The Foreign Service Call part 1
This is the first post in a 3 part series describing our journey to join the foreign service.
It's such a relief to be able to share what we've been waiting on for months! I hesitated to specifically put details of our foreign service journey on my blog before now mostly because the process is so long before it actually materializes into a reality. But when the reality hits, boy does it hit!
Some background for friends we haven't been able to catch up to speed yet:
In 2005 when R studied Mandarin in Beijing, he met up with a Foreign Service Officer who had served for years and while some of the difficulties of the lifestyle (moving from post to post every two years) didn't sound great, it has always loomed in the background for R as something he'd like to look into.
Other interests carried us both to Asia in 2007 to work for a non-profit while enrolled as language students which is where, as most of you know, we met & fell in love, not only with one another, but with living in foreign places & learning cultures quite unlike our own.
When we moved back to the states in June 2010 we were hopeful that our journey would lead overseas again, but very open to what capacity that might be in whether with a non-profit, the private sector or maybe even the state department. We knew we needed time to adjust to marriage and invest in our relationships with one another's families after 3 years abroad. I hadn't even met R's younger sister or brother before we landed engaged in Tulsa so we had a lot of work to do getting to know our family!
Atlanta was the perfect spot. I had meaningful work with Cru that kept us connected to some friends in East Asia & allowed me to pursue things I am experienced & gifted in. R was able to land a job as a financial analyst at NCR (with a philosophy degree no less!) and learn a LOT about global logistics & supply chains. We have thrived in Atlanta, but always knew in the back of our minds that this was not a forever place.
After a refreshing weekend retreat in the mountains of western North Carolina over memorial day weekend in 2011, we agreed that R would take the upcoming foreign service officers test and just see what happened. He didn't study. He hardly thought about it before just going in and taking a shot at it. We were confident that if this was what the Lord had for us, he would have to be the one to open the doors- we were not interested in kicking them in.
Read part 2 here.
It's such a relief to be able to share what we've been waiting on for months! I hesitated to specifically put details of our foreign service journey on my blog before now mostly because the process is so long before it actually materializes into a reality. But when the reality hits, boy does it hit!
Some background for friends we haven't been able to catch up to speed yet:
In 2005 when R studied Mandarin in Beijing, he met up with a Foreign Service Officer who had served for years and while some of the difficulties of the lifestyle (moving from post to post every two years) didn't sound great, it has always loomed in the background for R as something he'd like to look into.
Other interests carried us both to Asia in 2007 to work for a non-profit while enrolled as language students which is where, as most of you know, we met & fell in love, not only with one another, but with living in foreign places & learning cultures quite unlike our own.
When we moved back to the states in June 2010 we were hopeful that our journey would lead overseas again, but very open to what capacity that might be in whether with a non-profit, the private sector or maybe even the state department. We knew we needed time to adjust to marriage and invest in our relationships with one another's families after 3 years abroad. I hadn't even met R's younger sister or brother before we landed engaged in Tulsa so we had a lot of work to do getting to know our family!
Atlanta was the perfect spot. I had meaningful work with Cru that kept us connected to some friends in East Asia & allowed me to pursue things I am experienced & gifted in. R was able to land a job as a financial analyst at NCR (with a philosophy degree no less!) and learn a LOT about global logistics & supply chains. We have thrived in Atlanta, but always knew in the back of our minds that this was not a forever place.
After a refreshing weekend retreat in the mountains of western North Carolina over memorial day weekend in 2011, we agreed that R would take the upcoming foreign service officers test and just see what happened. He didn't study. He hardly thought about it before just going in and taking a shot at it. We were confident that if this was what the Lord had for us, he would have to be the one to open the doors- we were not interested in kicking them in.
Read part 2 here.
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