With each passing season I’m more and more convinced that the kindest, most loving, most respectful, most relational thing we can ever do is to just rete (stay) and koute (listen). Whenever I take an opportunity to truly do that, I am humbled and I learn.

This is not to say there is no need for teaching, that there is no benefit to learning other ways. It is only to say that we ought to seek first to listen, to learn, and then and only then should we attempt to tell or to teach. Save that stuff for later when we have respected and listened to the people that do life here every day of every month of every year of every decade. I’m thinking we have more to learn than they do. Rete, koute

We’re going into this adventure expecting many learning experiences, many paradigm shifts, and many challenges to our egos. There is one thing that I think (hope!) we have figured out before ever getting on the plane: to proceed with humility, never forgetting that we have much to learn. The name of our blog was chosen partly to remind us of this, a necessary reminder since what we’re going to do (“cross-cultural ministry”) carries the inherent implication that we are the ones giving out rather than the ones receiving. The verb “to minister” means “to give aid or service.” And of course, we are going because we do believe we can be of service to others. After all, we are both successful and experienced in our respective fields. We are both accustomed to being very competent and productive in our familiar North American context. Therein lies the danger. It is vitally important that we not mistake our professional competence for cultural competence and that we not assume we already know what the people we seek to minister to need and want from us. Going prepared to be still and listen, to learn and to receive, will both bless us and help us to be a blessing.

I’m very excited about this for three reaons:

1. The tentative plan at this point is that I will be teaching the two subjects I love most, Antiquity and Bible. My students from past years can testify that these subjects are the ones for which I have the deepest love, and for which I bring the greatest enthusiasm to the classroom. I believe I have been really gifted in these two areas, primarily by my parents, who raised me to love the Bible and to love the Greek and Latin classics.

2. Second, just as Sora will be helping to train other missionary midwives, so my work will not only be a means for me to serve, but will also help enable other missionaries to serve too. We want to leverage our talents for the Kingdom. By teaching missionary kids, I can bless their parents and help equip their children for ministry. Supporters will thus be able to know that the talents they invest by supporting us will not be buried in a handkerchief, but will be multiplied into blessings for many other missionaries besides the Colvin family.

3. Because of this development, both Sora and I will have defined ministry opportunities ready for us upon arrival. And both hers and mine appear to be perfect fits for our experiences and skill sets. This gives us a hope that we will be able to serve actively from the get-go, even before study and work enable us to overcome language and culture barriers.

The fact that both Sora and I now have well-defined, well-suited ministry plans is another strong indication that our missionary calling is of God. We’re just following where He leads. He is far wiser than we, and His plans are marvelous in the way they fit together perfectly.

Many people have asked me why I feel the need to go overseas, because they see the work I am doing as a midwife here in the States as needed, valuable, and important. And the shortest, simplest answer is: to save lives. Complications of childbirth will kill 1000 women today, and probably none of them will live in Ohio. The very few women who give birth unattended where I live do so by choice, and with readily available emergency care a phone call away. The millions of women who give birth unattended in the majority world have no other option and no back-up plan.

As a midwife attending home births in North America, I see low risk mothers almost exclusively. When complications arise we are usually able to anticipate them and transfer to hospital care long before they become life threatening. Only very rarely will my actions make a life-or-death difference for a mother or baby. But there have been a very few occasions when I know that God has used my hands to save a life, and it is a humbling and breathtaking thing. That is what I became a midwife to do.

Deputation is a tremendously challenging and edifying experience. We have had several families over to our house so that we could share our vision with them over food. These have been the most rewarding occasions, as it is always interesting to see what aspect of the mission God most puts on the heart of those we’re speaking to.

We end up having a great time and connecting with the families over sometimes surprising things. Sora had a terrific afternoon talking with a veterinarian about blood, mess, and animals giving birth. More recently, another sender became obviously excited about the potential for missionary midwifery to help stem the tide of the world’s orphan crisis by saving the lives of mothers.

