My previous post I wrote out a prayer that we prayed in church yesterday. Given that I actually prepare the liturgies I should not have been that surprised to find it there but I was. I guess I was surprised by how relevant it seemed to my life. When I put it in the service a few weeks ago it just seemed to fit with the theme, as I prayed it yesterday it seemed so relevant to my whole life.

As most of you know pretty much since we got married Martin and I have been trying to work out what we would do with our lives when I finished studying and then when he finished studying. I finished last year and Martin will be finished in December so the time is near. Initially we said we would go back to Peru but then we started think that it would be good to perhaps go somewhere else to prepare ourselves for that and get some experience in our fields. While both of us are doing jobs related to our fields they are not actually in our fields so neither of us have any experience in them. So we applied to some overseas community development organisations for some overseas work. We were hoping to get some experience in our fields and really learn what good community development looked like. We had been waiting for awhile to hear from these particular organisations and we took a holiday to Central Australia. Whilst there we took a journey to the desert that was very profound for both us which got us thinking that perhaps we could move to Alice Springs instead.

As is often the case with life on our return one of these organisations did offer us some amazing jobs in Indonesia. So for the last few weeks we have been thinking about, talking about and praying about what we might do. Finally we decided. We are going to move to Alice Springs next year.

It was not an easy decision but it feels right. We decided this for a number of reasons. Firstly, we were feeling that perhaps we were spreading ourselves too thin. We are already both very passionate about the issues facing Peru and Australia. As well as both places obviously mean a lot to us as that is where family and friends are. If we were to add Indonesia to that it might just get a little hard to maintain. Secondly, we feel like there are many opportunities for us in Alice to work and develop our skills in our fields and in building community across cultures. And we would like to try and understand more about Indigenous culture and in some small way be part of the journey toward reconciliation. Thirdly, we both feel quite called by the land. For Martin it is much more like home to him than Sydney and for me the desert is something I have been thinking about a lot in terms of the part it plays in my faith. Not only was it the place of Jesus first testing but the place where the Jews journeyed from slavery to freedom and on the way learned what it was to be the people of God. And lastly but probably of most significance is that we feel that we are pretty ready to have a baby. (and I mean next year in Alice not right now). I didn’t want to do that far away from the support of family, most importantly for me the support of my mum. Again initially we were thinking that we would wait til we got back to Peru to do this but it feels like the right time. So while we do still plan to go back to Peru in the long term it seems that as of about March or April 2009 Alice Springs will be out home for at least two or three years.

So back to the prayer. As we’ve journeyed through all this and explored many options and talked them through with many of you I have wondered why it doesn’t just happen. Why do we have to exhaust every option before the right one seems to appear. This prayer reminds me that God does call us to wait and to trust Him; to look and seek in all the wrong places as well as the right ones; to love wherever we are; and most importantly that he is always with us gently guiding us and drawing us nearer to Him.