Chasing dreams

Well, outreach is over and we are in the midst of debrief week back here in Kiev. We are doing a lot of talking about what God was teaching all of us during the time of outreach and it is great to hear what everyone is learning. I will write a blog later about how the outreach was generally, but I need some more time to debrief.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about this fall and what it will look like for me exactly. Torben will be the director of the next DTS starting September 27th, but I will be just part time staff. I need to rest in between schools more than a week or two. I need to take some more Russian lessons and I would like to help out some at the baby hospital again.

But lately my dream of continuing my education has been resurfacing. I finished one year of college in Ohio and during the summer after that, I decided to do my DTS in the fall rather than return to school right away. Since then, I have been on the mission field off and on, but my dream of finishing my degree has never gone away. In fact, the desire has grown stronger the longer I work with discipleship training. I want to be a missionary long-term, but I can see that to get an education in psychology/counseling would benefit my ministry a lot.
I run into a lot of people who have been through some awful experiences and because of that, they have some deep hurts. Even in this DTS, I have encountered students with very deep emotional wounds and though I know that God has spoken through me at times to help them, I know it would have helped so much to have some training in how to help them better. Also, I just love learning so much...I know, I'm such a nerd.

So, I've been looking into online learning programs. There are so many out there!! And there are some awesome online psychology programs. Of course, though, the issue of money comes up. I know it's not very realistic for a missionary living on support to dream of going to college. Even with financial aid, I don't think we would have enough. So Torben and I are doing a lot of thinking and praying about how this could possibly work out. Throwing lots of ideas back and forth. We both know that it would be really hard for us to leave missions - this is what we love to do - but it would only be for a time in order for Torben to work while I study. I don't know. Nothing is certain with any of it. These are just thoughts we've discussed the past few weeks. We've commited to be here at YWAM Kiev for another year, so I know these thoughts are premature unless a financial miracle happened. I'm just dreaming...