Talking to larger groups is more difficult. We learned some hard lessons yesterday. Because of a heavy workload, I wasn’t very prepared, and it showed in the talk. We also didn’t arrive early, and had to spend an embarrassing amount of time setting up a projector and screen. And to crown all, when someone asked if we had anything printed that people could take home – we didn’t. So it was a learning experience, and we’ll do better next time.

There’s a real sense that preparedness in a talk to potential supporters is a matter of faithfulness to God, and unpreparedness is something to be repented of. On the other hand, we always remember that God doesn’t need our slickness and fancy computer slideshows to raise up supporters.

Last week, the little guy pictured above celebrated his first birthday, and as his midwife, I was honored to be invited to celebrate as “one of the family.” And in his mother’s reflections of her pregnancy and birth, I walked with her again through that intense, joyful, sometimes frightening journey and was reminded that my role as a midwife does not end after the baby is born, or even at the six-week postpartum visit. The things I say and the care I offer will be remembered for a lifetime. The potential influence on a mother, and through her, on a family is tremendous.

I love having the opportunity to get to know a family during their pregnancy, to build bonds of trust months before the birth. But the emotional connection can be created in just a few moments. I had never met the midwife who caught my first child until she came on shift in the birth center many hours into my labor and I did not speak to her again for over 14 years. And yet she had an incredibly profound influence on what happened during my birth as well, how I felt about my birth and my body’s abilities, my confidence as an 18-year-old single mother, and eventually my decision to become a midwife myself. I am sure she did not remember me when I looked her up years later! I was blessed to be able to tell her how much of an impact she had made on my life’s story.

With every birth, I am stepping into another family’s story at an exciting and climactic moment. My role may be a small and minor one or I may be part of a plot development that completely changes the direction of the narrative.

Some wonderful developments:

1. We had a terrific visit to Christ the King Anglican Church in Dayton (Fr. Wayne McNamara, Rector). The saints in this parish showed us wonderful hospitality, hosting us for lunch. Sora had a very busy week of births in Cincinnati (80+ hours attending three different births), and didn’t get home until midnight on Saturday before our trip to Dayton. We brought Ezekiel and Naomi and worked, not too frantically, on our 25 minute presentation during the car trip. It wasn’t as polished as it could have been, but that might have been a good thing. Technical difficulties with our computer-projector slideshow were also overcome, thanks to a WiFi connection, DropBox, and my iPad, which communicated with the projector when Sora’s computer wouldn’t.

(Above: the corner entrance of Christ the King, from the parish webpage. The building is architecturally beautiful inside as well.)

We are very thankful to those in Dayton who gave gifts and pledges of support! We’re at 13.5% of our needed monthly amount, and we haven’t even sent out a letter yet. This is by word of mouth and personal contact with a few families so far.

2. Our friends Keith and Erica came to our house for dinner tonight, and we were greatly blessed by our conversation with them. Keith is a graphic designer, and will be helping us come up with a unified look for our email, web, and snail-mailed communications to supporters and to the wider world. Erica is a doula who has both worked with Sora as a birth attendant, and has had Sora as a midwife at the birth of her youngest son. She is also blessed with the ability to encourage others. It is a beautiful thing when others are excited about this ministry, and offer to help us with their talents!

3. We have booked a date to go back to Ithaca, NY, where I (Matt) was a grad student from 1997-2003. There we have a kind invitation from Pastor Jones and the elders of Covenant Community Reformed Church of Ithaca. It will be great to see them all again.

We’ve also contacted a few other churches we’d like to speak at. Pray that the Lord will continue to open doors for us to find senders to partner with.

4. On Sunday, we’ll be hosting a lunch for the members of our “Go-Team.” Ezekiel asked, “What’s a Go-Team?” I replied, “It’s the pit crew that refuels and repairs your Go-cart when you’re racing.” But seriously, it’s a core of committed supporters who will help us get to the mission field and keep in touch with us when we’re there. We’ll be going through the book Serving as Senders with them over our first few meetings.

5. Please pray for our continued efforts at raising support and finding out whom God is calling into this ministry as senders. We trust that as He has called us, so He will call others, since “how can they preach unless they are sent?” (Rom. 10:15) We just have to be faithful, work hard at our part, and be content with God’s timing.

