll it out around November. There’s a reason for that.

I can’t remember if I’ve posted about it here, but for a while I’ve been working on following a leading into a career change. “Working on” is perhaps a bit of an overstatement – it was more like “doing extensive research into” along with “hemming and hawing over”. It would have completely turned my life around. At the same time, I have been figuring out what to do about this connection I feel with a foreign country. I can’t really explain it, but I have often found myself longing to be back in Paraguay, el corazón de Sudamérica. The presentation I talked about last time was one of those moments. The poem I wrote is about this burning I had for Paraguay. I finally grew weary of not knowing what to do about these two life-changing leadings, so I prayed that God would show me which way to go, but I had decided to begin pursuing the path I felt I had the greatest chance of affecting myself and resolved to contact VCU admissions when I got back from the meeting.

About a week earlier, I had asked God if He wanted me to serve in Paraguay as an English teacher after Jason Steidl finished his term to have someone from the school invite me. Imagine my surprise when I checked my email upon returning home from the meeting to find an email from Karen Caballero inviting me to come teach English. It was sort of a fluke, but is anything really a fluke when God is moving? I immediately knew the only way to be obedient to Him was to go. It took about a week to finally decide, but I am confident in my decision to pick up and head down around the end of October.

There’s a lot more I can say, but perhaps I’ll save some of those things for future posts. I’m going to let everyone at my home church know on Sunday, so it’s pretty fair game at this point for folks to know. I appreciate your prayers for several things, including what to do with my house. I have yet to commit to one course of action, but I am leaning a certain way.

I plan to keep the blog updated throughout my term, so this will probably be the best place to find updates and stuff. I hope to also take a lot of photos, which you’ll be able to access through my flickr account.

Thanks for your support, and keep in touch!

-j