Talking to People

Yesterday we spent some time talking to people. I know, sounds riveting.

First we drove up to Penrith and spoke to a couple who are team leaders for a team working in Mongolia. We were meant to meet them at Penrith Plaza, but it was shut for ANZAC day, so we drove down to a park next to the weir, and spent a good hour and a half chatting with them. They gave us a bit more of a picture of life in Mongolia, and were keen to confront us a little with the grim realities: indoor living most of the year, a singularly unattractive capital city to live in, changing teams and circumstances, and so on. That was, I think, fairly constructive for us. We're not unaware of the significant challenges Mongolia will hold for us, but we do need to be reminded of them.

They also suggested we think of other places! That felt a little backward for us, having already gone through a process of narrowing down to one place, and now to start widening our options out again. But they made some good points about opportunities falling through, strategic thinking, and so on. So we're prepared to start entertaining some other possibilities, which clearly would make the blog-title redundant, but Mongolia is still our aim.

They were positive though! But it's up to us, we're the driving force here.

In the evening we went to Reach-Out e-track (silly name, methinks), a mission awareness/mobilisation night at SMBC. Rachel was quite keen to go to one of the workshops, on personality and mission, which was by a woman who had authored a book which she had read. (too many subordinate clauses in that sentence). The night was good overall, even though the american speaker kept allegorising the Bible.

Anyway, naturally various mission agencies had representatives there, so we went and spoke to one in particular, who didn't quite know what to do with us when we fronted up and said, "We want to Mongolia, we've been talking to your missionaries there." Anyway, we got the conversation going, made our seriousness apparent, and I guess we are now into the stage of serious-inquiry.

What's next?
- Conversations with mission agencies
- Contemplating alternative plans/places
- Finding out more about the official application process, and deciding when to commit to that
- Contemplating and planning a survey tour within the next 1.5 years to places we'd be thinking of going to (incl. Mongolia)