Please pray…

1. That we will be able to communicate clearly and winsomely why we believe God is calling us to this mission. This is a little more urgent because Sora, who had planned to do a bit more work on her half of the presentation, has been tied up with the busiest week of births she has ever had since she became a midwife. (I have barely seen her this week, that’s how busy she’s been.)

2. That the Lord will reveal whom He is calling to join us in this ministry as senders. We trust that as He has put His calling on us to do this work, so He will raise up senders to partner with us in doing it.

3. That we will find someone willing to be our “point person” to keep our communication flowing with CTK’s parish while we’re on the mission field. This is crucial, because a proper relationship between missionaries and their senders is a blessing to both parties, and the main way those blessings will flow to our senders is through good communication. We need someone who will be willing to relay our news from the mission field, to keep a bulletin board or forward relevant email news to the parish, and to give our prayer requests to the parish so that they can lift us up before the Lord.

In the meantime, at least some of our children will be enjoying the mid-Lent pancake breakfast here in Mason at our own Trinity REC!

A trinitarian pancake.

When we started this journey last fall, our long-term plans were very vague indeed. I felt a strong desire to serve as a midwife in the developing world and a need for a time of further “on the field” training to prepare for wherever God might lead us next. This was something that had been on my heart for several years. Matt was willing and ready to bring our family to Newlife School for the year it would take for me to complete my Bachelor of Science in Midwifery and grow in my experience of developing world midwifery. However, he was only just at the beginning of exploring what this might mean for our family, did not have a clear sense of what his role and calling would be on the mission field, and was not yet ready to plan for or commit to long-term missions. So we started out planning for a one-year mission trip while open to the idea that God might want us to serve for longer. Our local parish was happy to provide the necessary church letter for us to be eligible for a missionary visa, and we would be serving under the direction of Newlife’s existing and established ministry. I trusted that if God wanted our family to be long-term missionaries the details and means would become clear and I thought that would probably happen after we arrived in the Philippines.

In early January Matt attended a Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders (SAMS-USA) intern training workshop at the suggestion of the Reformed Episcopal Mission Board’s Executive Secretary, Canon Bill Jerdan. I was unable to go with him because I was on call for births here in Cincinnati. Matt returned from this workshop asking “Why are we planning for just one year instead of long-term?” In the course of his work toward ordination in the REC and our preparations to move overseas Matt had also found much more clarity about his possible roles in ministry.

Canon Jerdan had told us from our first inquiry about missions work that  if we wanted to be long-term missionaries we would need to be in relationship with a sending agency with the experience and resources to provide field support, though being “sent” by our local parish for one year of training and preparation was fine since we would be working with and under an established ministry. We had also initially planned to fund our year in Davao primarily from our own savings rather than relying on donor support to be able to go. In the last few weeks it has become evident to us that God’s call for our family to serve on the mission field is not a one-year commitment, but an ongoing and indefinite one. That being the case, it seemed wise for us to build as firm a foundation for long-term missionary service as we can while still here in the States.

Matt’s meetings with the staff at SAMS-USA, their written materials, and our subsequent phone conversations with them have all indicated that they will be a very good fit for us as a sending organization. SAMS focus up until recently was on missionary work in South and Central America, but in the last few years they have become more global and now have missionaries in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

As of last week, we have decided to delay our planned departure date until at least October in order to have more time to prepare for long-term missionary service. We have submitted an application to SAMS-USA to work with them as long-term missionaries. The application process will likely not be complete until late June, as we will need to travel to their headquarters in Ambridge, PA for a series of in-depth interviews and I am on-call for clients in Cincinnati and unable to travel for the next several months. In the meantime, we are continuing to get our house ready to put on the market and also starting to actively seek supporters who are interested in partnering with us. We are continuing to pray for God’s guidance on our preparations, His provision for each step of the way, and His spirit to be with us as we share our vision for ministry with those who will partner with us to make this vision a reality.