I remember the day vividly, we were sitting at his dining room table discussing the desires that God had put in our hearts and our hopes for the future. For me that meant putting the language skills God had given me to good use and once again living somewhere outside our American "bubble" of nice stuff. Lucas had a similar dream - to be used in a mighty way by God in another country.
As we've had more times of prayer together and conversations, God has gradually given us more pieces to the puzzle as He leads us one step at a time. We both feel a call to do business development, tent-maker missionary work in Central America. And for now that means that Lucas needs to gain some further experience in a technology called Drupal, which is used for building open source web sites. This would allow him to start a small web development company, building and maintaining websites for medium and small businesses. This could be based anywhere with a good internet connection; somewhere like Central America.
So after several months of hunting and studying to become qualified for a position that would allow Lucas to gain the needed experience, a job interview in St. Louis came up. He interviewed at 11AM and had a job offer by 2:30PM the same day! After lots of waiting, God was moving quickly. We drove down to St. Louis the following weekend to find an apartment and God again perfectly lead us to a duplex right in the heart of a historic Jewish neighborhood near Washington University. What wonderful preparation for living in another culture! And again we saw God's hand in confirming our choice for who the renters for our home would be in Bloomington.
So now here we are, amid boxes and joyful chaos getting ready to move to the next step in the journey God has for us. In his book Crazy Love, Francis Chen says that true faith and real Christianity is living our lives in such a way that we expect God to come through. As we have moved forward doing that and staying close to the Lord so we can sense His will, it is amazing how He has provided "exceedingly and abundantly above what we could ever ask or think"! We continue to walk forward with bated breath as we wait to see what else He has in store. And we are so thankful that He is our "fortress and strength" in the midst of all this transition.
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How beautifully God is working in your lives! Thanks for sharing your life! We will be praying for you and your family!
ReplyDeleteI've kind of built and have been doing that for like 7 years and am in a similar situation...now engaged to a girl in South Carolina for doing missions to Africa...though it looks like we'll end up being overseas less than I thought.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, please feel free to ask me for advice if you think it might be useful. Like, I'm not sure if you're aware, but developing client relationships in America before going overseas might be critically important as it is more difficult to get customers when you have to say I'm in suchandsuch country (I have difficulty closing sales even when I'm just a few states away). Cost of living is lower overseas, but the prices that can be charged locally (when overseas) for web development are also significantly lower. One of the biggest US-serving companies is actually based in Columbia using hired locals there to build the sites (GeeksOnSteroids.com). Anyways, I think your best plan would be to have an American client base before heading overseas, especially as dry spells and non-paying new customers can be unpleasant surprises that can cause cashflow pains if you're not expecting them. Also, after a few years, repeat business makes things a lot easier as well. Word of mouth can grow things a bit (maybe 10%-50%), but in the SMB sector, search engine leads (ie when someone Google's "Drupal Developer" tend to be the major driver business). Also, you might be slightly better off to have knowledge of Wordpress and SEO over Drupal...I've never had a client or lead ask me to do Drupal, whereas SEO'ed Wordpress sites can cover like 85% of what SMB's usually ask for. (https://www.odesk.com/blog/2011/01/in-demand-skills-in-a-borderless-economy/)...might be tougher to sell them on Drupal sometimes over Wordpress.
If you guys would like an hour or so of advice, I can probably give you a very dense hour of advice by phone on how to set up such a company and avoid a lot of the headaches involved in setting it up and getting customers. I figured for serving Christ's sake, I should offer. It's ok if you're not interested currently as well....got a lead phone call call from some guy in California or so...gotta go.